Page 2 of The Sleight Before Christmas

“Actually, it’s the perfect time. When do I get a dad moment? Whendo Iget bath time?”

See? Communication.

“You get time,” she counters unconvincingly.

“Yeah?” I lift my chin. “When?”

“When you ... go out with the guys.”

“October fifth, last year,” I clap back. She frowns as I straighten my spine, knowing I’ve got her somewhere in the vicinity of where I want her.

“Fine,” she sighs, giving up easily—too easily—as the suds in her hair start to sink into her scalp. “We could both use a private moment. Peyton turns eighteen in thirteen and a half years,” she delivers like a sentence. “I guess we can get our time then.”

“Jesus, it’s that long?” I ask, to which she nods, her eyes lowering. Seeing her surrender so quickly starts an uneasy gnawing inside my chest. Serena rarely, if ever, backs down.

“Babe,” I retract, tossing the bullshit aside. “I’m sorry, I really tried to wait until you—”

“No, it’s,” she shakes her head in frustration. “It’s okay, God, never mind. You work so hard, Thatch. You don’t deserve this. I’m sorry, I love you.”

Alarm bells start going off as I study her closely. Dark circles lay like stains under her eyes. She’s paler than usual, and from the way her robe is cinched ... thinner? The most gutting part is that her return stare is lacking all signs of life. Our typicalborderline playful tit-for-tat I was up for, but this? Something’s most definitely wrong.

“Go, I’ll take—” A tell-tale thud sounds upstairs, and both of us instantly snap to, heads tilting, ears perking. The long, loaded silence that follows has us both hauling ass up the stairs. Heart thumping wildly in my chest, I make it to the door a split second after Serena and stop behind her at the threshold. The blood in my ears roars as I take note of our boy child just as he grips the rope ... hanging from his bedroom ceiling fan.

“Daddy, look!” Peyton orders before sailing through the air as Serena and I simultaneously sound nuclear warnings, a stunted second too late. Peyton instantly drops from the rope, landing in an impressive dismount on his mattress. Stunned silence passes as I make the decision to go parent in lieu of awed spectator—especially after seeing the state of his ceiling fan, which now hangs by nothing but wires.

“Son,” I sigh as Serena uncharacteristically ambles into Peyton’s room before calmly perching herself on the edge of his bed. Staring up at the fan, I mentally try to work out how in the hell our four-and-a-half-year-old kid managed to secure a rope to his— “Gracie!” I shout, summoning our twelve-year-old nightmare into the circus tent.

“I’m on the phone!” She barks from her room.

“Good thing it’s not attached to a wall,” I holler back.

“What!?” She counters in evident confusion.

Feeling aged by the fact she probably has never seen a rotary phone, let alone a beige, wall-mounted classic, I clip out my order. “End your call and get in here, now!”

The overexaggerated stomping of feet fills the hall as Serena stares through our son, looking utterly clueless as to who he is.

“What, Dad, what?” Gracie snaps.

A second after I glance toward Gracie, I’m palming my eyes, an entire body flinch following as I toss words blindly in herdirection. “Put some damned clothes on, Jesus ... never mind. Want to tell me how your brother manipulated you into hanging a damned rope from his ceiling fan?”

“I thought it would hold,” she offers. Glancing in a safe direction, I watch as Serena scrutinizes her cuticles, which gives me pause. The sight of her like watching a firework fuse fizz out just as it’s supposed to go off.

“Thought it would ... hold,” I repeat. “He’s four, Gracie.Four.”

“One, two, tharee, four,” Peyton sounds before waiting for the applause that isn’t coming. Clearly slighted, he continues his count as Gracie sounds up again.

“I can’t watch him all the time,” she huffs.

“I asked you for ten minutes so I could take out the trash. Ten minutes. Could you maybe not have set him up for irreparable brain damage during that time?”

I brave a glance in her direction as Serena sits idly by as if this conversation is nothing out of the norm. Staring at her for long seconds, I realize it isn’t. In fact, this is the exact type of situation we’ve been dealing withhourlyfor months, hell, more likelyyearsnow on end.

“I told him it wasn’t a good idea,” Gracie defends.

“Ah, so, you weren’t able to reason with a four-year-old? Noted. Next time we can talk about a more reasonable argument you can have with someone whose most recent accomplishment was not smearing poop on the potty.”

“I didn’t smear poop, Daddy,” Peyton defends.

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