Page 10 of Ghost's Revenge
It's the perfect response. Not a promise, but not a rejection either. Putting the decision in my hands where it belongs.
Tyler bounds through the door and wraps his arms around my waist, still buzzing with excitement. "Did you see me catch it, Mom? Did you see?"
"I saw, baby. You did great."
Through the screen, I watch Derek walk back toward his motorcycle. But he stops at the bike and turns back, his eyes finding mine across the distance.
"Thank you," I mouth, not sure if he can see me clearly enough to read my lips.
He nods once, a small gesture that somehow carries more weight than words, then swings his leg over the bike and starts the engine. The rumble fills the air, but it doesn't sound threatening anymore. It just sounds like... Derek.
"He's nice," Tyler says, pressing his face against the screen to watch Derek pull away from the curb. "I like him."
"Tyler—" I start, ready to give him the speech about not getting attached to people who might not stick around. But the words die in my throat when I see the hope in his eyes, the way his shoulders aren't hunched with tension for the first time in weeks.
"Can I put my glove away in the special place?" he asks, referring to the small box under his bed where he keeps his most precious possessions.
"Of course you can."
He races upstairs, and I'm left standing by the door with Maria, who's watching me with knowing eyes.
"He's going to want to play again tomorrow," she says.
"I know."
"And the day after that."
"I know."
"And Derek's going to say yes, because he's already half in love with that little boy."
I turn to stare at her. "What?"
"You should have seen his face when Tyler caught that ball. Like watching his own son succeed." Maria folds the last towel and sets it on the pile. "Some men are dangerous because they don't know how to love. Others are dangerous because they love too much, too hard. You need to figure out which kind he is."
The words follow me as I head upstairs to check on Tyler, echoing in my mind like a warning I'm not sure I'm ready to heed. In his room, I find him placing his baseball glove in his treasure box, handling it like it's made of gold.
"Mom?" he says without looking up. "Do you think Derek has kids?"
The question catches me off guard. "I don't know, baby. Why?"
"Because he knew exactly how to show me the right way to hold my glove. And he didn't get mad when I missed the ball." Tyler closes the box and slides it back under his bed. "Daddies are supposed to teach their kids stuff like that, right?"
My heart breaks a little more. "Some daddies do, yes."
"My daddy never did."
Tyler rarely mentions David anymore, and when he does, it's usually with the kind of matter-of-fact acceptance that children have about things they can't change. But this feels different. This feels like the beginning of understanding that what we had wasn't normal.
"No," I agree quietly. "He didn't."
"Derek's not my daddy, but he taught me anyway."
"Yes, he did."
Tyler considers this, his four-year-old brain working through concepts that are too big for someone his age to fully grasp. "That was nice of him."
"It was very nice of him."
