hot apple cider and take them outside to a picnic table, to enjoy the afternoon sun. The look of surprised pleasure on Dylan’s face as he bites into a cinnamon-dusted donut makes me want to laugh out loud, but I settle for a smile.
Nick and I exchange a look over Dylan’s head—not exactly a loved-up look, but something a little bit like it. Since Dylan came into our lives, our conversations have become somewhat fraught, a tense innuendo of accusation to almost everything we say—Nick needing to work, my insistence that he spend time with Dylan, who is going to do what when.
Even the pronouns we’ve used—I instead of we, you instead of us—have revealed our emotional distance. But right now, as I sip cider and feel the sun on my face, I feel like we’re getting back to where we were. Where we need to be.
And then, in the sunny silence of the afternoon, Dylan suddenly lurches upright, knocking his paper cup of cider to the ground, his sugar-dusted mouth opened wide.
“Dylan—” I begin, but he’s already scrambling off the bench and sprinting away from us. Nick and I exchange a panicked look before he rises from his seat, calling his name. I am frozen, my heart thudding hard, my hands full of cider and donuts. “Dylan…” I say again, weakly this time. Josh simply stares.
Nick catches up with Dylan, reaching for his shoulder, but Dylan flinches away and keeps running. I watch, open-mouthed, as he runs up to a dark-haired woman standing by a car in the parking lot and tugs urgently on her sleeve. She turns, frowning as she looks down at him, and even from where I am sitting, I see Dylan’s shoulders slump, his face crumple. He drops the woman’s sleeve and turns around, trudging back towards us while Nick watches helplessly.
“Dylan…” I dump the donuts and cider on the table and reach for his hand, but he shies away from me. “Dylan, did you think that was someone you knew?” Even as I ask the question, I know the answer. Who else could he have thought it was but his mother? Beth. And for some reason, the way he ran to her, the urgent longing I sensed in every reckless step and the ensuing deep disappointment and even despair writ large on his face, hurts me in a way I don’t expect.
I feel achingly sad for Dylan, but it’s something more than that, a sense of loss in me that I don’t understand. I haven’t bonded that much with Dylan, and I’m certainly not jealous of his own mother. But I feel some sort of empty ache that I can’t identify.
The easy, optimistic mood of the day has fizzled, and we leave the farm without finishing our cider. We’re all silent as we troop back to the car, and Josh mutters something about needing to do homework and how he really didn’t want to spend three hours picking apples. I ignore him, and lean my head against the window, closing my eyes, as Nick starts the car and we head back to West Hartford.
Back at the house, Josh disappears into his room and I lug the apples to the laundry room, realizing I have no real use for twenty pounds of Courtlands. How many apple pies or vats of apple sauce can I really make? Dispirited, I dump them all by the washing machine, to think about later.
Returning to the kitchen, I see that Dylan has taken one of the new jigsaw puzzles out of the cupboard and is lying on the family-room floor on his stomach as he puts it together. The sight almost gives me that warm, satisfied feeling I had back at the farm—almost but not quite. I walk over to him and crouch by his side, watching as he carefully studies a piece before fitting it to another.
“That’s really good, Dylan.” No response, naturally. “You really like puzzles.” I pause. “Back at the farm, when we were having our donuts… you seemed as if you thought you’d seen someone you knew.” Again, no response, not even a flicker of acknowledgement. He simply keeps on with the puzzle, his head bent over it. “Who was it you thought you saw, Dylan? Was it your mom?” I speak gently, but the question still feels invasive.
Dylan doesn’t respond—of course—but then, just when I think he’s going to completely ignore me, he shakes his head, a methodical back and forth that keeps going, over