whipped cream and animal crackers wasn’t afraid to be a dad.
Regret landed in her gut like a one-ton boulder.
If only there was some way for her to send a message. Her phone was the first thing she surrendered when she ran. It was locked away on purpose. The device made her traceable. Without another way to contact him, she was screwed.
Her eyes shifted to the shadowbox. Arnie had handled the objects—all of them.
“I wonder,” she murmured.
Biting her lip while questioning her grip on reality, Summer opened the glass lid. A shudder of awareness shook her when his scent filled her senses. The display box wasn’t hermetically sealed. It wasn’t airtight. Arnie’s scent trapped inside had to be a sign.
She sat there for a long, long time staring at the feather and remembering why she picked up each stone.
As the clock approached midnight, she scooped up her treasures and marched outside into the moonlight. Placing the cherished objects on the cushion next to her as she wriggled onto a porch swing, Summer visualized mother moon charging each precious memory.
Clutching a small bluish stone in her left hand, she waved the feather through the air, catching moonlight with each sweeping gesture.
Minutes ticked by. She held the feather in front of her face and blew on it, imagining it taking flight and drifting for miles until it landed in the lap of her Viking Adonis.
“Arnie, hear me,” she called out to the midnight sky. “We need you.”
Swirling and unseen forces gathered energy. She felt the warm current connecting her heart to the baby inside her. With all her might, she willed a sliver of their combined life force out into the universe, hoping it found a way to him.
“Find us. Please. And hurry.”
The hour between two and three in the morning dragged on for an eternity. Arnie turned, punched his pillow, and tried a different position. The display of the digital clock sitting lopsided atop a stack of books on his bedside mocked him.
2:36
Sigh.
2:37
Oh, for fuck’s sake. He punched the pillow. Turned his face the other way and demanded sleep come and take him.
The attempt was good for less than a minute. He turned his head, cracked open one eye to check the time, and muttered, “Two forty-four.”
Growling with frustration, he threw off the covers and sat up. Any other time he’d jerk off, hoping the explosion of energy would put him to sleep, but he abandoned the idea. His unenthused dick was tired of being manhandled.
Stomping from the bedroom into the kitchen, he nearly ripped the refrigerator door off with a forceful yank. A single bottle of Yoo-hoo sat alone on a shelf. Everything else was a condiment, takeout leftovers, or a science experiment.
Drinking the watery chocolate beverage as he strode into the living room and noticed a stack of ignored mail.
“Guaranteed ninety percent is wasted paper.”
He pawed through the ads, flyers, and bulk mail with little interest. It wasn’t like a decorated envelope bearing a schmaltzy Hallmark card from Summer was suddenly going to turn up, so why bother?
A folded newsletter addressed to ‘Eat More Vegetables’ turned out to be a splashy four-page visit to his dad’s organic farm. Hawaii was good for his old man. Island life took the sting out of a twenty-year nightmare. For a long time, Arnie worried Giselle’s relentless reign of post-divorce terror would break the man, but contentment came with a change in continent. Going by the smiling faces of his farm crew, Ned Wanamaker’s life was now full of happiness.
A large envelope contained two tickets to a Broadway show, compliments of a legal firm trying ever so hard to worm their way into NIGHTWIND’s good graces. Without thought or care, he tossed the tickets aside. Dottie could have them. Or Milo. Not Neal or Rolf, though. He was still mad at those two fuckers for stealing a bag of coffee beans a client had given him. The Detroit Bold Coffee Company’s 8 MILE BASELINE blend purportedly delivered a serious jolt. He’d gone through half the beans before declaring it a caffeine fail.
Neal and Rolf thought it’d be hilarious to switch the beans with something of far less quality. Unused to being the jokee instead of the joker, Arnie’s nose got out of joint about the whole thing. As far as he was concerned, they could both eat shit for the foreseeable future.
Leaving the empty Yoo-hoo bottle beside a stack of shit he should have walked to the recycling bin, Arnie wandered around his apartment.