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“Yay! I’m ready!” She picks up Hugs with one hand and her backpack with the other.
“Great! We can leave when he comes back.”
I check that the window in my room is locked as it should be—it is. Then I do one last sweep of each room to see if there’s anything I forgot to pack—there isn’t. So when Landon returns, I collect our jackets and my phone, wallet, and keys, and we’re all set.
After we’ve stopped by his apartment, we head out to visit Lolly. When he went by this morning like he usually does, she wasn’t feeling well and her caregiver suggested coming back later in the day, so Rae and I got invited.
Unfortunately, upon our arrival, we’re told that although her fever is under control, she hasn’t been social at all today and we shouldn’t expect any conversation.
We find her lying in bed, staring unseeingly at the ceiling, looking horribly fatigued. It’s unsettling even before Landon whispers to me that she didn’t look this bad earlier. That only worries me more.
We try to talk to her like normal, but the only responses we get are sluggish looks. She doesn’t smile, doesn’t wave, doesn’t make a sound. It ends up being so disconcerting that I go hunt down her caregiver to ask if there’s something bad going on with her, like a stroke.
Mindy just looks at me sympathetically and says, “I understand how scary it is to see her this way, but I assure you, it’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
I guess I was foolish to hope she would give me advice on how to somehow nudge Lolly out of it. At least she doesn’t seem concerned, though.
Landon agrees when I get back and tell him what Mindy said, but I can tell he’s still bothered. It helps nothing that Lolly doesn’t respond whatsoever to his affectionate goodbye when we leave.
God, I wish so much that there was something I could do to fix this.
But I know there’s nothinganyonecan do. I’m not a failure. This is one of those things no one can control. So I just comfort him like I always do.
He cheers up a good amount while we make homemade pizzas and eat them withZootopiaon the TV. Then Rae helps us clean the kitchen, and we help her with her homework.
When it’s time to get her to sleep, she and I teach him how the before-bed compliment routine goes, and he thinks it’s fantastic.
His first mirror compliment ever turns out to be, “You know how to make the two very best girls in the world smile. Congratulations.”
“Good one!” Rae says as she gives him a big hug.
“Congratulations,” I echo with a kiss to his cheek.
Smiling, he hugs her back and returns the kiss to me. “Well, good job to Rae for reading out loud at school today without messing up, and good job to Annie for not being rude to averyrude customer at work.”
“Thank you!” we say together.
Rae’s words turn into a yawn. She’s on the other side of him from me, so I nudge him to nudge her out the door, and he does. “Okay, little lady. Looks like it’s bedtime.”
As we head into his room, I ask, “Are you sure you’re okay with giving up your bed?”
“Well, I’m not going to put you two on the couch while I sleep in my bed by myself.”
I chew on the corner of my mouth, unsure of how to not-awkwardly suggest that all three of us could sleep in his bed, which is even bigger than it was in my daydreams.
“But,” Rae speaks up, “if our sleepover is ‘cause there was something scary by our house, I don’t wantanybodyto sleep in the living room.” Her blue eyes are genuinely worried as she looks up at him. “What if the scary stuff gets you? Can you just sleep with us?”
Ha! Leave it to her to say what I’m struggling with.
He and I exchange the same,‘What do you think?’look.
I go first. “She has a point. I’d feel better if we were all in the same place.”
With a nod, he agrees, “Me, too.”
Later, it ends up being a good arrangement even outside of the safety aspect. I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and when I come back, I become aware of Landon quietly having a bad dream on his side of the bed.
I creep over through the darkness and kneel down, whisper to him, stroke his mussed hair. When he comes out of it, he grasps my hand and mumbles the details to me: Lolly had gone missing and his dad was very cruelly blaming him for it.
