It’s an adventure, she whispers, Brody weighted with sleep, the soft whorl at the crown of his head making silky strands shoot up. She eases open the side door she oiled yesterday and pads barefoot to the car, the moon thin, his head pressed to her collarbone. She nestles him in the car seat with Blue Teddy tucked alongside his butter-soft legs, his breath sweetly spiced with toothpaste and Flintstone™ Chewables. He shifts, making soft mewing sounds like the orange tabby cat left behind he’ll cry over when he wakes in the morning. Draping a blanket over him, she murmurs, Hush, hush, things will be better now.
Gravel crunches as she reverses out of the driveway, headlights off. At the stop sign, she glances at the dark house in the rear-view mirror, its black windows like gaping wounds, and then turns right and heads west toward the highway.
Days fill with wonder. He gathers treasures: a glittery pink stone dotted with sparkles unearthed from a park in Bobcaygeon; red, gold, and yellow leaves he gathered into a bouquet for her in Omemee; two red spoons from the Dairy Queen chocolate sundaes she splurged on in a town she can’t remember, all stored in an old IKEA cookie tin.
At night they play I Spy until clouds drag themselves across the moon, and they camp in the backseat, falling asleep with his spine curved against her abdomen so that she isn’t sure where she stops, and he begins. They breathe in tandem. Her heart unclenches. Bruises fade.
At a diner an hour from the Canada-US border, chocolate shake froth clinging to his upper lips, cruisers pull up, lights beet red, and officers circle her car.
Years later, she remembers those days, stitches them together in her mind fractured from time, distance, and too many hours alone in that dim cell. She meets him at a park much like the one where he discovered his glittery stone, his limbs long and golden-brown, his eyes like hers. She holds out the rusted IKEA tin filled with dry brown leaves pitted with lacy holes; the pink pebble, smaller now and more precious; and twin red plastic spoons, but he just smiles and looks away. Says he doesn’t remember any of it.
work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and twice for the Pushcart Prize, has won the Best Microfiction award, and was the 2024 winner of the Toronto Star Short Story Contest. She is the recipient of a 2024 SmokeLong Quarterly Fellowship for Emerging Writers. Her stories appear in Atticus Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Forge Literary Magazine, Fractured Lit, SmokeLong Quarterly, Vestal Review, and elsewhere. She lives and writes in Picton, Ontario, Canada.
