Chapter 17 TORNADOO

Chapter 17 TORNADOO
Night falls slow outside, but inside my house the energy is still firmly two p.m.
The living room lights are dim, the TV is playing cartoons on mute, and Hazel… Hazel is a battery nobody remembered to unplug.
She’s sprinting back and forth from the couch to the hallway, unicorn pajamas flapping, her shorts sliding a little at the waist, short hair completely free of its elastic, bangs stuck to her sweat-damp forehead. My three cats have chosen tactical retreat; they’re perched on top of the cabinets, all wearing the same expression: this is not our problem.
“Hazel.” My voice comes out for the thirteenth time in ten minutes. “Those are night lights, not party lights.”
She stops in the middle of the hallway and spins around with full dramatic flair. Her round cheeks are flushed, big eyes shining. “I’m still not sleepy.”
“Of course you’re not,” I mutter, fluffing the couch cushions that have been demoted to trampoline. “You run on chaos.”
Jade and Gemma left a few hours ago, abandoning glitter, glue, and noise in their wake. Luca swung by after his meeting, dropped off a cute bear-face donut for Hazel, then took off again because of an “early call” tomorrow morning. Hazel cried for two minutes, then forgot as soon as her toilet-paper ghost cat stood perfectly on the shelf.
Now it’s just me, Hazel, and the countdown to tomorrow at four p.m. ticking in the back of my skull like a bomb timer.
I lean my hip against the kitchen doorway and fold my arms. “Okay. Listen up, tiny tornado. It’s past your bedtime. Your body needs rest. Your brain needs rest. The cats are already asleep because they have self-respect.”
Hazel immediately scoops up Bruno from behind the couch. “Bruno’s not sleeping.” She swings the poor cat like a stuffed toy. “He wants to play with me.”
“Hazel De Cruz.” I cross the room in three steps and grab Bruno with one hand. He surrenders to my arms, claws tucked in. “If you carry him like that, he’s moving in with the neighbors.”
“NOOOO!” Hazel shrieks, slapping at the air with both hands. “He’s mine!”
“Exactly.” I set Bruno on the floor and pat his butt like, run, man. He bolts. “Which is why you have to treat him nicely. The same way Mommy treated you when you were sideways in my stomach for nine months and destroying my spine.”
Hazel tilts her head. “What’s a spine?”
“Long story,” I mutter. “Okay. Bedtime.”
She drops to the floor immediately, cheek pressed to the wood. “I’m already sleeping.” She squeezes her eyes shut, her mouth twitching like she’s physically holding the laugh in.
I roll my eyes at the ceiling. “Right. People who are sleeping always scream ‘I’m a robot’ five seconds earlier.”
Hazel seizes the cue instantly. She pushes herself up halfway and sticks both arms straight out. “I’m a robot. I don’t need sleep. I drink gasoline.” She marches stiff-legged toward me, beeping quietly. “Beep boop.”
“Perfect.” I bend, scoop her up in one motion, one hand under her butt, one at her back. “In that case, this robot is being sent back to the factory for maintenance.”
Hazel screeches with laughter, arms looping around my neck, her chubby legs kicking the air. Her weight settles against me, warm and familiar. My four-year-old is not a baby anymore, but she’s still small enough to fit in my arms. For now.
“I don’t want maintenance.” She drops her head onto my shoulder, cheek squished against my neck. Her breath is warm, smelling like kid shampoo and leftover maple syrup. “I want cartoons. One more episode.”
“Nope.” I tap the TV power with my toes. The screen goes black, our reflections faint in the glass. “We already watched two episodes.”
“Only four,” she corrects, bold-faced lying.
I lift an eyebrow. “Hazel, you can’t even count to four without forgetting three.”
She whines, her voice climbing in pitch. “Mommy’s meeean.”
“Yeah. That’s been confirmed internationally.” I hug her a little closer and turn toward the hallway. “Say goodnight to your toilet family.”
We pass the shelf in the living room. The toilet family is lined up: the tall roll labeled MOMMY, the medium roll L U C A with a ‘tie’ that looks more like a throat wound, the tiny glitter-covered Hazel roll, plus the four-eyed ghost cat beside them.
Hazel lifts her little hand and waves. “Goodnight, paper Mommy. Goodnight, paper Daddy. Goodnight, paper Hazel. Goodnight, ghost kitty. Don’t eat me.”
“Is this a home or a horror movie set?” I mutter. “We’re inviting Gemma over with a crucifix tomorrow.”
The hallway to Hazel’s room is dim, lit only by a star-shaped nightlight at the end. The ocean is still out there, rolling in slow, steady waves against the shore.
Hazel’s room looks like someone dumped an entire toy catalog in here and gave up halfway through organizing. White walls with crooked rainbow stickers, a low bookshelf crammed with board books and crayons, a twin bed with planet-printed sheets, and on the wall closest to the window, a row of cheap printed photos: Baby Hazel in an oversized beanie in my arms; two-year-old Hazel chasing the tide, Luca running beside her with his jeans rolled up; Hazel with blue icing all over her mouth, sitting on my studio table, wrecking my blueprints.
I nudge the bedroom door open with my foot, shoulder pushing it wider. Hazel is still in my arms, her fingers now playing with my hair, wrapping one strand around her little finger.
“I’m still not sleepy,” she announces, but her voice has already dropped half a notch.
“Great. You can lie down and lie at the same time.” I lower her onto the mattress and pull the blanket up to her belly. “Where’s your pillow?”
Hazel immediately rolls over, grabs her favorite pillow, the one already giving up on structural integrity, with the cat-print pillowcase. She hugs it, then sits up again, the blanket sliding down.
“Story,” she says. “Two.”
“One,” I correct, leaning my hip against the side of the bed. “Mommy’s tired.” Tired in the head. Tired in the heart. Tired of thinking about four p.m. tomorrow.
“Two,” Hazel insists, holding up two chubby fingers.
“Half,” I fire back.
She blinks. “Half a story?”
“We start one story, and if you fall asleep in the middle, that’s it. That’s called life.”
Hazel exhales like an employee who’s had her overtime cut. “Okay. But it has to have a unicorn horse.”
“Of course,” I mutter. “What is life without a unicorn horse.”
I sit on the edge of the bed and tug the blanket up again, this time actually getting it to cover her stomach. Hazel lies down, but her legs keep kicking under the covers.
“If you keep moving,” I tell her, “the planets on your sheets are going to get dizzy.”
She giggles and tries to still her feet. “Can they throw up?”
“Yeah, and guess who has to clean it?” I point at myself.
Hazel thinks about it for a second, then stops kicking. “Okay. They’re quiet.”
I lean over to flick off the main light. The star nightlight glows, bathing the room in soft yellow. Outside, the wide window shows a thin strip of dark ocean.
I grab a random book off the shelf by her bed. The cover is a pastel unicorn that looks way too happy. Naturally.
“Mommy, are you scared of unicorns?” Hazel asks, her eyes big in the half-dark.
“I’m scared of the electric bill,” I say, opening to the first page. “Unicorns are easy.”
She snickers, then presses her cheek into the pillow. Her small fingers find the edge of the blanket and start twisting it, slow. She’s done that since she was a baby, her own built-in comfort mechanism. I like that more than I’ll ever admit out loud.
I start to read, my voice dropping, not really reading the words on the page so much as sliding into a freestyle story.
“So, in a land far, far away—”
“What’s it called?” Hazel cuts in.
“The Land of Laundry That Never Ends.”
Hazel laughs and slaps a hand over her mouth. “That’s our house.”
“Exactly. In that land, there lived a unicorn… not white, not pink, but gray, because she kept falling in the mud.”
Hazel squirms happily. “What’s her name?”
“Her name is… Hazel.”
“Nooo,” she protests, but her smile is huge. “I’m not gray.”
“Sometimes you’re gray when you forget to shower.” I smooth her short bangs, nudging a strand away from her eye. “This unicorn Hazel has a very chatty mom who keeps saying, ‘sleep, sleep, sleep, school tomorrow,’ even though she’s not in school yet.”
“I’m not in school,” Hazel mumbles, letting out a tiny unconscious yawn.
“Yeah, I know, baby.” I tap the tip of her nose, giving it a gentle pinch. “That’s why all of this is practice.”
The book is still open in my lap, but I’m not looking at it. I’m looking at her small face. Under the nightlight, her lashes cast thin shadows on her cheeks. There’s a speck of glitter still stuck near her temple, a leftover from Jade’s chaos earlier this afternoon.
“This unicorn Hazel,” I go on, “keeps saying she’s not sleepy, but her eyes are heavy. Her head is heavy. Her whole body is heavy.”
“My body is big,” Hazel says, proud. She stretches her arms under the blanket. “I’m chubby.”
“Chubby and valuable,” I tell her.
She smiles, half-asleep. “Like a donut.”
“Exactly,” I murmur, laughing. “Like a donut.”
I keep going with the story. The sound of the waves slips between my sentences. A few paragraphs into the saga of the unicorn trying to escape bedtime, Hazel starts inching closer to me. Her small hand reaches out, finds my wrist, and tugs lightly.
“Mommy,” she whispers.
“Mm?” I close the book a little, looking down at her.
“Are you going tomorrow?”
The question lands too neatly, too soft.
“Tomorrow I’m working at the studio,” I answer quietly. “Kayla’s taking you to the beach. You can build a two-story sandcastle if you want.”
“Kayla’s nice,” she mumbles, lips brushing the pillow. “Is Luca coming?”
I swallow. “Maybe. If he finishes work early. He said he wants to stop by.”
Hazel nods, a tiny motion, like that settles it. She’s quiet for a second, then again, “Mommy’s meeting a person?”
“What exactly did you hear when the grown-ups were talking?” I narrow my eyes.
Hazel cracks one eye open, sly. “I heard… Rafal. The printer.”
I almost choke and laugh at the same time. “That is not his name.”
“What’s his name?” Hazel pushes, her voice already fuzzy with sleep.
“His name is…” My tongue stalls. The name feels wrong in this room, a space full of toys and tiny clothes and a life he’s never touched.
“His name is Boring Grown-Up,” I say finally, light. “And you don’t have to remember it.”
“Boring grown-up,” Hazel repeats, satisfied. “Does he have a unicorn?”
“If he does, the unicorn is probably sad,” I mutter.
Hazel giggles, but it dissolves into another yawn. Her little mouth stretches, her eyes stay closed longer. The hand gripping my wrist loosens, the hold melting into a simple touch. Her body shifts, edging halfway onto me, her head landing on my thigh.
I stop reading. I close the book with one hand and use the other to run my fingers slowly along her back over the thin blanket. Her breathing starts to slow, settling into the pattern I know by heart. In, out, in, out. Steady.
In here, in this room, everything feels smaller and sharper at the same time. The walls with their crooked rainbow stickers, the photos taped up, the pile of books on the floor I never quite manage to organize, the cat plush in the corner whose head I’ve already reattached once. My current life has a shape now, even if the cracks are still there.
Hazel mumbles something in that half-dreaming place. “Mommy…”
“Yeah?” I whisper.
“Don’t go too long.”
The line drifts out of her mouth without any intention to hurt, but it hits perfectly.
I let out a slow breath and lean down to kiss her hair. “I won’t be gone long,” I tell the top of her head, my nose brushing the fine strands. “I’m only going as far as I have to so your life stays comfy. Okay?”
She doesn’t answer. Her breathing has already dropped into another frequency.
Carefully, I slide her off my thigh onto the pillow. Hazel rolls a little, her arms automatically searching for something to hug. They find the cat pillow, and she clutches it tight. Her short bangs fall over her forehead, covering the tiny spot that got glue on it earlier.
I pull the blanket up to her shoulders, making sure her legs are covered. Nights near the beach like to pretend they’re warm, then sneak in a cold draft under the door.
I stand up slowly; the mattress creaks just a little. Hazel doesn’t stir. The cats have apparently decided to sleep in the living room tonight, far away from flailing feet.
At the door, I turn back one more time.
The star nightlight throws a soft gleam over Hazel’s cheek. Her mouth is slightly open, her brows relaxed. She looks… safe. That’s it. Just safe.
Tomorrow at four p.m., I’m letting someone who once left me at an altar walk into another room in my life. Not this room. Never this room. But still, the outline of the life I have now is about to brush up against a man who should’ve been finished years ago.
I curl my fingers around the doorknob, open it a crack, then close it gently, leaving a small gap. Hazel always likes a little bit of light from the hallway. So do I.
The hallway is quiet. The living room is half-dark, only the kitchen light still on, shining over the toilet-paper family and the ghost cat on the shelf. They stare back at me with shiny googly eyes, silent witnesses to all the nonsense and chaos I call “home.”
I take a long breath and rest my back against the wall for a moment.
Tonight, I can lie in my own bed and pretend tomorrow is just another workday. Tomorrow, I have to stop pretending.
For now, the only thing that really matters is asleep in the next room, hugging a cat pillow, one hundred percent sure that Mommy always comes back.
That’s my real altar. Everything else is just décor.