Chapter 249 A Day in the Sun
ADRIANA
The house had been closed up for too long.
I noticed it at breakfast — the twins eating with the particular contained restlessness of children who had been indoors too many days in a row, Lorain swinging her legs against the chair rungs in a steady rhythm that meant boredom was setting in, Leo scrolling through his phone with the glazed focus of someone not actually reading anything. Even Lana seemed unsettled, making the small dissatisfied sounds she made when the environment around her wasn’t interesting enough.
“We’re going out today,” I said.
Elijah junior looked up. “It’s hot.”
“It is,” I agreed. “We’ll take the car, bring umbrellas, get water and ice cream. You won’t even feel it.”
“Ice cream!” That was Liam, who had apparently been waiting for a reason to be enthusiastic about something all morning.
“Ice cream,” I confirmed. “So finish eating.”
The twins were immediately on board, which was usually the hardest part. Leo said he was in. Lorain looked pleased in the quiet self-contained way she approached most things. I looked at Leo to see if he’d noticed what I’d noticed — that the seat at the end of the table was conspicuously quiet.
Leo caught my eye and gave a small shrug. He’d noticed.
After breakfast, I went looking and found Leo upstairs outside Elijah’s room. He tilted his head toward the door.
I went in.
Leo was lying beside his father on the bed, on his back, staring at the ceiling with his arms folded across his chest. He looked over when I came in but didn’t sit up.
“We’re leaving soon,” I said, keeping my voice easy. “It’ll be good. You should come.”
Nothing.
“Is it the heat? Because I meant it about the umbrellas—”
“Mum.” He said it quietly but with enough weight to stop me. “I don’t want to go. You and the kids go. I’ll stay here with Dad.”
I looked at my son lying next to his unconscious father and understood, with the particular clarity of knowing someone their whole life, that this was not a conversation I could have right now. Not here, not like this. He needed to be in this room. Whatever was moving through him needed the space to move.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll bring you something back.”
He didn’t answer, but the line of his shoulders softened slightly.
Downstairs, getting four children out of the house and into the car with the necessary supplies was its own small operation. The twins argued about who sat where until Lorain, with so much authority, pointed at the seats and said “sit” in a tone that made both of them comply immediately. I made a mental note to figure out how she did that. Clearly, I needed the lessons.
The city was busy and warm and exactly what the kids needed.
“On foot from here,” I said when we parked. “Stay where I can see you.”
That instruction lasted approximately four seconds before Elijah junior and Liam were twenty meters ahead, weaving through foot traffic with the guards jogging after them.
Lorain stayed closer to me, holding the edge of the stroller occasionally like she was helping. I carried Lana against my chest because the stroller was already loaded with the bag and she was happier being held when there was a lot of noise and movement around her.
My mind kept pulling back to Leo in that room.
Nothing had happened, no argument, no incident, nothing I could point to as a trigger. He was just a fifteen-year-old boy who had been carrying more than he should for months and had chosen today to stop pretending he wasn’t tired. I understood that. I just wished I knew how to reach him through it.
“Mum!” Elijah junior was pointing at a street vendor. “Sugar cones!”
I looked at the display. Pure spun sugar, bright colours, approximately zero nutritional value.
“You’re getting ice cream later,” I said.
“But this is different to ice cream. It’s—”
“It’s sugar.”
“Good sugar though.”
I looked at the vendor, who had the expression of a man who had watched this exchange play out a thousand times and found it quietly amusing. He leaned toward the twins.
“My princes, might I suggest the ice-flavored cones instead? Cold, sweet, and they won’t ruin your appetite for ice cream. No brain freeze either.”
The twins looked at each other. “Deal,” said Liam.
I mouthed thank you to the vendor. He gave me a small nod. The cones were ice. Just ice. But they ate them with complete satisfaction and that was all that mattered.
The face painting came next, which meant twenty minutes of the twins debating their options with the focused intensity they never applied to anything academic, changing their minds every thirty seconds while the artist held the catalogue open with patience.
“Boys,” I said finally. “Choose. The man has other customers.”
Lorain had already chosen and was sitting in the chair getting it done while her brothers were still on the first page of the catalogue. Lana watched the whole process with enormous eyes, tracking the movement of the brush with an attention that made me think she was going to want one too.
She did want one. She sat for it with a stillness that made the artist look up in mild surprise, as though he hadn’t expected a baby to be cooperative. She seemed to understand something was happening to her face and was taking it seriously.
“You’re more patient than your brothers combined,” I told her.
By the time we made it back to the car, Elijah junior with a small stain on his shirt from a cone that had disagreed with physics, Liam sunburned across the nose despite the umbrella, Lorain pristine and satisfied, Lana asleep in the carrier. I was genuinely exhausted in the good, earned way that came from a day that had gone right.
I’d gotten a cone for Leo. Plain chocolate because that was still his.
When we got home, Hazel was in the entrance hall and she took Lana from me with ease.
“Sounds like it was fun,” she said. “The screaming carried from the street.”
“It was chaos,” I said. “Perfect chaos.” I looked around. “Where did you disappear to today? I looked for you before we left.”
“I went to collect the doctors.” She nodded upward. “They’re in Elijah’s room now. I brought them straight here.”
I was already moving before she finished the sentence.