vehement

15

• AMALIA •

Hours pass. I make Enzo and I some lunch with scraps left in the fridge. He eats his quickly, so I give him the rest of mine too. I don't have a phone, and there's no clocks, so I have no way to tell the time. I don't even know when Frankie gets back, so it wouldn't be much help anyway.

     Enzo draws a picture and gives it to me. It's of three people, two of which are evidently him and I. I expect the third to be Frankie, but it isn't.

     "Who's this?" I ask him.

     "Grandpa!" He exclaims.

     I furrow my eyebrows. At that moment, I hear the front door open. "I'm back!" Frankie says.

     I lift Enzo up and get the picture, then walk into the hall. Frankie smiles at me, but I hold the picture up.

     "Who's Grandpa?" I ask.

     His eyes soften, and he looks to Enzo. "He still hasn't gotten over it."

     "Gotten over what?"

     "I didn't want to upset you, so I didn't tell you, but another reason why we moved here was because your dad passed away. You couldn't stand to be in the place where you grew up with him, so we left. Enzo doesn't realise he's dead. He thinks he's coming back."

     My heart saddens. "Oh." I whisper, looking down at my son who smiles at me.

     I hold him closer to me and Frankie says, "why don't you get him and yourself ready for the library?"

     "Okay." I say. I walk up the stairs and into his bedroom. I find a cute little outfit and change him into it before going through the dresser in the room Frankie and I share.

     It's mostly dresses. I pick out a ditsy floral one and get it on, along with a pair of trainers. I'm tying the laces, sitting on the floor when Frankie walks inside. He smiles down at me.

     "You okay?" He asks.

     I nod.

     I undo the laces again after getting them wrong for the fourth time.

     "Here, I'll do it." Frankie says. He crouches down beside me and begins to tie my laces for me. I smile in thanks, and he helps me stand up. "Are you ready to go?" He asks. I nod.

     We get Enzo from his room, where he's playing with his toys. We walk out of the house, and I breathe in the fresh air. Frankie opens the passenger door for me and I get in as he gets Enzo into his car seat.

     He gets in beside me, and I lean back, wrapping my arms around myself. I roll the window down, allowing wind to spread into the car.

     "You warm?" He asks.

     I nod. "I'm feeling a little dizzy."

     He grabs a bottle of water from the console and passes it to me. "Thanks." I say.

     He smiles.

     "What type of books do I like to read?" I ask.

     "Fiction and Fantasy." He tells me.

     "What about you?"

     "I don't read much." He responds. "Enzo likes to, though."

     It takes around twenty minutes to drive to the library. For about three fourths of the journey, we just past woodland. Our house is in the middle of nowhere, and when I ask Frankie about it he says that was one of the main reasons I wanted to move here, so we had a lot of privacy. But is this too much?