Flours For You | ✓

10 | the little nugget returns

"Why are you sad?" he asked, genuine curiosity laced in his tone.

"I'm not sad," I lied nonchalantly, turning my head the other way.

"You're lying."

"What," I spun my head around in feigned shock, "am not!"

"Yes you are! I can tell," he stated with much conviction.

I held my hands up in surrender, heaving a large sigh. "Okay, okay. You got me. But how did you know?"

He shrugged again, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Your face doesn't look the same as last time."

"You remember me from last time?"

"I spilled ice cream on you. I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean to get your jeans dirty," he apologized, his posture becoming timid.

I halted in my footsteps then and squatted down in front of him to level myself at his height. Eventually, I placed a hand on his shoulder and said, "It's okay."

He looked down at his feet that started playing with the dirt on the ground. "Please don't be sad."

"I'm not sad about the ice cream anymore," I gently assured.

"No." He shook his head. "It's sad to be sad all the time."

I laughed, loud enough to mask the chirping birds but not loud enough as my ears perked up as it heard a voice calling out a name in the distance.

"Henry!" a woman's voice bellowed out from behind me, her timid footsteps narrowly approaching.

I spun my head around to see what I assumed to be the boy's mother. Her long red dress flowed with the wind as she held tightly onto her hat that was attemping to be carried away. Anxiety was clearly written on her face, a mark of normality amongst any mother who had been looking for their missing child, that I inwardly cursed myself for not finding her sooner.

"Hi, mama!" Henry happily exclaimed, as he ran with much force only to head straight into his mother's arms.

She heaved a sigh of relief as she crouched down and hugged him, her eyes briefly fluttering closed. Eventually, she recollected herself and looked up and into my eyes with her wild blue ones, its depth reminding me of the oceans I've seen in Hawai'i a few years back.

"Thank you so much for finding Henry," she rushed to speak, the creases on her forehead deepening.

"Believe it or not, he actually found me." I affectionally smiled his way, timidly patting his head.

"One minute I'm packing up the trunk, ready to go home, and the next minute I'm running around like a mad-woman because my child is missing!" She threw her arms up in the end for emphasis, her tired, worn-down features holding the most astonished expression I've ever seen on another human: mouth, eyes, and ears it seems, agape to its fullest extent.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that," I hesitantly replied, my voice wavering at an attempt to comfort someone, especially a mother, I knew nothing about. Being raised from a mother who handed me off to my sister the second I could speak, I especially didn't know anything about comforting or raising a child. My words were coming from a hopeless place to say the least.