Kira
“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy, please, no!”
Kira bolted awake and jumped directly out of her bed as soon as her eyes were open. Lucian was calling her, but it wasn’t normal. She could tell that much already, just from the urgent, desperate tone in her son’s voice. “I’m coming, baby!” she yelled back. She bolted out into the hallway and dashed down the hall towards her son’s room. When she flung the door open, she saw Lucian curled up in a little ball on his bed, rocking back and forth. “What is it, baby? What’s wrong?”
“Dream,” Lucian mumbled, looking up at his mother through tear-filled eyes. “Mommy…” He reached out with his two hands, wordlessly asking for her to come forward and hold him.
Kira walked over to the bed and gathered her son in her arms, holding him close to her chest and dropping soft kisses at the top of his head. “What was it, baby? What happened this time?”
Lucian shook his head and gripped at her shirt, wiping his tears on the fabric of her pajama top. “It’s nothing. It’s okay. I’m okay,” he whispered, but his small voice still trembled. He was clearly terrified, shaking in her arms. Kira felt her whole body go cold in fear. This wasn’t normal. Lucian didn’t get scared like this. He was such a bright, happy child. Nothing ever fazed him. Even when Larry and Kira broke up, he only cried a few times before he adjusted, remaining the same healthy, perky little child he always was.
Kira cleared her throat and tried to speak as delicately as she could. “Honey, does it have something to do with the bruises? Did somebody hurt you?”
“No,” Lucian said immediately, shaking his head back and forth. “No, that didn’t happen.”
That phrasing made Kira narrow her eyes, suspicious that her son was lying. “What didn’t happen, baby?”
“Nothing!” Lucian said, burying his face deeper into her shirt. “Nothing happened, okay?”
“Okay, okay,” Kira said. She shushed her son softly and rubbed his back, trying to get him to calm down. “Okay, we can talk about it later, all right? Why don’t you try to go to sleep and have better dreams, baby doll?”
“I can’t,” Lucian said, sniffling a little. “I’m scared.”
“Mommy will be with you this time,” Kira said. She settled on the bed with her son still in her lap. “You can sleep. Mommy will hold you, baby. I’ll keep you safe.”
“Okay,” Lucian said, but he sounded like he wasn’t totally confident, remaining stiff in her arms for several long minutes before exhaustion finally got the better of him and he slipped off to sleep.
Kira sighed deeply, feeling crushed by the weight of her worry over her son. Slowly, so as not to disturb Lucian, she got to her feet, still holding onto her son as she crossed the hallway back to her room. She placed Lucian down on her bed and pulled the blankets around him tightly, keeping hold of his hand as she reached over to grab her phone from the nightstand. It was still early in the morning, but Dylan would probably be awake soon. Honestly, it was a miracle that he’d slept through the whole night, given Lucian’s multiple nightmares and the other noise that Kira and Brent had undoubtedly caused together.
Kira dialed Larry’s number, tapping her feet impatiently as it rang several times with no response. “Oh, come the fuck on,” she muttered as the call went to voicemail. She wasn’t going to give up that easily, though. She called back three more times until she finally got an answer.
“What?” Larry barked into the phone, his voice sounding a little clogged-up. Kira figured she’d probably woken him up, but she didn’t really give a fuck. This was important.
“Hey. Did something happen to Lucian yesterday?” she asked, getting straight to the point.
“What? No,” Larry said back, scoffing into her ear. “What are you on about?”
“He came home with bruises he didn’t have before,” Kira said, turning to look at her sleeping child, who was frowning in his dreams.
“So what?” Larry asked. “Kids get bruises all the time, Kira. It’s a part of life. You can’t protect him from everything.”
“He wouldn’t tell me where they were from,” Kira said sharply. “That means he thinks I’m going to be mad about what happened to cause them. So you better cut the bullshit and think hard about what he was doing yesterday that might have gotten him hurt.”
There was a long pause where neither of them spoke, although Kira knew Larry was still on the line because she could hear his shallow, ragged breathing from the other end of the line. “Be careful about what you’re suggesting here, Kira,” Larry said in a warning tone of voice.
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Kira said. “Except that you should be watching our son well enough to know what hurts him. Do you have a problem with that or not?”
“You know, I should really be asking you to take better care of Lucian, not the other way around,” Larry said.
“Oh, yeah?” Kira scoffed. She rubbed her hand down Lucian’s back when he whined a little in his sleep, his brow furrowed up like something was wrong. “Yeah, you’re going to have to do a much better job convincing me that I’m the bad guy here if you want anyone to actually believe you,” she said, even though at the moment she felt a strange sense of guilt wash over her as she watched her son continue to frown in his sleep.
“I’m serious, Kira,” Larry said. “You have him living in that strange house, with that strange man I don’t even know. I haven’t even met the guy. For all I know, he’s a child molester. How do I know he’s not hurting Lucian whenever your back is turned?”
“Because he’s never alone with Lucian!” Kira said. “I would never let anyone touch my child. You know better than that.”
“Then stop suggesting that I would hurt my kid, Kira,” Larry said in a firm, stern voice. “I mean it. You better quit it.”
Kira sighed. She brushed some hair back from Lucian’s forehead, trying to smooth over the wrinkles of worry that had popped up in between his eyebrows. “Okay, well, tell me this, then. Why has he had two awful nightmares in one night? Both of which he refuses to tell me about.”
She heard Larry groan under his breath on the other end of the line. “He’s five years old, Kira,” Larry said. “Nightmares happen. They don’t have to mean anything.”
“These ones do,” Kira protested. “He’s been a total wreck after them, and he won’t tell me what they’re about. He’s never done that before. Doesn’t that concern you at all?”
Larry was quiet a moment. Kira could practically picture his thoughtful face, the way he always stuck his tongue out in between his teeth when he was preparing to say something. God, she used to love that face, but now even the thought of it made her want to hurl.
“You know, Kira, I didn’t want to say this, but since you’ve pushed it this far…”
“What? Just spit it out,” Kira snapped, too annoyed to pretend to be nice at this point.
“Maybe the nightmares have to do with the change in living situation,” Larry said.
“What do you mean?” Kira asked. Her heart pounded harder inside of her ribcage as her anxiety swelled.
“I mean living in that house, with that man. Lucian won’t stop talking about him, you know. I don’t think it’s healthy.”
“What the fuck would you know about healthy?” Kira asked. “And besides, you were the one that got us kicked out of the last place, all because you couldn’t keep yourself from threatening the landlord.”
“I never did that,” Larry said, but Kira was too experienced with his lying to believe him.
“Sure, sure you didn’t,” Kira said sarcastically. “And I’m sure you didn’t call my boss to complain about me either. Hey, asshole, guess what? Next time leave a fake name.” She rolled her eyes, amazed at how fucking stupid her ex-husband was. Sometimes she felt so ridiculously dumb for ever loving him, for ever marrying him, but then she figured it all happened for a reason. At least she got Lucian out of the whole mess.
Larry made a clicking noise with his teeth. That was always what he did whenever he was angry at her and trying to hold it back. Kira shivered, even though she hated that he still had that power over her, to make her nervous. I should be over this by now, she told herself. He can’t hurt me. He can’t do anything to me anymore.
“I’d be real careful what you say to me, Kira,” Larry finally said, his voice low and serious.
“And why’s that?” Kira asked. She gripped a little harder onto her son’s hand, even though he was asleep and couldn’t possibly comfort her in this moment.
“You’re just walking on very thin ice with me right now,” Larry said. “Remember, Kira, I’m the one with the stable job. I’m the one with the same house that we lived in while we were married. It would be pretty simple for Lucian, you know, if he were to come stay with me full time.”
A flash of terror washed over Kira. Her face burned as she considered Larry’s veiled threat. “Why are you doing this, Larry?” Kira asked, dropping her son’s hand and getting to her feet, if only to fool herself into thinking that she was actually taking action rather than feebly arguing with her ex-husband. “You agreed to visitation rights when we divorced. Why are you trying to make things more complicated now?”
“You were the one that made things complicated when you moved in with that man,” Larry said. No kindness or softness remained in his voice anymore. “You should think very carefully before you call me like this again. Have a good day.”
Before Kira could come up with anything else to say to keep him on the phone, he hung up, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
“God damn it!” Kira muttered to herself, biting down on her lip to keep herself from screaming out loud in frustration.
Larry was going to try to take Lucian away, or at the very least he was going to let the threat of it hang over Kira’s head until she did whatever it was that he wanted from her. Maybe he wants custody, Kira wondered. She paced back and forth over the whole length of her bedroom, checking to make sure that Lucian was still sleeping relatively peacefully every few seconds. No, Larry doesn’t want Lucian full time. Not really. He has too many flings to worry about, too many girls to fuck and then fuck over. He must have some other motive, some other reason for wanting Lucian around more often. But what could it be? And how can I stop him?
Kira didn’t know what to do. She hated this feeling. She needed some kind of guidance, some kind of help from somebody she could trust. But that was the problem: there was nobody in her life that she did trust except for Lucian, except for maybe Dylan, and they were both children. So what could she do?
There’s Brent, some part of her whispered inside her mind. I could tell Brent what’s going on. Maybe he could help.
A thousand other voices in her head shouted the smaller one down, saying that it was such a stupid idea. She wasn’t with Brent, and anyway, she didn’t even want to be. If she tried to get him involved in a custody battle with Larry, things could get messy fast, and that was exactly what she didn’t want to do.
What other choice do I have? Kira thought to herself. She crossed the room to stand across from the mirror, staring at her own pale reflection. None of the other voices in her head could come up with a solution.
So that settles it, she thought. She blew out her breath and stretched down to her toes just to feel in control of her body, at least for a brief moment. I’ll ask Brent. He’ll know what to do. He’ll help.
But first, she had to get the boys up and ready. Lucian had preschool today, and Dylan had his first playdate ever with a friend of an old coworker. She needed to focus on those tasks first before she could worry about Larry and his stupid bullshit.
I’ll focus on the boys, she said to herself as she dug out an outfit for the day. The boys come first.
Still, she couldn’t dislodge the festering knot of dread that rested at the bottom of her stomach, threatening to erupt and send her over the edge. I can’t lose Lucian, she thought. She breathed deeply to try to calm herself down. I can’t. I won’t. I won’t.