Ayla was driving to work early Friday morning, exhausted after a largely sleepless night, when her phone rang. Before she looked at it, she said a silent prayer that it would be her boss, Jeff, telling her they were overstaffed and offering her the opportunity to stay home. The calls didn’t come often, and she couldn’t really afford to miss work, but the excitement of seeing Preston’s dad— she’d decided that it just had to be him— made it impossible to get any proper sleep.

She looked down at her phone as she rolled to a red light, and saw the name “Tara” instead of “NPE – Jeff.”

“Hey, girl,” Ayla answered. Tara, Ayla’s best friend from high school, lived with her husband in the Poconos in Pennsylvania, where they ran a B&B he’d inherited from his grandparents.

Ayla hadn’t yet made good on her promise to visit, despite the fact that Tara said she and Preston could come and stay for free whenever they wanted to. They kept in touch mostly via social media.

“Ayla! Are you serious?” Tara was practically shouting into the phone.

“What?” Ayla replied, still more asleep than awake, driving to work on autopilot, waiting for her energy drink to kick in.

“The video you sent me! That’s totally the guy!”

Ayla sent a link to the news story about Watterson Gaming to Tara right before she went to bed the previous evening, which was actually less than three hours prior. Tara and Natalie were the only two people who’d seen the mystery man from Scald that night on the parking garage rooftop, and everybody had lost touch with Natalie.

“Thank you! I know I’m not crazy!” Ayla responded. “It’s him, right?”

“I’d bet my life on it,” said Tara. “And how freaking hot is he?”

Ayla pulled back into traffic. “Very. Nice signal, asshole! Sorry, not you, Tara.”

Tara laughed. “Duh, no worries. I have to ask. How wet did you get seeing him again?”

“Stop it. Do you ever think of anything besides sex?”

“Why would I want to?” Tara asked. “What’s better?”

“I barely remember,” Ayla confessed. “Ever since Preston, it’s been work, work, work, baby, baby, baby. Occasionally sleep. Sex hasn’t exactly been a priority.”

“Sucks to be you. Why don’t you grab Watterson Gaming guy and come to Pennsylvania? There’s nothing here but woods to explore, and our dogs love kids. You could have plenty of adult time. Just putting that out there.”

“Yeah, you make it sound so easy,” Ayla replied, pulling into the parking lot at National Parcel Express. “I can’t even figure out where to start with the guy. I can’t just barge into Watterson’s corporate office, Preston in tow, find him, and say ‘Here’s your kid!’”

“Yeah, that might not strike the right tone. But what do they say, ‘knowing is half the battle’? Hypnotize him with your ass, girl.”

“You’re impossible. I’m at work, I gotta go. But you’re sure it’s him, right?”

“Not a doubt in my mind,” Tara confirmed. “Although you, ah, got a bit better look at him than I did.”

“Love you, thanks.”

“Miss you, friend.”

Exhaustion be damned, Ayla bounced into work. She was energized and ignored Jeff’s nasty attitude and with the news that the last truck they were expecting from Fresno had been delayed, she got out of work a bit early.

The weekend was off to a good start.

Lupe had only been there for fifteen minutes when Ayla got home, and Preston greeted his mother at the door. “Buenos dias mami te amo como fue el tr-tr-trajabo?”

“Trabajo,” Lupe corrected Preston’s fledgling Spanish. “Work.”

“Oh yeah, trabajo. How was work?”

Ayla laughed. “Work was work. Yucky. But we got done early, so that’s cool, right? Want me to make pancakes? Lupe, would you like to stay for breakfast?”

Lupe agreed, and Ayla whipped up a batch of pancakes that the three of them ate while Lupe continued Preston’s crash course in Spanish.

Day three of learning Spanish had Preston excited about going to daycare to play with his “friends,” Gilberto and Luis, and Ayla’s morning at the call center was as close to “not terrible” as it ever got.

Her first break rolled around and she checked her phone on the way to the vending machine to grab a Mountain Dew for a caffeine burst.

She opened a text from Desiree, in all caps:

MICK MERRYWEATHER. HIS NAME IS MICK MERRYWEATHER. TEXT ME ASAP!

Ayla stopped in her tracks and stared at the phone. Her palm covered her mouth and her eyes struggled not to bug right out of her head.

Mick Merryweather. Preston Merryweather. Ayla Merryweather? She thought of the three names and then spoke them aloud.

Ayla slumped down against the wall in the hallway outside the breakroom, laughing and crying simultaneously. She replied to her roommate’s text.

“Tell me more!”

Moments later, Desiree replied.

“About time! I asked around and one of the managers here worked at Watterson. The guy is Winston Watterson’s bodyguard. Mick Merryweather. He’s British. That’s all I know, I’ll keep poking around.”

British? Ayla knew he had an accent of some sort, but it was slight. Maybe he’d lived in the United States for a long time?

“THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!”

Ayla sat and stared at the name until several co-workers went rushing by, anxious to avoid the wrath of Teri Palermo.

“Shit!” Ayla exclaimed, and she rushed back to her cubicle, sans caffeine. She didn’t need it. She was high on Mick Merryweather.

Teri glared at Ayla’s smile; nobody was supposed to be that happy on her watch.