Blake Pierce: Before He Envies

“Why are you still awake?” he asked, grumbling into his pillow as he lay back down.

“Do you think we’ll be good parents?” she asked.

He propped his head up sleepily and shrugged. “I think so. I mean, I know you will. But me…I imagine I’ll push him way too hard when it comes to youth sports. Something my dad never did for me that I always feel I missed out on.”

“I’m being serious.”

“I figured. Why do you ask?”

“Because our own families are so messed up. How do we know how to raise a child the right way if we have such horrible experiences to draw from?”

“I figure we’ll just take note of everything our parents did wrong and don’t do any of it.”

He reached out in the dark and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She honestly wanted him to wrap her up in his arms and spoon her, but she wasn’t fully healed up from the surgery just yet.

They lay there next to one another, equally exhausted and excited for their lives going forward, until sleep took them both, one right behind the other.

Mackenzie found herself walking through rows of corn again. The stalks were so high that she could not see the tops of them. The ears of corn themselves, like old yellow teeth poking through rotted gums, peeked out into the night. Each ear was easily three feet long; the corn and the stalks on which they grew were ridiculously big, making her feel like an insect.

Somewhere up ahead a baby was crying. Not just a baby, but her baby. Already, she could recognize the tones and pitches of little Kevin’s wails.

Mackenzie took off through the rows of corn. She was slapped in the face, the stalks and leaves drawing blood a little too easily. By the time she reached the end of the row she was currently in, her face was covered in blood. She could taste it in her mouth and see it dripping from her chin down to her shirt.

At the end of the row, she stopped. Ahead of her was wide open land, nothing but dirt, dead grass, and the horizon. Yet, in the middle of it, a small structure—one she knew well.

It was the house she had grown up in. It was where the crying was coming from.

Mackenzie ran to the house, her legs moving as the corn was still attached to her and trying to draw her back out into the field.

She ran harder, realizing that the stitching around her abdomen had torn open. When she reached the porch to the house, blood from the wound was running down her legs, pooling on porch steps.

The front door was closed but she could still hear that wailing. Her baby, inside, screaming. She opened the door and it opened easily. Nothing squeaked or screeched, the age of the house not a factor. Before she even stepped inside, she saw Kevin.

Sitting in the middle of a barren living room—the same living room she had spent so much of her time in as a child—was a single rocking chair. Her mother sat in it, holding Kevin and rocking him softly.

Her mother, Patricia White, looked up at her, looking much younger than the last time Mackenzie had seen her. She smiled at Mackenzie, her eyes bloodshot and somehow alien.

“You did good, Mackenzie. But did you really think you could keep him from me? Why would you want to, anyway? Was I that bad? Was I?”

Mackenzie opened her mouth to say something, to demand that her mother hand over the baby. But when she opened her mouth, all that came out was corn silk and dirt, falling from her mouth to the floor.

All the while, her mother smiled and held Kevin close to her, nuzzling him to her breast.

Mackenzie sat up in bed, a scream pushing behind her lips.

“Jesus, Mac…are you okay?”

Ellington was standing at the doorway to the bedroom. He was dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of jogging shorts, an indication that he had been working out in his little space in the guest bedroom.

“Yeah,” she said. “Just a bad dream. A very bad dream.”

She then glanced at the clock and saw that it was almost eight in the morning. Somehow, Ellington had allowed her to sleep in; Kevin had been waking up around five or six for his first feeding.

“Has he not woken up yet?” Mackenzie asked.

“No, he did. I used one of the bags of frozen milk. I know you wanted to save them up, but I figured I’d let you sleep in.”

“You’re amazing,” she said, sinking back into the bed.

“And don’t you forget it. Now go back to sleep. I’ll bring him to you when he needs to be changed again. Fair deal?”

She made an mmm sound as she drifted off to sleep again. For a moment, there were still ghost images of the nightmare in her head but she pushed them away with thoughts of her loving husband and a baby boy who would be happy to see her when he woke up.

After a month, Ellington went back to work. Director McGrath had promised that he would get no in-depth or intense cases while he had a baby and nursing mother at home. More than that, McGrath was also quite lenient in terms of hours. There were a few days when Ellington left at eight in the morning and returned back home as early as three that afternoon.

When Ellington started going back to work, Mackenzie truly started to feel like a mother. She missed Ellington’s help very much on those first days, but there was something special about being alone with Kevin. She came to know his schedule and quirks a bit better. And although most of her days involved sitting on the couch to heal while binging shows on Netflix, she still felt the connection between them growing.

But Mackenzie had never been one to sit around aimlessly. She felt guilty for her Netflix binges after a week or so. She used that time to instead start reading true crime stories. She utilized online book resources as well as podcasts, trying to keep her mind active by figuring out the answers to these real-life cases before the narrative reached the conclusion.

She visited the doctor twice in those first six weeks to ensure that the scar from the C-section was healing properly. While the doctors beamed over how quickly she was healing, they still stressed that a return to normalcy so soon could cause setbacks. They warned against something as common as even bending over to pick something up from the floor that had any significant weight to it.

It was the first time in her life that Mackenzie had ever truly felt like an invalid. It did not sit well with her, but she had Kevin to focus on. She had to keep him happy and healthy. She had to keep him on a schedule and, as she and Ellington had planned during the pregnancy, she also had to prepare for separating from him when it came time for him to start daycare. They had found a reputable in-home daycare and already had a spot reserved. While the provider cared for children as young as two months old, Mackenzie and Ellington had decided not to put him into care until five or six months. The spot they had reserved opened just after Kevin tuned six months, giving Mackenzie plenty of time to feel comfortable with not only Kevin’s own development, but to prepare herself for the separation.

So she had no problem waiting to heal so long as she had Kevin there with her. While she did not resent Ellington for returning to work, she did find herself wishing he could be there during the day from time to time. He was missing all of Kevin’s smiles, all of the cute little mannerisms he was developing, the coos and the variety of baby sounds.

As Kevin started to hit milestone after milestone, the idea of daycare began to loom larger in her mind. And with it, the idea of returning to work. The thought of it excited her but when she looked into her son’s eyes, she did not know if she could live a life of running into danger, a gun on her hip and uncertainty at every corner. It seemed almost irresponsible for both her and Ellington to work such dangerous jobs.