All the Sky by Susan Fanetti Page A

tree; when he did, he jumped back a little, surprised.
    “You okay, Mom?”
    She patted the plastic arm of the empty Adirondack next to her. “Yeah. Couldn’t sleep, either. Wasn’t it dark in the woods?”
    “Not bad. Moon’s bright.”
    “You have a good walk, get things straight?”
    Nolan sat down, dropping all at once into the chair, the way all teens seemed to do. “Do you think he just stopped caring at all?”
    Her heart constricted. Matt hadn’t been in any kind of contact at all for almost three months. It was baseball season, but until these past few months, he’d always been sure to call, at least once a month. He hadn’t seen his kid in person in four years, but at least he’d call, and sometimes Skype. Never before had there been this total silence, not even returning Cory’s calls and texts. She was pretty sure he’d found somebody and was distracted from his past by the prospect of a future.
    But he had a child in his past. She was finding it harder and harder to wish him well.
    “No, kiddo. Your dad loves you. You know he loves you. It’s the season, you know how busy he gets. Since he started coaching, even busier. That’s probably all it is.”
    “But he’s been busy before, and he’d still call. Last thing I got from him was a reply to a text I sent. Three weeks ago. A smiley. Only a smiley.”
    She hadn’t known about that. She took a breath to say something encouraging—she wasn’t sure what—but he waved her away. “You don’t have to stick up for him, Mom. I know the deal. I’m okay, really. I just want to be mad at him. It makes me feel guilty being mad when you make excuses for him.”
    Thwarted from her normal course, Cory didn’t know what to say. So she reached over and squeezed his arm. He was getting some muscle tone. Interesting. The time was wrong to comment on that, so they sat in silence, listening to the cicadas and the night birds.
    “They’re right about him, huh? He is a loser.”
    “I don’t know what you want me to say, Nolan. Am I a loser? Lots of people think I am—Aunt Linz and Uncle Alex do. Your dad and I are a lot alike. Some things are hard, even when we want to do them.”
    “But you’re here. I always know you’re here. You listen. Like now. Mom, he doesn’t even know me anymore. He doesn’t care.”
    “Is there something you want to do about it?”
    He looked out across the yard. A raccoon ambled across the dusty scrub, near Bonnie’s house. It stopped and looked over at them, sitting back on its haunches. Its eyes shone eerily in the glow of the dusk-to-dawn light. Once it decided they were harmless, it headed on its way.
    “I just need to reset my expectations, you know? Not expect him to even care. Then I’ll be okay.”
    Matt had been a decent father, once. When they were married, and when he was home. He and Nolan had some major differences in their personalities—Matt was an athletic extrovert, who could barely stand to be indoors, and Nolan was an introvert who preferred video games to sports—but Matt had been carefree and fun, good at pulling Nolan out of himself. Not much of a disciplinarian, but Nolan had never needed much disciplining. Not in her opinion, at least.
    And then he’d given her an STD, and she’d had enough of his extroverted dick. Splitting had been her idea—her demand, much as it broke her heart—and after not much more than a year divorced, Matt had moved away, to a team in Nebraska—and then he’d just moved on.
    Nolan was right. It was time to acknowledge that Matt didn’t want to be in their lives at all. But Cory found herself unable to say those dire words to their son. So she said only, “I love you, kiddo.”
    “Love you, too.”
     
    ~oOo~
     
    “It’ll be fine! We’re usually quiet on Mondays, anyway. And this isn’t Tuck’s. He won’t get into trouble here.”
    “You think Havoc will have a problem?”
    Bonnie shrugged. “Doubt it. But he won’t be around until just before