Free The Guest Cottage by Nancy Thayer

over-the-top reaction.
    Ah. After a moment’s reflection he realized why all his alarm bells had gone off. That moment had been so much like the times Tallulah had spent playing dress-up with Leo. Trevor had wanted to yell:
Don’t make him remember his mother while he’s happy! Don’t send him back into his lonely well of sorrow.
Leaning against the wall, he heard Leo and Lacey giggling and realized he didn’t need to protect his son right now. Silently, Trevor said a prayer of thanks that his boy was playing.
    But he knew that sometime Leo was going to blow, and the Anderson family would realize what a nutcase his child was. And then what?
    The third morning they went to the beach, it happened.
    They were in Leo’s bedroom, getting ready for a day at the beach. Leo insisted on taking along Tubee, his stuffed giraffe.
    “Tubee will get all sandy and gross on the beach,” Trevor pointed out.
    His son had clutched the animal—one of nature’s less fortunate designs, in Trevor’s mind—to his chest like a diva in an opera. “Want Tubee.”
    “Sorry, dude,” Trevor said, trying to be brisk and natural, “no Tubee. Come on, let’s go splash in the ocean.”
    “Daddy. I want Tubee to live in my sand castle,” Leo explained reasonably.
    Trevor knelt next to Leo. “Leo. Look. We can wash the sand out of your hair when we return from the beach, but sand and salt water will ruin Tubee. His fur would get all yucky—if he gets soaked, he might even fall apart.”
    Wrong thing to say. Trevor knew it the moment the words were out of his mouth. Leo didn’t need anything else in his life to fall apart. Leo shrieked. Gripping Tubee even tighter, he ran into the closet and slammed the door shut behind him.
    “Leo. Come on. Don’t you want to go to the beach?” Trevor tried to keep his cool.
    “NO! WANT TUBEE!”
    Trevor opened the closet door. His son was huddled on the floor like a storybook character fearing the ogre. “Leo. Tubee can wait right here on your bed. Or even in the car, we can leave him on the seat in the car—”
    “NO!” Leo began to kick and yell in protest, making such a racket that Trevor finally shut the door on his son, leaving him to have his tantrum in the closet.
    Aware that the entire household could probably hear his son’s freak-out, Trevor sat down on Leo’s bed and forced himself to count to ten. Children held their parents hostage, he thought. They had no shame about screaming, while their parents had to act like adults.
    For a moment, Trevor wished Lacey would come in and work her happy-girl magic on Leo, cajoling him to join them on the beach. Instead, Sophie stuck her head into the room.
    “We’re leaving now. Maybe we’ll see you at the beach later.” With a smile, she was gone.
    Trevor heard the front door slam.
They’ve deserted me,
he thought sullenly, and then admitted to himself that probably they were trying to do him a favor, to get out of earshot of Leo’s gale-force fit.
    After a while, Leo’s energy ran out and he went quiet. Trevor opened the door to be sure his son hadn’t turned blue from yelling. “I’m going to work in my computer room,” he said, and left the room, with the door open.
    His hands were shaking too hard to manage the computer, but he sat staring at it, calming down, wondering what to do next. Sophie and her kids were so disgustingly normal it made Trevor and Leo look worse by comparison. Should Trevor forget about this and go back to Boston, or take Leo to a hotel in Maine or something, where no one could see what a loser he was? Plus, what about Sophie’s family’s reaction to having a screaming child in the house?
    Leo came into the room, head hanging. “I want to go to the beach, Daddy. I put Tubee in bed for his nap until we get home.”
    Relief and something like joy flew up inside Trevor’s chest.
They give us these miracles, these pardons, so generously,
he thought;
they crush our spirits like crashing boulders only to hold