I’ve never seen anything funnier to anyone in my entire life and I want to remember exactly what that looks like—the completely defenseless, full-body hilarity of a kid who has forgotten, for this stretch of time, that there’s anything in the world to be careful about.
He declares himself officially turned approximately thirty seconds later, because of course he does. He’s been waiting for this.
He hauls himself up from the carpet with both arms stretched out in front of him, and when he says “braiiiiins,” he says it with real commitment. He’s had practice. ThoseDave the Villagerzombie novels are all dog-eared to hell after all. This is not his first zombie rodeo.
He advances on his mother.
She braces herself against the headboard with two pillows stacked like shields and a very serious expression that doesn’t last long.
I sit on the floor and watch my son do zombie groans at his mother, who is now laughing too hard to maintain any defense whatsoever.
His arms wobble with the theatrical undead drama of it.
He cuts his eyes at me once—checking that I’m watching, wanting me to see—and I give him a solemn thumbs-up. That’s all the endorsement he needs.
This kid.
I don’t know what I expected when Harper told me. The terror was there first, and the disbelief, and underneath all of it the particular vertigo of realizingholy shit, I’m a dad.
But I didn’t expectthis.
His specific gravity and humor and intelligence and charm?—
And just how fucking amazing he is. I didn’t expect to love him this much this quickly.
I will never,everlet anything hurt him.
It’s a solemn vow I know is just as ridiculous as thinking I could protect my mother completely from harm, but I don’t fucking care. Imean it. I don’t care. I’ll take care of him until my dying breath and even then.
I pick up the pillow again. I don’t have a plan. I just know I want to keep playing zombie pillow fight with these two people for as long as the world will let me.
Which is naturally when the doorbell rings.
It rolls through the house once, clear and carrying, and the three of us freeze exactly where we are—Harper against the headboard, Bruiser mid-zombie-lurch, me on the floor with a decorative lace-edged pillow.
Bruiser tries to keep the groans going. He manages about three seconds before the silence in the room reaches him.
He looks at his mother. Then over at me, and Ihatethe way his body straightens up with tension.
“Are the bad men back?” he whispers.
There it is—the thing living underneath all the giggling, underneath the zombie commitment and the pillow fight physics—the thing this kid has been carrying around too, quietly. He shouldn’t know how to ask that question. He shouldn’t have a reason to.
My jaw locks.
“I’ll go check,” I say.
“No,” Harper says calmly, giving me a serious look that says, I-mean-business. I think it’s herMom Look. I’ve just never had it aimed at me before now. “I’ll go. You boys keep trying to eat each other’s brains.”
She smiles at Bruiser and ruffles his hair.
Then she’s moving, efficient and calm the way she gets when she’s managing something frightening—pulling it inward, taking it off the table so nobody else has to carry it.
She looks at me over Bruiser’s head, and it’s the same look from the car:I need you to do what I ask without me having to say any more words.
I get off the floor and hop on the bed with Bruiser. “Hey. You and me, okay? We stay.”
Bruiser looks between us. His arms are still out from the zombie bit, and he hasn’t quite lowered them yet, like his body isn’t sure what register it’s in. Then slowly, reluctantly, he lets them drop.