Justus is without a doubt overdressed for the party he\u2019s going to; none of his friends are going to show up in a button-down shirt or dress pants. It\u2019s never occurred to him to question this discrepancy between how he and his cousins are dressed for special occasions and how his friends look when they show up to birthday parties. He\u2019s five and a half, and parties make him excited, not introspective. Especially this one \u2014 one of his kindergarten classmates is turning six, and the invitation was not to the boy\u2019s home but to the local playland.<\/p>\n
His baby sister, nearly two, isn\u2019t old enough to really understand what\u2019s going on, but she\u2019s picked up on his excitement and has been following him around most of the morning. He doesn\u2019t mind; he likes his sister and is proud that he can be a Good Big Brother to her. When Dad finally tells him it\u2019s time to go, he pauses long enough to tell her goodbye.<\/p>\n
\u201cBye, Fee-Fee! I\u2019m gonna go to Dylan\u2019s party now, but I\u2019ll tell you about it when I get back, okay?\u201d He hugs her, and then Mom picks her up to keep her from trying to follow him and Dad into the garage.<\/p>\n
It tastes like store bought cake, but they\u2019re all five or six; nobody cares as long as the cake is cake. Colorful paper bags of party favors wait on a table at the back of the room, next to Dylan\u2019s gifts, to be distributed at the end of the party. The air buzzes with excitement as they\u2019re released to play in the bright children\u2019s wonderland for two whole hours. Practically forever.<\/p>\n
Teenagers wearing polo shirts and shorts wander the perimeter of the play area, along with a couple of older employees. Once or twice they tell the children to stop doing this or that thing, but they don\u2019t seem overly interested in their tasks, and avoiding their notice soon becomes a game in itself.<\/p>\n
Someone gets the idea of playing hide-and-go-seek, and the playland with its nooks and crannies and criss-crossing tunnels seems like the perfect place for it. They enlist Dylan\u2019s dad to eenie-meenie-miney-mo who\u2019s going to be it first, and scatter as Blair starts counting. A few rounds in, it becomes harder to find a really good hiding spot, and maybe they all also start getting a little more competitive.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast one, kids!\u201d Dylan\u2019s mom calls out when the fifth child starts counting.<\/p>\n
Justus is determined to find a really<\/em> good spot for this last round. He climbs high up, and finds a spot where he can slip through a gap that probably shouldn\u2019t be there \u2014 there\u2019s holes that look like something should be holding the sides together, like a bolt or a rivet. The space is longer than he is tall and narrow, walls farther apart at the top like a lopsided letter V; he has to squeeze to fit, but there\u2019s no way he\u2019ll be found here.<\/p>\n There\u2019s an ambulance parked outside when she arrives. She tries to tell herself it\u2019s probably just something relatively innocuous, the kind of thing that could happen anywhere boisterous children get a little too absorbed in their games. Ignores the police car that pulls into the lot behind her. She\u2019s parked her car and is halfway to the business\u2019s doors when a jingle starts playing in her purse.<\/p>\n She stops, retrieves her phone from its depths. \u201cMagdalene White speaking.\u201d<\/p>\n Two policemen pass her, enter the playland.<\/p>\n \u201cMagdalene? You need to come here as soon as you can.\u201d It\u2019s the boy Dylan\u2019s father; she recognizes his voice, though not the tone he speaks in, like he\u2019s seen a ghost.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just outside. Did something happen?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s Justus.\u201d It sounds like he wants to say more, but he doesn\u2019t elaborate. Just repeats his previous words. \u201cYou need to come in as soon as you can.\u201d<\/p>\n She doesn\u2019t hang up, but she removes the phone from her ear, half-runs as fast as she can between her high heels and the uneven gravel lot. Pushes the door open to see EMTs kneeling on the floor above a too-small, too-still body, the child\u2019s white button-down shirt open and his skin nearly as pale as his light blond hair. Her child. Her son.<\/p>\n \u201cJustus!\u201d She doesn\u2019t have eyes for anyone else as she stumbles forward, instinctively struggles against the hold as hands grab her to hold her back.<\/p>\n \u201cMa\u2019am. Let the medics work.\u201d<\/p>\n The words reach her through thick fog, barely have any meaning. Her only thoughts are for her son, her baby, who needs his mother.<\/p>\n The coroner\u2019s report lists cause of death as asphyxiation.<\/p>\n Too long spent in a space too tight to let him breathe freely. A space he should never have been able to access, through a gap that should never have existed.<\/p>\n She confides in her husband, and Victor doesn\u2019t tell her God has a plan. Doesn\u2019t give her any of the platitudes she hears at the funeral. He simply holds her and cries with her. Her strong, stoic husband whom she hasn\u2019t seen cry since their daughter was born \u2014 and those were tears of joy, not grief. It doesn\u2019t make her feel any better<\/em>, but she feels less alone knowing he hurts as much as she does. Maybe more.<\/p>\n Magdalene never tells her sister about her doubts. Rachel has always been her confidant, whom she tells everything, but this is one thing she won\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n She desperately hopes Rachel will never have cause to understand just how deep her pain runs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Justus is without a doubt overdressed for the party he\u2019s going to; none of his friends are going to show up in a button-down shirt or dress pants. It\u2019s never occurred to him to question this discrepancy between how he and his cousins are dressed for special occasions and how his friends look when they more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[77,74,75,76],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-life-of-ferret","tag-death","tag-ferret-white","tag-justus-white","tag-magdalene-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/vixenscratch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/vixenscratch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/vixenscratch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/vixenscratch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/vixenscratch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/vixenscratch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217,"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/vixenscratch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/vixenscratch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/vixenscratch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/vixenscratch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}