Chapter 13 - Mason's Heroic Stand
That evening, I took Mason out to our favorite lakeside park in Grosse Pointe.
The summer sun was warm, shimmering across the gentle waves of Lake St. Clair. Families were picnicking on the grass; children were laughing and flying colorful kites against the bright blue sky.
Mason sat beside me on a wooden bench, eating a strawberry ice cream cone. He had been seeing a wonderful child therapist for the past two weeks, and for the first time since that terrible flight to Chicago, the dark shadows under his eyes were completely gone. The bright, curious spark in his brown eyes had returned.
“Mom?” Mason asked, wiping a smudge of ice cream from his chin.
“Yes, my love?”
“Are you and I going to be okay in our big house all by ourselves?”
I wrapped my arm around his small shoulders, pulling him close against my side.
“Mason, we are going to be more than okay,” I smiled, looking into his sweet face. “Mom got an amazing new job designing airplane computer systems. Our house is ours forever. And you and I are an unstoppable team.”
Mason smiled, a wide, genuine grin that lit up his entire face.
He reached into his small blue backpack, pulled out a fresh sheet of drawing paper, and handed it to me.
I looked down at the paper.
It was a brand-new drawing. But this time, there was no pilot in a dark uniform.
The drawing showed me standing proudly on the runway, wearing a beautiful blue dress, holding Mason’s hand while a giant, magnificent jet soared high into the clouds above us. Across the top, in big, colorful letters, Mason had written:
May you like
MOM IS MY HERO. WE CAN FLY ANYWHERE.
Tears filled my eyes—tears of pure, unadulterated happiness. I pressed the drawing to my heart and held my son as tightly as I could.
