I kept one ear on the Mommies chatting each other up. “Why are you talking to me now?”

“You were a stranger. Now you’re a baby so it’s ‘kay. So anyways I like strawberry gum and my Mommy said I shouldn’t have gum cuz I could choke and it stays in your tummy for a long time but she said I could have strawberry ice cream but ice cream has a different mouth feeling and I like chocolate and vanilla ice cream better maybe if I could get that fancy space ice cream. My favorite color is lavender. That’s like a fancy purple, ya know?”

Slowly, I nodded, though I did not speak at first. Too many emotions. Too much crashing down all around me. I’d been debased, advanced on, mocked, harassed, condescended to, intimidated, coerced, and brow-beaten. This blast from my past was one straw away from breaking my back. “Um…yeah?”

“-Littles who lived here.”

My ears perked up. They were talking about what happened! I leaned forward in the stroller. Janet’s eyes made contact with mine. “Oh? There were Littles who lived here?”

“Oh yes. I think so. A Little girl, I think. Poor thing-”

“What happened?”

A finger poked my shoulder and out of habit I turned to face its source. “So why do you think they call it a rectangle because it’s not very tangled up its lines are super straight and the angles aren’t wrecked either so that can’t be it,” she paused long enough only to snort at her own words, ”seriously though I think I ‘member reading it being from another language but I don’t read magazines that don’t have crayons anymore. What’s your name?”

“Clark.” I immediately realized I shouldn’t have answered. It only encouraged more talking when I needed unfettered hearing.

“It happened this weekend. Amy and I live a few blocks over but-”

“- going into Mrs. B’s class are all the toys-”

“-Little girl had a breakdown or something. Maybe her Matur-”

• there’s a difference between toys and blocks ya’know-”

“Lucky none of the others houses caught fi-”

-eouf does she still have those funny glasses-?”

“Police and firefi-”

“-bout Jessinnia he’s the octopus stuffie- “

“Vans from Child Protective Services came and-”

“-home with me some of the other kids prolly call him somethi-”

“So it’s sad about the house but at least she’s likely getting the love and care she needs.”

“You can’t let them call him the wrong name, it’s rude.”

I hadn’t heard it all through the inane babble but I’d heard enough. This clueless, typical Amazon gossip, believed that a Little girl played with matches or something and set the house on fire.

Instantly, I knew the truth. No. Not my Cassie. That’s what went down. Not by a longshot. My love. My brave, beautiful wife did something much more poetic. Much more rash and angry. Much more herself.

When I didn’t come home, Cassie had figured out what had happened right away. Of course she had. But she hadn’t known about Janet’s ‘gift’ to me in fully declaring my adult status dead. She had seen the trap. She had known that sooner or later the Amazons would come for her in one form or another, and decided to go out with a bang.

If we couldn’t have our house, no one could. Burn it all down and escape back to the trailer park. Start over. Divorce me, become Cassie Braun and not look back to protect herself and everyone else left in her life. It was exactly the kind of thing we talked about doing in the worst case scenario.

She got sloppy though. Sloppy or unlucky or both. She got caught fleeing the scene, or they realized it was arson immediately, or the Amazons realized there was a Little living in the house and the fire was all the excuse they really needed.

Gone.

My wife was gone. Gone and chances are I’d never see her again, and if I did there was a fifty-fifty shot that she wouldn’t recognize or remember me. She definitely wouldn’t love me anymore, regardless.

I’d doomed her with my hubris. Doomed her with my ambition. Didn’t fucking listen to her and lied to her and myself for far too long. I’d won so many battles that I’d thought myself invincible and instead of taking a single defeat- a defeat that was really only admitting she was right- I doubled down and cost us everything.

“-and that’s why I think axolotlotls are like Little frogs.”

Janet came over and unbuckled me, scooped back up and plopped me back on her hip like the last five minutes hadn’t even happened. “Well thank you for telling me all that Helena. I appreciate it.”

“No problem,” Helena said. “I love chatting people up. It’s my only vice.” My everything destroyed and trampled in less than a week and it was just gossip to her. My past and future no longer existed but at least she had a neat bit of trivia. “How did your Little stinker get away from you anyways?”

“Oh it’s embarrassing,” Janet lied. “I stopped to change him in the backseat and he just slipped off when I was balling up the old Monkeez.“

“Ha! I’ve fallen for that one before. Don’t beat yourself up.”

Janet was keeping my secret and honoring my privacy. There was a strange kind of honor in that. I should have been touched. I was just furious. Furious with myself. Furious with Janet. It didn’t make sense but I was furious with Cassie, too. Why couldn’t she have waited for me?

“Say bye-bye, Clark.” I said nothing. My eyes went dead like a shark’s. “He’s just shy.”

Amy piped in for me. “Bye-Bye, Clark! He’s just shyyyy!”

“Oh my sweet girl!” the Gossip said, “She was talking about her baby.”

“I’m a baby!”

“I know, but you’re my baby. She was talking about hers.”

“Oooooh,” the Little girl nodded sagely.

Back in the car. Back to another prison. Back to a life with no chance of reprieve. “Clark,” Janet said. “I’m so sorry, hon.” Dead silence from me. “I swear I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have offered or suggested it if I knew it was going to happen.” I was shaking. Humming on a toxic cocktail of near homicidal emotions and with nothing left to look forward to. “Maybe you’ll see her in Mrs. Beouf’s class…?”

“I hate you.”

“Hmmm?”

She’d heard me. “I hate you.” I said it again, even softer.

“I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate…I ha…I…” I’d cried a lot already over the past several days. Had managed to go almost an entire day, tear free. Had thought things were looking up.

I was quiet this time, but I cried all the same. I kept muttering “Hate…hate…hate…hate…hate…” Softer than a whisper no one could hear me. A rain of grief over my face. All water. No thunder. The lightning, I kept bottled up inside my heart.

“I’m so sorry,” Janet told me as she held me. “I’m so, so sorry.’

“Hate…”

She coddled me and cuddled me. “I’d take it all away if I could.”

“Hate…”

She hugged me and fed me. Wiped away the torrent from my cheeks. “You can call me Janet if you want.”

“Hate…”

She fed me real food, not stuff out of a jar or anything pre-processed that could have been tampered with. Fresh fruit and vegetables. “Even in front of others…I won’t get mad if you call me Janet.” Took a few bites just in case.

“Hate…

She bathed me and washed my hair with relaxing shampoos. “If you want to talk about it, I’ll listen…”

“Hate…”

She wrapped me up and changed me and plopped me in front of the television. The Muffet show was on. One of my favorite re-runs…the one at the train station because the usual venue was being fumigated. “It doesn’t even have to be…I mean it can be about anything you want.”

“Hate…”

She checked and changed me again. Put me in jammies and put me to bed. “Goodnight, Clark. I’ll have the baby monitor on. Call me if you need anything and I’ll come running.

I finally found my voice after she left. “I hate you.” It was loud enough to hear this time. “I hate you so much. So fucking much. I hate you.”

On the cushioned mattress I muscled myself up to standing and looked directly at the baby monitor. ‘I hate you.”

“I hate you.” I didn’t yell it, just said it loud and clear.

“I hate you.” Kept it up for hours. Kept saying it again and again and again until the room got dizzy from exhaustion.

“I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” Janet never came. For all I knew, she’d heard me and then went and cried herself to sleep and turned her end of the transmission off.

Didn’t matter much to me. I needed to say it. The thing of it was, I wasn’t even entirely sure who I was saying it to.

“I hate you.”