Mistake

When he was five years old, he had gotten in trouble for lying to his mother.

It had all started because of the stupid little boy in the stupid house next door. They had just moved in and were still getting settled. Lucas hated the new house. It was small and he didn't like the color of his room and he couldn't find anything cause all his stuff was still in boxes. He tried asking his dad but he was busy getting ready to go again. He had lots of missions and was gone alot. But Lucas was very proud of him and tried not to miss him too much when he was gone because his daddy was a hero and did important stuff.

His mom had said so, so he knew it was true.

The people mom had hired to help unpack hadn't come yet and he didn't want to ask his mom to help him. He tried not to ask her to help him much, he knew it was difficult for her to do stuff and his daddy said he had to be a man and do for himself and not bother his mom when she was tired cause it made her feel worse when she wanted to help and couldn't.

So Lucas slid amongst the boxes until he found the one with LUCAS written all over it in blue marker. He had wrote his name on it himself so he would be able to find it. He could write lots of words...and numbers too. He liked writing words and numbers, it made mommy laugh and they would play games finding new things to write and it was something they could do together.

He was happy. The Lucas box was on top of another, not-too-big box. He carefully slid another box up next to it until he could climb on top and reach his box. He opened the lid and rummaged around until he found his dinobot. He loved his dinobot. Nana had given it to him for his birthday. He grabbed the toy and carefully climbed down then went outside to play. His mom had told him it would be OK to play outside here for little bits of time since they were in a dome now. That made him happy since he didn't have to carry his rebreather.

They had never lived in a dome before...at least, not that he could remember. He looked curiously around. The light was different, not as orangy and foggy. The ground looked different too, There were little patches of greenish, brownish stuff scattered around in front of the house in the dirt. He thought it might be grass. He had seen pictures of grass on TV and other places. This didn't look quite like that but he thought it was pretty neat anyway.

He sat down near one to play, flipping the switch on his dinobot and clapping his hands to make it roar and stomp its feet.

He was trying to remember the word to make it walk when he saw, staring at him from the steps of the house next to his, another little boy. One who looked close to his own age.

"Hi," the boy said.

Lucas considered for a moment if he wanted to speak. He didn't always get along with other kids very well. They always seemed so stupid and could never understand his games. They were mean too. But here was new and different from home, so maybe the kids would be new and different too.

"Hello," he said, "My name's Lucas."

The other boy grinned. "I'm Jack. Wanna play?"

Lucas rolled his eyes, "I already am. A better question would be do we wanna play together?"

The other boy's forehead wrinkled slightly as he said, "That's what I just said."

Lucas almost gave up then but decided to try anyway. He knew his mom and dad would like it if he made a friend.

"Wanna come see my dinobot?"

The other boy's eyes lit up. "Sure," he said as he made his way over to where Lucas was sitting and plopped down, "I wanted one but my mom said they were too big for me yet. I think she must have fibbed cause you got one and we're probably the same age. I'm seven, by the way." he puffed up his chest proudly as he stated that fact and Lucas was simultaneously impressed that an older kid wanted to play with him as well as a little shocked that said older kid's mom thought the dinobot was too 'big' for him.

Lucas thought it was quite any easy toy.

The two boys began to chat and play, with Lucas showing Jack how to operate the bot. Jack never quite caught on to all of the ways, but he could clap and seemed to enjoy making the dino roar and stomp about.

It was some time later that Lucas heard his mother call from inside the house. He was actually having a pretty good time and didn't wish to go in. Then he heard her again and knew she was going to come and get him. Suddenly, he didn't want his new friend to see his mother.

Lucas loved his mommy. More than anything. More than his dinobot and his HuggaBooBear. Sometimes he thought he might even love her more than daddy...and he really loved daddy.

But he saw how people sometimes looked at her.

It made him sad and mad too. It made him want to hit them because they were stupidheads and they should know that she was a great mommy. She was smart and pretty and told great stories and gave wonderful hugs and just because her legs were funny and she walked with sticks shouldn't make a difference.

But it did.

And sometimes the kids, the mean ones from where he lived before, said things that made him mad so he hit them. His mommy would get that sad look on her face and tell him he shouldn't, that he was better than that. Then, when mom wasn't looking, his dad would grin at him and give him a wink and ruff his hair. He liked that.

But he hated seeing mom upset.

But if his new friend didn't meet his mom, then maybe it wouldn't be a problem.

He quickly got up, grabbed his bot and turned to Jack.

"That's my mom, you need to leave," he said hurriedly.

Jack just sat there and looked at him. "Why?"

"My mom's calling me. I gotta go and you need to leave before she gets here."

Jack gave him a look. "Seriously? Is your mom gonna beat me up or something just for playing with you?"

Lucas jumped on that. "Yes, she will," he nodded his head vigorously, "She's real strong and tough and mean and she might hurt you so you need to leave. Now!"

He jerked on Jack's arm and gave him a shove as he got to his feet.

Jack frowned at him as he rubbed his arm and stepped backward.

Lucas gave him an apology look, "Sorry, please. We can play again, OK? I just don't' want you to get hurt."

Jack just looked at him a moment and then past him. "OK, but your mom doesn't look so mean to me!"

With that parting shot, he turned and took off across the small yard to his own front door, jumping up the steps and slamming the door behind him.

Lucas was frozen, afraid to turn around and see who he knew was behind him.

"Lucas."

She spoke very quietly and he cringed. He knew that tone of voice. He turned slowly around to see not just his mom, who was standing at the edge of the porch, but also his dad, just inside the doorway.

"Son, come inside."

Lucas tried not to hunker down even further. His dad had 'that' tone in his voice. The one that he knew meant he was in trouble.

Lucas trudged slowly up the steps and into the house. His dad stood aside to let him, and then his mother, in before he shut the door.

"On the couch," his dad said sternly.

Lucas shuffled over and sat down, setting his bot between his legs. The little boy made quite the dejected picture with his slumped shoulders and hanging head and arms, a picture he knew almost always made his mother go easier on him.

"Lucas," his father's stern, deep voice compelled him to look up. He did, to see his parents, side by side in the doorway.

"Are you going to tell your mother and I what that was all about?"

Lucas pondered that a moment and then said meekly, "Not unless I have to."

His father straightened like an arrow and made to step forward but his mother grabbed his arm. Her lips twitched treacherously but she willed the laughter away.

Ayani loved her boy but his quick wit and intelligence coupled with his honesty sometimes proved maddening to his father, who seemed to have more difficulty telling when he was trying to be smart and when he was just being smart. A fine line, granted, but a distinct one, especially with her precocious boy.

The couple exchanged a quick look and then she took the lead.

"Lucas," she said more gently, "I...we, heard what you said to that boy. Why would you lie like that?"

Lucas squirmed like a worm on a hook. Now that he was caught, his thoughts all seemed to have fled. What could he say? He didn't want to tell them the truth but he knew he was running out of time to think up something else they would believe.

"Speak up, son, and tell your mother why you lied."

Uh, oh. Time up.

That was his father's tone of voice he knew to never argue with. He still remembered the spanking he had gotten the one time he had tried it.

Lucas looked up at them, his small face and big, miserable green eyes threatening to break their front...especially when they started glazing with tears.

"I...I just...I didn't want him to be mean," he choked out before his tears overflowed and he sniffed.

Ayani broke and made her way over to his side, sitting carefully down beside him as she wrapped her arm around his shoulders. She cast a look to her husband's puzzled and frustrated face.

"What do you mean, Lucas? Was he being mean to you," she asked as he hid his face in her shoulder.

"No...no we just played. He liked my dinobot," came his muffled reply.

"Then why would you think he would be mean? And why threaten him with your mother," asked his dad as he made his way into the sitting room, pulling a packing box around to sit on.

Lucas kept his face hidden against his mother. It seemed easier to speak when he couldn't see their faces. He felt now that he had made a mistake. He just didn't know what to do about it.

"Why, Lucas," his mother prodded.

Lucas swallowed hard and said softly, "Because I didn't want him to look at you the way they always do...you think I don't notice but I do. And I wanted to keep playing with him. I was scared he wouldn't stay my friend...no one ever does for long."

He felt his mother go rigid for a moment before her arms wrapped around him in a fierce hug. He felt better for telling but at the same time, he felt something was deeply wrong. He felt his mother tremble slightly before she let him go and told him to go straight to his room. He looked up at her and at his father. Something about their faces was scary so he grabbed his dino and did what his mother said as fast as he could.

As soon as he was gone, Ayani slumped and began to shake, the tears and grief she had been holding back after hearing her son's words pouring forth. Nathaniel was instantly by her side, wrapping his arms around her and holding tight as he wrestled with his own anger and sadness.

He tried hard not to be angry at his boy for his words. He was, for all intents and purposes, still a baby, unusually perceptive yes, but not always aware of the power of his words. Ayani wept silently in his arms and his anger grew as he thought of the disease that was slowly destroying his wife.

Sometimes...God help him, but sometimes he resented her for making the decision to get pregnant, knowing that it could make her problems worse, make her disease progress faster.

She was so damn stubborn, and had wanted a child so damn bad. He had told her that he didn't mind to adopt, that it didn't bother him if they didn't have a child that was created from them.

But she had.

And she had took the decision from his hands by not telling him she had quit her birth control until she was already pregnant.

She had done so well during pregnancy, so much so that they had been wildly hopeful that perhaps, just maybe, the doctors were wrong. Maybe she could be the exception to the rule.

Then had come the birth. He still didn't like to think about it, how close he had come to losing her, losing them both.

The doctors had warned him sternly it would be suicide if she ever did it again and so he had taken the decision out of her hands this time, unwilling to risk her possibly doing it again and signed for the procedure to nullify the future possibility before they closed her up.

He had been so angry, so heartbroken and worried.

And then they had laid that tiny, squirming, squalling, red-faced boy in his hands and he had felt a part of himself he never knew existed suddenly burst.

He had looked down at the screaming face of his son and knew that now, where there had been only one,there were two people he would do absolutely anything in the world to keep safe and happy.

Even now though, as much as he loved his son, it was hard to look at him sometimes, knowing that her decision to have him had cost Ayani her future. The doctors had told him that if she lived to see Lucas grown it would be a miracle. The stress of carrying and delivering him acting as a spur to the degenerative aspects of her illness. Where before they might could have promised her a fairly normal lifespan, now...now she would be lucky to get 20 more years.

Phenomenally lucky.

He wiped at his face when he suddenly realized his cheeks were wet. Ayani must have felt him shift because she looked up, her green eyes awash with tears.

"Nathaniel, we can't punish him for this. He doesn't understand."

He nodded. They had never told Lucas the details of his mothers problems, deeming him much to young to handle such things. And they had never thought it to be something he noticed or cared about.

Until now.

Nat sighed, "I'll speak to him."

Ayani grabbed at his arm, "Nathaniel Steven Taylor, don't you be hard on him," she warned him with a gimlet eye. It was a look she didn't use often, but he knew better than to argue when she did.

He patted her hand and gave her a smile, "Baby don't worry, I ain't gonna eat him, just talk to him, man to man," she was still giving him the look and he sighed, "I promise I'm not gonna be hard on him or punish him. I don't even plan to look mad. But he knows somethings up and he's gonna be expecting one of us to come talk to him and its not gonna be you," he stated.

Seeing her still unsatisfied look, he leaned down and cupped her cheek, feathering his lips across her forehead, "Please, baby, he's my baby too. I need to talk to him."

Ayani's eyes finally softened and she nodded her head.

Nathaniel padded quietly down the short hallway to his son's room. The door was cracked and he peeked in to see Lucas, curled up on his bed, hugging his knees to his chest and staring out the window. He looked so small, with his mop of sandy blond hair and those big green eyes that were so very similar to his mother's. He knocked softly and Lucas whipped around, focusing those eyes onto him and Nat tried not to feel uncomfortable with the unchildlike seriousness that was in them.

He loved his son, but there were times when he simply did not understand him.

Shaking his head against the thoughts in it, he slipped inside and sat gingerly down on the end of the bed.

"Am I in trouble now?"

Nat looked at his boy and shook his head.

"No. No, Lucas, you're not in trouble, but son, do you understand why your mother and I were upset?"

Lucas' little shoulders lifted into a shrug and he looked down, picking at his blanket.

"Because I told a fib," he offered in a small voice.

"Yes, you did. And that's wrong. But Lucas, you said something about your mom that's not true, something bad, and you hurt her."

Lucas looked up quickly at that, his big eyes filling with tears as his bottom lip began to quiver.

"I didn't mean to," he breathed.

Nathaniel immediately scooted forward and wrapped an arm around his boy's shoulders.

"I know, son, I know. And your mother does too. But just cause we know doesn't mean it don't still hurt. Once something's done, its done, for good or ill...and we have to live with it. But hopefully, we can learn from it too, so that we don't do it again in the future, right?"

He looked down to see his son slowly nod his head. He smiled and ruffled his hair then continued, "It also never hurts to apologize too...and try to make it right if you can. I think your mom would appreciate it."

Lucas looked up, confusion writ upon his small face. "What would I do?"

Nat made a show of pondering his words seriously, "Well, for starters, I think you need to say you are sorry for lying to your mother. She loves you alot and I know you love her too and would never want to make her cry. And then, I think we need to go over and visit this young friend of your's and his family, show them that what you said isn't true, and you need to tell him that it wasn't."

Lucas' eyes got big and he shrank down a bit, "But what if he doesn't still wanna be my friend?"

His dad narrowed his eyes, "Well then he probably ain't anybody you wanna be friends with anyway and we'll go find some kids who would be."

Lucas looked down and thought over his dads words. He hated that he had hurt his mama's feelings. He loved her and it made him kinda sick to think that she was crying because of him. He was upset with himself now that he had made such a mistake. She was the best mommy in the world and he would make sure she knew it.

He looked up at his dad, little chin firm and a glint in his eye, an expression that his dad startlingly realized was very similar to himself, and said determinedly, "OK daddy. Let's do it."

Feeling unaccountably proud, Nat took his son's small hand, helped him dry his eyes and stood to walk with him back into the other room.

"Daddy?"

"Yeah, son?"

"I love you."

Trying manfully not to tear up, he looked down at the little face turned up to his and said gruffly, "I love you too, son."