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What had at first felt like paradise quickly started to feel like a prison of sorts. While she still loved her son more than she could even start to explain, Mackenzie was getting stir-crazy. The occasional stroll down the block just wasn’t cutting it anymore. When the doctor had cleared her for light exercise and to start picking up the pace around the house, she instantly thought of jogging or even some light weights. She was out of shape—perhaps more than she had been in over five years—and the abs she had often prided herself on were buried beneath scar tissue and a layer of fat that she was unfamiliar with.

In one of her weaker moments, she started to weep uncontrollably one night when getting out of the shower. Ever the dutiful and loving husband, Ellington had come rushing into the bathroom to find her leaning against the sink.

“Mac, what is it? Are you okay?”

“No. I’m crying. I’m not okay. And I’m crying over stupid shit.”

“Like what?”

“Like the body I just saw in the mirror.”

“Ah, Mac…hey, you remember a few weeks ago when you told me that you’d read that you would start crying over random things? Well, I think this is one of them.”

“That C-section scar will be there for the rest of my life. And the weight…it’s not going to be easy to get it off.”

“And why does this bother you?” he asked. He wasn’t taking the tough love approach, but he also wasn’t coddling her. It was a stark reminder of how well he knew her.

“It shouldn’t. And honestly, I think the crying is over something else…it just took the sight of my body to bring it all out.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your body.”

“You have to say that.”

“No I don’t.”

“How can you even look at this and want it?” she asked.

He smiled at her. “It’s quite easy. And look…I know the doctor cleared you for light exercise. So, you know…if you let me do all of the work…”

With that, he gave a flirtatious glance back through the bathroom door and into the bedroom.

“What about Kevin?”

“Taking his late-afternoon nap,” he said. “He’ll probably be up in a minute or two, though. Just so happens, though, that it’s been a little over three months. So I don’t expect anything that happens in there to take long.”

“You’re such a dork.”

He responded with a kiss that not only cut her off but instantly erased the way she had been feeling about herself. He kissed her deeply and slowly and in it, she could feel the three months that were pent up within him. He led her gently to the bedroom and, as he had suggested, he did all of the work—carefully and with skill.

Kevin’s timing was perfect. He woke up three minutes after it was over. As they walked into the nursery together, Mackenzie pinched his butt. “I think that was a little more than light exercise.”

“You feel okay?”

“I feel exceptional,” she said. “So exceptional that I think I might try the gym tonight. You think you can watch little man while I head out for a bit?”

“Of course. Just don’t overdo it.”

And that was all it took to get Mackenzie motivated. She never half-assed anything. That included working out and, apparently, being a mother. Perhaps that was why a little over three months after bringing Kevin home, she felt guilty for going out for the first time. She’d gone to the grocery store and the doctor before, sure, but this was the first time she had headed out knowing that she would be away from her baby for more than an hour or so.

She got to the gym just after eight, so most of the crowd had thinned out. It was the same gym she had frequented when she had started with the bureau, before she had relied on the bureau’s own facilities. It felt good to be back here, on a treadmill like anyone else in the city, fighting with the out-of-date resistance bands and working out just to be active.

She only managed half an hour before her abdomen started to hurt. She also had a severe cramp in her right leg which she tried to work out but to no avail. She took a break, tried the treadmill again, but decided to call it a day.

Don’t even try to be hard on yourself, she thought, but it was Ellington’s voice in her head. You’ve grown a human inside you and then had it cut out. You’re not going to go back into this thing like Superwoman. Give it some time.

She had broken a sweat, and that was good enough for her. She went back home, showered, and fed Kevin. He was so content that he fell asleep while nursing, something the doctors advised against. But she allowed it, holding him there until she, too, felt tired. When she put him down for bed, Ellington was at the kitchen table, working on some research issues with his current case.

“You good?” he asked her as she passed back through the living room.

“Yeah. I think I might have overdone it at the gym. I’m a little sore. Tired, too.”

“Need me to do anything?”

“No. Maybe in the morning help me out with some light exercise again?”

“Happy to help, ma’am,” he said with a smile over his laptop screen.

She was smiling, too, when she went to bed. Her life felt complete and she had a sore cramping in her legs, the feeling of her muscles starting to learn what they had once been used for. She drifted off within a minute, freshly exhausted.

She had no idea that she’d have the dream of the huge cornfield again, of her mother holding her baby.

And, likewise, she had no idea just how badly it would affect her this time.

***

When the nightmare stirred her awake this time, the scream did come out of her mouth. When she sat up in bed, she did so with so much force than she nearly fell off the mattress. Beside her, Ellington also sat up, a gasp rising in his throat.

“Mackenzie…what is it? Are you okay?”

“Just a nightmare. That’s all.”

“Sounds like it was terrible. Is it anything you want to talk about?”

With her heart still hammering in her chest, she lay back down. For a moment, she was sure she could taste the dirt from the nightmare in her mouth. “Not in depth. It’s just…I think I need to see my mother. I need to let her know about Kevin.”

“That’s fair,” Ellington said, clearly still baffled by the nightmare and its effect on her. “That makes sense, I guess.”

“We can talk about it later,” she said, already feeling the lure of sleep. The images of the nightmare were still there with her, but she knew if she didn’t get back to sleep soon, it was going to be a long night indeed.

She woke up several hours later to the sound of Kevin crying. Ellington was already starting to get out of bed, but she reached out and placed her hand on his chest. “I got him,” she said.

Ellington didn’t put up much of a fight. They were slowly starting to get back on a relatively normal sleep schedule, and neither of them were keen to start testing it. Besides, he had a meeting in the morning, something about a new case where he was going to be the lead with a surveillance team. He’d told her all about it over dinner but she had been too lost in her own thoughts. Lately, her attention had been all over the place and it was hard to focus—particularly whenever Ellington talked about work. She missed it and was envious of him but could not quite dream of leaving Kevin just yet, no matter how good the daycare was.

Mackenzie went into the nursery and gently took him out of the crib. Kevin had gotten to the point where he would put a stop to his crying (mostly) the moment one of his parents came to him. He knew he was going to get what he needed and had already learned to trust his own little instincts. Mackenzie changed his diaper and then set herself down in the rocking chair and nursed him.

Her mind drifted to her parents. She could obviously not remember feeding as a baby. But the mere idea that her mother had once breastfed her was too much to even imagine. Still, she now knew that motherhood brought with it a whole new filter through which to see the world. Perhaps her own mother’s filter had been skewed—and perhaps even totally destroyed when her husband had been murdered.

Have I been too hard on her all this time? she wondered.

Mackenzie finished feeding Kevin, thinking long and hard about her future—not just for the coming weeks, when her maternity leave would come to an end, but to the months and years ahead and how she might best spend them.