Undeniably Yours by Becky Wade

frog, pilling with wear and slightly stained. Jayden accepted it with the mistrust of a general accepting a gift from a sworn enemy. He fisted it against his chest and kept crying.
    â€œDrink?” Bo asked him, extending a juice box.
    Jayden pushed it away.
    â€œDiaper?”
    Jayden swiped the diaper from Bo’s hand and threw it on the floor emphatically.
    â€œWipes?”
    Those, too, he hurled to the floor.
    â€œChange of clothes?”
    Cashew skittered under the sofa.
    â€œStrange maze toy?”
    Jayden turned his face away.
    â€œWeird knobby ball toy I don’t understand?”
    Jayden’s skin darkened to the color of a tomato.
    â€œWell,” Bo said, “that’s all the diaper bag has to offer.”
    Meg walked Jayden around her living room, rocking and bouncing, trying to talk to him. Huge tears rolled down his cheeks in steady tracks.
    Sympathy swelled inside her. Poor little guy. He hadn’t exactly been born into the easiest lot in life. His young, single, working mother had been doing her best to simply scrape by. Now he’d been taken from everything he’d known in Lubbock, brought to Whispering Creek, and left in the care of people he viewed as frightening strangers. He had no way of understanding that his mommy had only left temporarily, or comprehending when she’d come back.
    Meg clicked on her TV and found a children’s channel playing a cartoon.
    Still didn’t help. He kept right on sobbing his heart out with no sign of slowing down. “Bo? I’m running out of ideas.” And beginning to feel slightly frantic .
    He came out of the kitchen carrying two sugar cookies on a napkin. “Here, let me give it a try.”
    Gratefully, she handed Jayden over. The little boy blinked up at Bo with worry and fascination.
    â€œLook, dude. If I had to eat the food that’s in your bag and watch this on TV, I’d be mad, too. Cookie?” He lifted the napkin. Jayden took a long moment to decide. He glanced at the cookie, at Bo, and back at the cookie before finally quieting enough to take the cookie and give it a tentative bite. Bo settled into a chair with Jayden on his lap and used the remote to change the channel to sports. “Basketball good with you?”
    Jayden watched the screen and chewed.
    â€œCool. It’s good with me, too. What do you say us guys just sit and relax awhile?” Bo leaned back in the chair, and Jayden nestled against Bo’s chest. Jayden’s tantrum hiccupped its way into silence.
    Bo glanced at Meg, who’d frozen in place, almost too afraid to move lest Jayden start back in on the screaming.
    â€œI’m winging it,” Bo said to her.
    â€œYou’re a magician. Thank God you’re here.”
    Bo winked at her.
    Saint Bo, a man christened with the miraculous ability to gentle horses, nervous women, and one-year-olds.
    Jayden spent the next fifteen minutes watching basketball, then took a sharp turn from calm couch potato into Tasmanian devil. He tried to pull things off Meg’s shelves, climb on her chairs and tables, open every drawer and cupboard door on the property, and seek and destroy anything breakable.
    Meg brought out the coloring books and crayons she’d purchased for his visit. He spared them ninety seconds of interest. She brought out a brand-new set of Play-Doh. Ninety-five seconds of interest.
    Meg and Bo took Jayden outside, and spent an hour and a half chasing him around the lawn, repeatedly detouring his desire to run headlong into the deep end of the pool, and averting his tendency to stick anything under the subheading of “nature” into his mouth.
    They baby-wrangled him through just about every room and closet of the big house for another hour, before finally imprisoning him in his highchair for dinner. Per Amber’s instructions, Meg made quesadillas and carefully cut them into bite-size squares before serving them to Jayden.
    â€œBo?”