Peter and Parker enjoy a moment in the town square while their friends Ella and Simon are at school.
Parker takes a farewell run down the red-brick sidewalks which he's grown so fond of.
Donna and Peter fetch the kids from school, and we all meet up at her place for lunch. Peter and Simon decide to play hide-and-seek in the bathroom after lunch and lock themselves in. Always quick on her feet, Ella draws a diagram of the hook and eye latch and shoves it under the door. They still can't figure it out. I thought we were going to have to call the Mallorcan fire department, but Donna shoulders the door and breaks the latch. Phew. We all pile in the car and race off to Ella and Simon's horseback riding lesson.
Ella and Simon are learning to post. Peter watches as they trot around the ring, and begs for a ride too. The riding instructor agrees to let Peter sit on a pony after the lesson, and in the split second I turn my back on Parker to lift Peter onto the saddle, the little guppy disappears.
For my first lap around the stables, I'm nonplussed. The second lap I start to feel a bit unsettled. I yank Peter off the horse and tell him to look for his brother and motion to Donna to look too. Still no Parker. Ella and Simon have joined the hunt. It's dark. There are horses and cars. I'm starting to sweat. Timi and Michael pull up from a solid day climbing.
The walls of my mind are suddenly flooded with images of that couple whose child was kidnapped from their hotel room in Spain two summers ago, and I grab Timi and pound him in the chest: "Parker's gone. What if he's been kidnapped! I can't find him anywhere."
I now have the attention of everybody at the stables, and we're all on the lookout for my two-year-old. A kid signals to Timi that he thinks he spotted bambino behind the back arena. Timi runs back screaming, "Parker, Parker." A little voice pipes up: "Hi Papa. Look Papa horse!"
Still flustered, we spit out hurried goodbye's to our hosts and tossed the midgets in the minivan. The uneventful journey to the airport allowed us to regroup. We arrived a good hour before departure time, plenty of time to fuss around and resort our ample baggage contents.
Not very prudent. At check-in they informed us they'd closed the flight. Timi persuaded them to reopen it, and so we were back on course. We made it through security and read that the flight had been delayed until 8:45, so, our starving family, sat down to supper in Terminal B.
Timi excused himself to go to the men's room and happened to look up at the flight monitor and see a new departure time: 8:20 from A24. He ran back to me to check my phone for the time. It was 8:17.
We gulped down our final bite and all ran helter skelter to the A-terminal. Timi was in the lead, and I sprinted behind pushing the stroller with one hand...the other arm outstretched ready to catch Parker who nearly bobbed off his shoulders at the hairpin turn to the connecting hallway. Thankfully the guppy recovered his balance just in time for Timi to leap onto the moving sidewalk over a small Mallorcan woman and her purple suitcase.
I take a second to glance back at Peter. He' miraculously staying in step behind his long-legged parents, despite complaints of a gimp left leg from a bit of glass in his foot and ample wind resistance from a magician's top hat that's he'd insisted on bringing along on the trip. Well why not. A traveling circus might be a handy explanation for a lot of things.
It's midnight, and we're back in Vienna waiting for our bags. Mallorca was fabulous, but it sure it good to be home safe.
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