Sometimes it wasn’t all that bad, but sometimes it was a crime scene. And I’d seen my fair share of crime scenes in my tenure as a homicide detective and a consultant with the FBI’s Violent Crimes Unit. I had no doubt that what was awaiting me in the Huggies Little Mover was what we in the business like to call “a real bloodbath.”

I carried Clark to the counter and hefted up the diaper bag. After a couple of long deep breaths, I unclasped the diaper, revealing the carnage. I said, “Dude, what has your mom been feeding you?”

My best guess was cabbage—and lots of it.

After some light gagging, a bit of moaning, and four “You’ve got to be kidding me’s,” I had Clark cleaned up and in a fresh diaper. I picked him up off the counter and set him on the floor, where he waddled off.

After double-bagging the diaper, I made my way to the sliding glass door of the two-bedroom flat. Nice, pronounced “niece,” is a coastal city in the southeasternmost of France, sitting on the pebbly shores of the Mediterranean Sea. From Lacy and Caleb’s sixth-floor balcony there was a perfect view of glimmering cobalt water. The boardwalk running the length of the shore was packed with locals and tourists strolling the open-air markets and riding bicycles.

It was a much better view than the one from my small rented flat a quarter mile away. I’d lived at Lacy and Caleb’s for the first few months after moving to France, but after the baby came, it was just too much—the crying, that is—so I rented a place not far away. It came fully furnished, and there was an amazing café just a hundred feet away. But in the French Riviera, I suppose there is an amazing café every one hundred feet.

Anyhow, it was a nice day—a few lazy clouds in the sky—and if I hadn’t been on diaper-duty, I would most likely have been on the boardwalk myself, engaging in my new favorite activity.

Rollerblading.

Yeah, I know, the once mighty Thomas Prescott—detective extraordinaire, fearless defender of justice, and according to one post by the fourteen-member Facebook group Prescott Posse, “unconventional sex symbol”—had been reduced to a rollerblading nanny.

And sure, if Old Thomas could see what New Thomas had become, he would most likely stake out New Thomas’s house; wait for him to put on his kneepads, wrist guards, and helmet; strap on his “blades”; and put in his earbuds. Then when New Thomas was least expecting it—riding that blader’s high, hands beating to Michael Jackson’s greatest hits—Old Thomas would gun the engine and Mad Max New Thomas into oblivion.

Or Old Thomas would just be really sad.

One of the two.