I pushed the splintering oak door open wide with a single knock and stepped inside, carrying my gift bag. “Hello? Anybody home?” An unintentional joke, considering eight people lived inside this single-story house.
“Miss B?” a familiar voice answered back, followed by racing feet that skidded to a halt an instant before they leapt over the love seat in the living room. Benny gave me a fist bump. “Did you find my note? I made Mom pull into Brighton’s parking lot so I could put it on your car.”
“I sure did,” I said, roughing up his silky near-black hair while pushing away the image of Joshua’s hand removing the note from under my wiper blade. I held up the blue gift bag. “And I also stopped by the store. Couldn’t come without it.”
It was the same thing I bought him every year on this special day. Our tradition.
His braces glinted in the light as he smiled up at me. Crazy how I could still remember the first tooth he’d lost in my classroom all those years ago. How traumatic that day had been for him. Of course, back then, most things had felt traumatic to a little boy who’d lost the only world he’d ever known.
“Awesome! Thanks.” He tossed the gift tissue aside and dug into the bag with the excitement of a child much younger than his twelve years. But that was exactly what made him Benny. He could be just as excited about a small, sentimental gift from an old teacher as he was about the video game he’d been saving for since Christmas. He pulled out the green container of Play-Doh and let out a whooping, “Yes!”
The glee on his face transported me back in time, back to when the young man standing before me weighed less than the average American toddler on his first day of first grade. He’d only known a handful of English phrases when he started school, but he could write most of the letters in the English alphabet and all of his numbers. That was, as long as his mama remained less than an arm’s length away. Which she did for weeks . . . months, even. Gail sat with her son at his desk—writing with him, coloring with him, reading with him, and encouraging him to interact with his classmates despite the tough language barrier. And while it didn’t take long for the kids in my class to win him over, Benny was less than eager to interact with me. Until the day I gave him his own container of green Play-Doh.
His need for sensory output was the olive branch that first connected us, but it was the way his little hand accepted my offering that molded my heart to his forever. As he squished that doughy substance between his fingers, something changed inside me. Something I wouldn’t be brave enough to put into words until years later.
Now Ben shook the green substance, still in the shape of its container, into his palm and immediately flattened it between his hands like a pancake. Some things never changed. “I’m gonna go see if I can get Chowder to walk on it. Her paw prints would look awesome in this!”
“Eeew, Ben.” The logical voice of Benny’s slightly older sister, Allie, sounded as she entered the living room carrying a hardback fantasy book bearing a library code on the spine. I’d yet to see her without a novel permanently affixed to her person. “You can’t let the cat walk all over that and then play with it again. That’s disgusting.”
“It’s my Play-Doh. I can do whatever I want with it.” He looked to me for approval, and I nodded affirmingly, although Allie definitely had a point.
“I bet Caleb and I can get all four of her paw prints on here! See you when Mom cuts the cake, Miss B!” And with that, he was off, bounding over furniture as if his legs were made of mattress springs.
Allie scoffed in disgust, and I couldn’t help but chuckle at her look of disdain. “Hey, Allie, do you know where I might find your mama?” Gail could be any number of places. With a mix of six tween and teenage children, it was better that I ask for directions rather than wander about the house, poking my head inside bedrooms.
She pointed to the wall that separated the dining nook from the kitchen. “I think she’s still baking. She’ll be happy to see you.”
I left my shoes and purse on the rack by the front door and strolled to the kitchen, noting and appreciating the cozy, lived-in feel of their home for the hundredth time. Two mismatched athletic socks lay on the floor near the couch next to the coffee table, where several science textbooks were stacked. Not too far away, a plate of crumbs balanced on a spiral notebook. Study food, probably. Gail often joked that her oldest boys ate a minimum of one mph—meal per hour.
Gail’s back was to me as I entered the bright galley kitchen. A soft symphonic hymn played from an iPhone resting on the windowsill. She hummed along to “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” the sound barely registering above the cello’s solo as she bent over Ben’s cake, working her culinary magic.
Not wanting to startle her, I waited to speak until she lifted the piping bag away from the cake. “I’d offer to help, but you’ve seen my icing skills in action. I’m way better suited for the clean-up crew.”
She turned and offered an immediate smile I couldn’t help but return. “Ah, Lauren. I was just thinking about you.”
“Good things, I hope.” I leaned against the butcher block in the middle of the kitchen.
“Always.” She laid the piping bag on the counter and wrapped me in a tight hug. “You’ve been missed around this house—especially by Ben.” She promptly moved to pick up a barstool that weighed nearly as much as she did and placed it next to the counter, patting it twice for me to take a seat. “Here, I’m almost done with his cake, and then I’ll make us both a warm cup of chai. Why don’t you catch me up on your life these last couple weeks?”
I actually laughed. What did I possibly have to tell her? Nothing had changed since our last tea time chat. My life had been in a holding pattern for months now. Unbidden, Joshua’s face surfaced like a distant mirage and I quickly blinked him away. There wasn’t room for him here. Not in this house, and certainly not in my head, either. “I’m afraid that might be a very short conversation. Everything’s pretty much the same.”
She switched to her yellow piping bag and raised her petite eyebrows in a way that suggested nothing I had to say would ever be too boring for her to hear. And she meant it, too. Gail Cartwright had the kind of face Hollywood would typecast as “compassionate mother figure.” Honey brown eyes, a delicate mouth framed by decades of joy, and a silver-streaked bob that curled softly under her chin.
“Let’s see . . . I did find a cute note from a sixth-grade boy on my car this afternoon,” I said, running the tip of my finger along the pastry knife before bringing it to my lips. Buttercream, yum. Gail made the best cake frosting on the planet. Sweet and dense and unbelievably creamy.
“Yes, Benny—excuse me, Ben—was excited to leave it for you to discover.” She emphasized Ben’s new name preference, and I shook my head. He might make his family call him Ben now, but I would never stray from calling him Benny. To me, he’d always be my little gap-toothed first grader. “I meant to send you a reminder text last night, but—”
“But you manage a household of eight, taxi at least four of your kids to and from their chosen extracurricular each afternoon, and co-lead a weekly support group. Really, you never have to apologize to me for missing a reminder text.”