Right Under My Nose

by Parker, Ali

  I couldn’t help wondering where that came from. What was his family like? Hopefully, I would get to know firsthand soon enough. I was a little nervous. These kinds of meetings were rarely fun, after all. Still, it would be for the best. For Hunter. Which was what all of this was about at the end of the day.

  My phone buzzed, and I snatched it up at once, somehow assuming it must be Hunter’s parents calling me up directly even though they didn’t have my number. I looked at the screen and found Zoe’s name, instead, and answered at once.

  “Hey,” I greeted her.

  “Hey.” She yawned down the line. “You feel like going out for lunch? I just woke up, and I don’t feel like cooking any time soon.”

  “Sure thing.” I grinned. “Usual place?”

  “You know it,” she agreed. “See you there in fifteen?”

  “Twenty?”

  “Deal,” she replied, and with that, she hung up the phone and left me to gather myself to meet her. The place we were headed was the same one we had gone to celebrate getting the job at the school in the first place. We had happened to be together when we got the news, and she had insisted on taking me out for a drink to revel in our victory. At the time, I hadn’t known her so well, but after that long, boozy lunch, I felt as though she was my best friend, and I couldn’t imagine life without her.

  Before I headed out the door to Mamas, I noticed the screen of my laptop was lit up like it was trying to tell me something. I turned to check it out and found a fresh email. From Hunter’s father.

  I quickly clicked it open and scanned through the lines, grinning when I saw he was agreeing to meet me tomorrow at the school as I had first suggested. I would have made it during the school day, but I didn’t want to take time away from my day to speak to a parent. Besides, if one of the other kids caught on that Hunter’s father was there for a reason, it might make the divide between him and the rest of the kids even more pointed.

  I made my way down to Mamas to meet Zoe, who was already sitting there with a green tea in front of her when I arrived.

  “Hey.” I gave her a quick hug. “You all right?”

  “I indulged in a glass too many of wine last night,” she admitted. “So I think I’m going to avoid the champagne cocktails for now and stick to detox. How about you?”

  “Yeah, I’m actually really good.” I nodded excitedly. “I got an email from Hunter’s father. You know, the quiet kid in my class?”

  “Yeah, I think I know the one.” Zoe furrowed her brow as though searching for him in her memory.

  “Well, I messaged him right before you called to ask if we could have a meeting to check in on how his son was doing,” I explained. “He’s not bad or anything, but he seemed a little out of place compared to the rest of the kids.”

  “Yeah, of course,” Zoe said. “Have you met them before?”

  “No, that’s the thing, the parents have never come to the school before,” I shook my head. “Or at least as long as I’ve been there. That’s weird, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty weird,” Zoe agreed. “Why? Did they have a reason, or do they just not turn up?”

  “I think they usually have some kind of reason, but it never seems much,” I admitted. “Mostly just work. In fact, I’ve never heard from the mother at all. We don’t even have her email on file.”

  “Maybe she’s not around,” Zoe pointed out, and I furrowed my brow and leaned back in my seat. I hadn’t even thought about that, but it was a strong possibility. Maybe it was just his dad around at home, and maybe that would explain his quietness. Sometimes, with single fathers, kids didn’t develop the same kind of emotional literacy they did with both parents. Or maybe he was dealing with abandonment issues and didn’t want to let anyone get too close to him.

  “Yeah, I guess you could be right,” I agreed. “Either way, I’m glad I’m going to get to meet this guy once and for all. Feels like it can only be a good thing for Hunter.”

  “You’re a really good teacher, you know that?” Zoe reached across the table and patted my hand. She was, most of the time, this wisecracking bundle of sarcasm, but occasionally she would come out with something so sincere and so sweet that it would catch me completely off-guard and mean even more thanks to the incongruity. I smiled back at her.

  “Thanks, Zoe,” I replied. “You know I think that about you too, right?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not the one taking time out of my weekend to take care of a kid who needs extra attention,” she pointed out, and I chuckled.

  “I’ll probably be the one nursing the hangover the next time we go out,” I warned her. “It’s probably going to be a difficult meeting.”

  “Yeah, there’s likely a reason he’s been avoiding you so long,” She arched an eyebrow teasingly, seeing a chance to get me shifting in my seat with nervousness. “I mean, why wouldn’t he come into the school all that time? Maybe he doesn’t exist. Maybe Hunter’s a figment of your imagination.”

  “And yours,” I reminded her. “Your hoodoo act doesn’t work when you told me you know who he is, remember?”

  “Darn,” she snapped her fingers like a dastardly villain whose plan had been foiled at the last moment. “I forgot about that.”

  “What do you think his father is actually going to be like, though?” I wondered aloud. “I mean, he’s never come in before. That’s weird, right?”

  “It’s weird,” Zoe agreed with me. “But I don’t think it’s automatically something to be freaked out about. It could be a lot of reasons.”

  “Right.” I nodded, glad for her here soothing me before I dived too far down the rabbit hole of overthinking all of this.

  “Or he could be a psychopath who doesn’t understand human emotion and doesn’t want to have to fake it in front of his son’s teacher,” she jibed, and I shot her a look.

  “Oh, come on,” I fired back. “You really want me to go in wondering if he’s an android? That’s going to help nothing.”

  “Maybe you could check for bolts and wires.” She waggled her eyebrows at me. “Single father, remember?”

  “We don’t know that,” I reminded her, but I couldn’t help feeling a small flutter deep in my chest. If anything was my weakness, it was men who were good with kids. They just made me swoon. I thought they were the damn sexiest things in the world. There was nothing like seeing a big, masculine guy get down and goof around with their child, nothing like it in the world.

  “Let’s talk about something other than work,” I suggested, and we spent the rest of the brunch talking about a book I had loaned her that she was loving and the movies coming out that month that we wanted to see. I found my mind pleasingly lifted from the worry about what was going to come in that meeting the next day. At least, until I got home.

  When I opened my laptop, that email was still sitting there staring me down, and I frowned as I looked at it. I read it through again, trying to find some kind of hidden meaning in the lines, a hint of tone or indication of emotion. But that was impossible through email. This guy was brusque and to the point and wasn’t trying to sugarcoat anything, which might have been good or could have been… well, could have been bad. Really bad.

  As I got undressed, took my makeup off, and slipped into a bath, I found myself wondering what kind of man Hunter’s father was going to be. If he hadn’t made it to one meeting before this one, I had to assume he wasn’t that involved with his kid’s upbringing. Not that it exactly surprised me. More and more parents these days, by choice or not, had to hand over the childcare to other people, whether it was the teachers at the schools or their families and friends. I didn’t blame them for that. But something about Holden, Hunter’s father, gave me a different kind of vibe.

  I closed my eyes, imagined him, and found my mind conjuring up the image of an old, rich man who mostly threw money at his son’s upbringing to make sure it went as smoothly as possible without him getting directly involved. That was how he liked it, for sure. But at least he had agreed to co
me in and meet with me. That was a start, and I had to hope Zoe was wrong, and he wasn’t actually a psychopath or an emotionless android in disguise.

  And even if he was, I promised myself then and there, I would do everything I could to invest him in the life of his son. Hunter was a sweet kid, and he deserved the people around him to care about him, to feel as deeply as he clearly did. I smiled as I went to apply a face mask, satisfied that by this time tomorrow, I would have done some good in this young boy’s life. And I would have done it without quite as many Bellinis in my system as I had right now.

  5

  Holden

  I paced back and forth outside the car for a moment, trying to gather myself. I knew I was being ridiculous, but being here at the school was stressing me out and making me feel like I was about to land in a whole lot of trouble.

  “Dad, are you coming?” Hunter asked impatiently, waiting by the gate. The place was nearly quiet, except for a couple of cleaners and some janitors tending the grounds, and I knew I had to go in there and face this teacher, once and for all, to whatever had been going on in my son’s life.

  “Yeah, yeah, of course.” I finally followed him through the gate. I couldn’t believe I’d never been here before. Well, not since I enrolled Hunter, anyway. I had liked the look of the place, and he had always been well-behaved and never caused an ounce of trouble until this moment, so I’d never needed to come in. I had read the email the teacher had sent me a good few times through, trying to get a feel for how she felt about him and what exactly this meeting was about. I came up with nothing. As Hunter led me into the main school building, I watched him and found it hard to believe for an instant that he had been causing any real trouble. But I supposed I was the one who had neglected to come in here, who had tucked all the parent-teacher invites behind the clock on the mantelpiece and then forgotten about them. I had no idea how he was doing in school, and I was about to find out, for better or for worse.

  I arrived at the door of the classroom he led me to and paused there for a moment as I stared at the woman I assumed was meeting me. She had her head down and was frowning at some papers in front of her, her long, deeply dark hair wrapped into a bun at the back of her head. I cleared my throat, and she looked up—and the jolt of her hazel eyes as they met mine took me by surprise, sending what felt like an electric current across my skin. She smiled and got to her feet, extending her hand to me as she approached. She had a warm, open face, a sincere smile, and I liked the way she looked at me. Made me feel warm, comfortable.

  “You must be Holden,” she greeted me, and I nodded.

  “Autumn?” I asked, and she glanced at Hunter.

  “Well, I prefer Miss Becks in this classroom most of the time, but I suppose we can let it slide for now.” She winked at my son, and he grinned back. They obviously had a good rapport—that was nice to see. I couldn’t help noticing how small the classroom seemed. Or maybe I had gotten a hell of a lot bigger since the last time I had stepped in a place like this. It was all decked out in bright primary colors with various wall charts delivering information about ancient peoples and distant countries and famous authors. The place had a nice feel to it, the same way it had when I had first come here to enroll Hunter.

  “Thank you so much for coming in.” She took her seat behind her desk at the front of the room, and I sat opposite her. Hunter pulled up a chair to join us. He had a big grin on his face, like his two worlds were colliding and he couldn’t have been much happier about it.

  “Of course.” I shot a look at Hunter. “Are you sure we, uh, all need to be here?”

  “I think it’s important to keep an open line of dialogue between all parties involved in this kind of situation.” She nodded seriously, and Hunter shifted in his seat.

  “Am I in trouble?” he asked, and she shook her head at once.

  “Not at all, Hunter,” she promised him, giving him another one of her calming, sweet smiles. She was striking, and I couldn’t help but notice how creamy and soft her skin looked next to the flimsy fabric of the green sweater she was wearing. She reached up to undo and redo her hair, and it briefly swept down to her waist before she gathered it up once more. I caught a whiff of her perfume, which smelled floral but not old-fashioned. It suited her somehow.

  “I wanted to bring you in today so we could talk about your social life,” she told him, and I raised my eyebrows.

  “Is there something wrong there?” I asked. I was on the defensive, and I knew that, but that was what working in business for years had taught me—always come out swinging to defend yourself, just in case you need to. She took a deep breath and continued.

  “I’m concerned that Hunter is becoming somewhat isolated from the rest of the students,” she continued, addressing me. I could practically feel my son deflating next to me like someone had stuck a pin in him and let the air out. I wanted to cover his ears and demand that she shut her mouth, but that wasn’t going to achieve anything. I needed to hear her out. I just wasn’t sure my son did as well.

  “And what do you mean by that?” I asked, trying to keep my tone cool and collected. Why on earth had she invited Hunter in to hear all of this? I mean, I assumed she knew better than me, but still, it felt cruel to drag him through this pointed attack on his character.

  “I mean that Hunter sometimes has trouble connecting with the other kids his own age,” she went on calmly, obviously oblivious to the fact that my back was up over what she had told me. “Would you say that’s right, Hunter?”

  “I don’t know what to talk to them about,” he replied, his voice small. “I didn’t realize it was a bad thing.”

  “It’s not a bad thing,” she assured him, and I wanted to reach over and give him a big hug. I wanted to take him out of there and leave and not look back and tell this woman she could go fuck herself if she thought it was all right to talk to my son that way. But I had to sit there and listen to her and take it, that it was my natural reaction as a parent not to want to hear anything wrong about my child. I had to overcome that. I had to prove to her and anyone else who might hear about this meeting that I could handle myself in the face of this.

  “No, it’s not a bad thing,” I followed up, looking at him intently. I turned back to her. “So what is this about? You think we need to address this?”

  “I don’t want Hunter to feel like a social outcast from the rest of his group,” she told me, and the word immediately sent a flurry of irritation through me. Outcast? Who was she to use that word to describe him? She barely knew him. She didn’t know him like I did, that was for damn sure. Outcast? The word ran through my mind like it had been lit up in neon, and I inhaled and exhaled slowly to bring myself back down to Earth. I had to remind myself that this woman had my son’s best interests at heart, no matter what it might have seemed like to me. She cared about him. It was her job to care. This was what she thought was best, and I should trust her on that.

  “And I wanted to see how he was doing outside of school.” She pressed her fingertips together and looked at me over the top of them expectantly. I blinked a couple of times, and for some reason, every interaction I’d ever had with my son dropped out of the back of my mind just like that. There was something about the way she looked at me, those hazel eyes burning into mine, that made it harder to think straight than I would have cared to admit to.

  “He’s going….” I looked at Hunter, and I realized that I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember what he had been up to outside of school in the last few months. I had tried to set him up with a couple of clubs—football, drama, that kind of thing but he had seemed reluctant to take any of them on or take any interest in spending much time outside the house. He always seemed bright and sparky when he was around me or Raymond, but he couldn’t have us be his only friends. He needed children his own age to connect with, that much was obvious.

  “Hunter does really well with me,” I told her. “And I have a close friend with a family of his own who Hunter gets on very we
ll with.”

  “Oh?” Autumn turned to Hunter and smiled interestedly. “Do they have children?”

  “They just had a little girl,” Hunter gushed, and I grinned when I heard the excitement in his voice. “They said they might let me babysit her sometime.”

  “But they don’t have any children around your age?” She furrowed her brow, and he shook his head. She nodded, and I could see her making an internal note of the information. I shifted in my seat once more. I wanted to know what she was thinking. Usually, I could get a good read on people pretty quickly—years of working in business would do that for you—but she was a different kind of person than the ones I was used to dealing with and I was having a hard time seeing inside her head.

  “I think it’s great that you get on so well with your dad’s friends.” She smiled at him again, but this time, it looked more indulgent than anything else. I felt my skin prickle once more, but this time, it was annoyance more than anything else.

  “What about your mom’s friends?” she asked, and at once I knew I had to put a stop to things there. Hunter froze in his seat, where he had been fidgeting back and forth for the last ten minutes, and he looked to me, clearly expecting an answer of some kind. My heart twisted in pain as I watched him. I knew he was asking me, without words, what the hell his answer to that question should be. Because he didn’t have a mother, never had, and I tried to keep the conversation about her to a minimum till I could properly express to my son that her leaving had nothing to do with the person he was and that he should never blame himself for that. But now, here was this teacher, swinging in and talking about her as though she didn’t give a damn about our situation. Well, I wasn’t going to take a moment more of it. I was fucking done with this.