by Amy Woods
Owen nodded and walked over to the cabinet. After rummaging around for a moment, he found the clay on the bottom shelf and chose a few colors before bringing the soft sticks to the table where he’d sat before. Liam was still worried that maybe the boy had moseyed off from Paige’s office, so he decided to call her from the phone at his desk.
“Hey, Owen, I’m just going to let your mom know that you’re here, okay?” he said, picking up the receiver.
Owen nodded yes and Liam punched in Paige’s office extension.
“Hey, Emma. It’s Liam Campbell,” he said when the receptionist picked up. “I was trying to reach Assistant Principal Graham. Is she in?”
Emma told Liam that Paige was in a meeting with Principal Matthews, but that she would inform her boss of Owen’s whereabouts. He was still a little uncertain about having him there without her permission, but Emma hadn’t seemed concerned and surely Paige, cautious as she was, would know what her son was up to. He planned to do the best he could to show Paige that he knew what he was doing.
Liam joined Owen at the table and noticed he had chosen the red clay to work with. “Mind if I sit?” he asked.
Owen nodded that it was okay, so Liam perched on one of the kid-size chairs across from him. Liam took some of the clay and began shaping it into a car, enjoying the smooth, cool moisture of the blue material in his hands.
“I love working with clay,” Liam said. “It feels really good to be able to build something with your own hands.”
Owen said nothing and continued to shape the crimson dough with his small fingers, his tongue stuck out in deep concentration.
“And it’s amazing,” Liam continued, “that you can take a sort of weird and gross blob and make it into anything you want. Anything in the world.”
Owen looked up at Liam then with wide eyes just a shade lighter than his mother’s. Liam was struck by the thought that he’d love to see even the tiniest of smiles cross Owen’s face again. He felt the same around the boy’s mom.
It was amazing how the two of them tugged at his heartstrings after only a few days.
Amazing—and terrifying.
Liam continued to form the car he’d started while Owen shaped a dog with his red clay. Even though Owen didn’t say a word, Liam’s shoulders relaxed as he let the world go and worked to build something all his own.
* * *
When Paige left Principal Matthews’s office late that afternoon, she felt simultaneously numb and fearful, as well as exhausted from the day’s back-to-back meetings. Somehow she made it back to her own desk.
So, she was the first choice—the only choice, really, as she’d understood it—to take Ms. Matthews’s place as principal.
On some level, she’d known she would at least be a candidate, but she’d assumed there would be a more qualified person to take the position. And though she would still have to interview and speak with the superintendent about her goals for the following year, Paige had gotten the impression that they would be mere formalities. Ms. Matthews had all but handed over her office to Paige during their meeting. It was an honor, and something she should be celebrating.
But, after her initial astonishment, a sense of apprehension spread through her.
How could she take on even more obligations and still offer Owen as much as he needed of her? How could she commit to more meetings, more intense conferences with parents and more supervisor duties than she already had and remain sane?
But then, how could she not?
The further she made it in her career, the more she could give to Owen: better therapy, a better home than their small condo and someday she hoped—if Owen’s condition improved—finances that allowed for better college choices.
The weight of the impossible decision she had to make made her want to melt into her office chair, close the door and never leave. Sometimes, with tremendous guilt, she longed for the luxury of simply disappearing completely, just for a few moments. But she couldn’t because Owen…
Oh, God… The breath rushed out of her lungs. Where was Owen?
Paige jumped up from her chair and threw open the door, rushing to Emma’s desk.
Emma quickly pulled off her headset and looked at Paige as though her boss was crazy.
“Afternoon, Ms. Graham,” Emma said, searching Paige’s face for clues as to what might be going on. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s Owen. I meant to call his babysitter earlier to see if she could pick him up and take him home today, but then I had the appointment with Principal Matthews and I forgot—and, oh, my God, how could I have forgotten—”
“Ms. Graham,” Emma said, holding up a hand. “It’s all right.”
Paige could barely hear what Emma said as heat flared up through her chest and into her face.
“Mr. Campbell called an hour ago, just after you went in to speak to Principal Matthews. Owen’s safe with him and everything seemed fine, so I didn’t want to bother you during your meeting. And you went straight to your office and shut the door when you got back, so I figured you needed a little time to yourself. You looked so pale.”
Paige rubbed her eyes and sat for a minute, holding her face in her hands.
“I can’t believe I let this happen,” she said to Emma.
“You’re just stressed out,” Emma said, sitting beside her. “Which is totally understandable. But there’s nothing to worry about. Everything’s okay.”
“Don’t bother with calling Mr. Campbell,” Paige said. “I’ll grab my things and go and get Owen myself. Thanks, Emma.”
Paige went back for her purse, then closed up her office and said good-night to Emma on her way out. As she walked to Liam’s classroom, she chastised herself again for being so irresponsible. Carelessness was something she disliked in others and she had always strived to keep it out of her own life.
The truth was, part of her wanted to be principal. She loved Peach Leaf Elementary, and she loved the faculty. Part of her had always yearned for the job, despite what her father had done all those years ago when he’d held the same position at Peach Leaf High School. She’d never admitted it to herself fully before, but there was a piece of her that thought that if she could become a principal, and do the job well, then somehow his abandonment of her mother and their family would be erased. She knew it was silly, but there it was all the same.
The hallways she walked now were the same she’d just left one afternoon, when everything changed. She was just Owen’s age when her father had come home after work and told Paige’s mother that he was seeing someone else, a teacher at the high school, and that he didn’t love Paige’s mom anymore. Paige had rushed out of her bedroom full of excitement to tell him about her day and had stopped on the stairwell when she heard the all-too-common yelling.
The words that had followed still roamed the back of her mind. He’d told her mother that he was going to build a new family—one that did not include his wife and daughters.
Paige had been Owen’s age when her father had broken her heart, when her world had turned upside down, and he’d never come back, not even once, to see Paige or her sister, Emily.
The last she’d heard was that he’d moved to another town, where he’d taken a job as a principal at a high school far away from his unwanted family. But the damage was done. In their small town, the family name had been tarnished forever, at least in Paige’s mind. She then worked hard to be the best student possible so that she could get enough scholarship money to send herself to college.
Despite everything that her father had done, she’d always wanted to teach, and he hadn’t been able to take that away. So after finishing her master’s degree, Paige had moved back home to take care of her mother when she’d gotten sick. She’d stayed, having met Mark and made a life with him.
In some ways, her father had become nothin
g but a distant memory, which most days she was able to block out completely.
But she remembered him now, as she struggled against the doubt clouding her every thought. She’d forgotten to put Owen first today—she’d made a mistake—but she wasn’t the same reckless parent her father had been. She couldn’t bear the idea of Owen wondering where she’d been when she was supposed to have someone pick him up and take him home, couldn’t bear the thought of Owen ever feeling abandoned as she had as a little girl.
Paige turned down a corridor and found the art room door open.
When she stepped in, the sight of Liam silently building what looked like a blue car with clay, and the look of pure delight on Owen’s face as he shaped a red animal across the table, sucked the breath she’d just taken right back out of her.
She hadn’t seen Owen smile that way, that freely, since before his father had died.
And, since then, she hadn’t seen any man pay attention to her son with the obvious joy that Liam had all over his face. What she saw was something more than a teacher working with a student.
It was something special.
She stood for a moment, afraid to burst in and break the spell.
Just then, Liam caught her watching the two of them work. He smiled at her over Owen’s head, and then turned back to her boy, without moving to put the clay away. The intensity of his smile at Owen made her pause. It was filled with the gentle tenderness she’d thought only a parent could feel for a child.
After putting on final touches, he stopped working on the blue car and held it up for Owen to see.
Owen stopped molding the red dog with his fingers and his eyes lit up at the car that Liam had shaped.
“Cool,” said Owen, so softly that Paige wasn’t sure she’d actually heard it.
But Liam looked up at her again and grinned, the corners crinkling around his forest-green eyes, and she knew she wasn’t imagining anything.
Chapter Four
Liam pulled his eyes away from Paige and focused back on Owen, allowing her a moment of privacy to react to the fact that her son had spoken to someone other than her for the first time in a very, very long time. When he looked up again, Liam could see her eyes glistening with tears, which she quickly wiped away. She crossed her arms and stood watching, and Liam felt as though his heart was across the room with her. He always delighted in seeing his students or therapy-group kids succeed, but he felt now as if he were watching his own child cross a bridge that had seemed unsurpassable until that moment.
He tried not to let himself get too excited, though. It was common for kids like Owen to have a small breakthrough, and then digress into the shadows where they’d grown so comfortable hiding. Besides, even with this progress, it could take a few weeks for Owen to speak with regularity again.
He needed to communicate that to Paige. It was important for her to understand how delicate the next few days would be and how incredibly vital it was to Owen’s further progression that she not make a big deal out of it. Owen needed to think everything was normal, to have the adults around him behave the way they had been for the past several weeks, so that he wouldn’t feel their tension and retreat into silence.
But how hard it was to stay still when he wanted to sweep Paige into his arms and rejoice with her over this one moment of success.
After ensuring Owen was engaged with his clay, Liam rose from his seat and made his way toward Paige. She looked like she’d had one hell of a day. Her eyes were red with dark circles forming underneath, which, he was reluctant to admit, did nothing to detract from her natural beauty. As he neared her, he thought that nothing on earth could ever make her less lovely.
Dangerous thoughts indeed. He reminded himself that this was his boss he was thinking about.
“How has your day been?” he asked, hoping she would take his cue to just go with the relaxed conversation.
She looked at Liam curiously, and her eyes narrowed, clearly wondering if he had just witnessed the same thing that she had. He desperately wanted her to understand that he’d felt the significance of the moment as much as she had.
“It’s been fine, I guess,” she said, looking past Liam to stare at her son. “Did he just…”
“Yeah, he did, Ms. Graham, but…”
She had forgotten Liam and left him hanging on his words as she dropped her bag and took a step into the doorway.
“Ms. Graham,” he said, reaching out and grabbing her arm.
She turned to look at him as if he’d slapped her, and he cursed himself for reacting so abruptly, especially when he was supposed to be the calm one here. He reminded himself that it wasn’t his kid, after all, who’d just made a huge step in a positive direction.
Owen wasn’t his child.
“What are you doing?” she said, glaring at him. “He just said a word. My son spoke, Mr. Campbell. Don’t you realize that that’s the first time he’s said anything to anyone—anyone—besides me in six months?”
“Yes, Ms. Graham, I do understand that.” She looked down at her arm, which he still held. He tried not to think about the way his whole hand fit around her small elbow or the softness of her creamy skin. How could he possibly be getting worked up over an arm? His boss’s arm, no less.
But he had to make her understand before she unintentionally overwhelmed Owen.
“Ms. Graham, you have to understand something…”
“What—you mean other than the fact that he just took a monumental step toward getting better?”
Paige moved her arm out of his hand, and the next thing she did surprised the living daylights out of him.
“I understand that this is the most important thing that’s happened to him—to me—in the past six months,” she said, wrapping her arms around Liam in a tight hug before pulling back to grasp hold of both of his hands as she looked straight into his eyes.
Joy like nothing he’d ever seen shone out of those baby blues.
Her skin felt soft as satin in his hands as she held them with her own.
“And it’s all because of you. I…we…have you to thank, Mr. Campbell,” she said. The combination of her words and the way she was looking at him—as if he had her whole world balled up in the palm of his hand—caused uncomfortable, burning heat to fill his body.
He dropped her hands, quickly, and instantly regretted the harsh move when he saw a pink flush rise in the woman’s cheeks as her eyes darted away from his. The last thing he wanted to do was embarrass her—or stop her from touching him. But he owed it to her to be honest. At that moment, he could either let her go on thinking everything would be okay from there on out, or he could tell her the truth and possibly break her heart.
Liam took a deep breath and decided to do the right thing, even though it might make him the bad guy to a woman who, much too quickly and very likely against her will, was climbing over his walls.
He looked down at his hands and then spoke, choosing his words with great care.
“Paige…you have to understand that what you do and say right now is important.” Liam spoke softly in hopes that Owen wouldn’t hear them. “He has to think that nothing weird happened. You have to make him understand that his saying something in front of me is normal, okay?” Liam glanced over at Owen before turning back to Paige.
He could tell she was trying to understand why she had to go against her feelings. Paige stared at her son and put a hand over her mouth, softly tapping her knuckles against her lips, as though assembling a million scattered thoughts into something coherent in her mind. After seconds passed that seemed like minutes, she forced her hands back to her sides and shoved them into her pockets.
“No, actually, I really don’t understand. I really, really do not.” This time she spoke softly and Liam could see that she truly did want to know what he was talking about. She seemed wil
ling to at least consider following his lead. Maybe she was beginning to trust him, even after knowing him for only two days.
“Try to put yourself in Owen’s shoes, okay?” Liam held his hands out, palms up, desperately wanting to show his sincerity and that he meant no harm. “You know that he’s been quiet all this time because something has been bothering him deeply.” Paige’s eyes darkened and Liam scanned her face, looking for a sign. He knew he’d hit a nerve, but he had to keep going for Owen’s sake, even if it bothered her.
“Something’s been upsetting that kiddo to the point that he’s felt like he can’t speak to anyone but you. You’re his safe place, you see. You have been all along,” Liam said, and Paige’s shoulders lowered slightly.
There. He was starting to have the effect he wanted.
“So now that he’s said something, you—we—need to let him know that it’s completely normal for him to speak. We don’t want to freak him out so we have to just go with the flow.”
Paige relaxed further, but her eyes were filled with what looked like confusion and pain as they met Liam’s.
“Can I ask you something?” she said tentatively.
“Of course,” he said. “Anything.”
“I’ve just never understood, and the therapist has never really tried to explain it to me…. Why this?” Her forehead knit and she raised a palm in question.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean.” he said.
“Well, why this…this silence? Why has he chosen not to speak to anyone? Of all the ways he could react to what happened, why did he choose this way?”
Liam took a deep breath. He’d explained this so many times to parents who were doing the best they could for their children but still felt as if they hadn’t done enough as they watched their children continue to struggle. “It’s not that he’s chosen this, Ms. Graham. It’s just that, well, children don’t, and can’t, always rationalize the things they do or think through actions like us. They’re brilliant people—don’t get me wrong—it’s just that they haven’t learned to label everything the way we do. So if you were to ask Owen why he’s not able to speak to anyone but you…”