Both her boys were downright miserable about entering. Cade especially. Mrs. Baxter and Ms. Hemmings had both agreed that the score Mrs. Baxter gave him on his entry essay could be counted as his language arts grade for the entire semester. The class had been working on theirs for weeks, and it was already a big part of the overall semester grade. It was a perfect solution to Cade’s situation.
Except, as it turned out, for the topic of this year’s competition—which Cade had totally balked at. And his therapist had said not to let him off the hook writing the essay, unless he could tell Sam or Brian why he didn’t want to do it. Which he hadn’t yet. And Dr. Mueller had said it was important not to give him that out, no matter how much Sam wanted to spare him.
“You,” Cade said from the bottom of the stairs. He’d come down so quietly, she hadn’t noticed him there. “You’re what’s wrong, Mom.”
She curled her hand into her pocket, around Brian’s note. When she was sure of her voice, and that she could be a teacher in that moment instead of a worried parent, she said, “How am I your problem, when you’re the one not doing your work?”
“You won’t talk Mrs. Baxter into giving me another assignment.”
“Because you won’t give me a good reason why you won’t do this one.”
“I don’t want to. That’s the reason.”
“Well, you don’t have a choice.”
She’d avoided talking about her own problems for too long. She wasn’t going to make that same mistake with her son.
“Like you have a choice?” Cade trudged across the kitchen and practically threw himself onto his own stool. His face, like his father’s had, still sported bruises from Monday. “You’re an adult, so you get to never talk about what you don’t want to talk about. But we’re kids, right? So we have to do what we’re told, no matter what.”
Sam blinked, forcing back the sudden need to give him a smothering-mothering hug. But Cade needed both a mother and a teacher right now, and Sam wasn’t giving up until she’d found a way to be both for him.
She glanced at Joshua, who was still looking down. She flipped the first slice of French toast over, added a second that had been soaking. Then she faced both boys and crossed her arms.
“I don’t like to write,” Joshie finally said.
“You never have.” Sam flipped the new slice of toast and transferred the first onto a plate. She sprinkled it with powdered sugar from the shaker she’d grabbed from the pantry. She handed Joshie the plate, a napkin, and a fork from the silverware drawer. “That hasn’t stopped you from doing Expressions in the past. What gives now? Besides the fact that your brother is refusing to do his work, so the two of you are banding together in solidarity, or something like that.”
Joshua doused everything in syrup, cut off a huge bite and shoved way too much food into his mouth.
“Soli-what?” he asked around the mess.
“Are you not writing your entry”—Sam smiled, holding the everyday moment close—“because your brother’s not writing his?”
Joshua shrugged and swallowed. She stopped herself from saying how proud she was that he’d stick up for Cade that way, even though they’d been having a tough week with each other. Instead, she flipped the second piece of French toast onto a plate. She handed it and a napkin and fork over to Cade, who didn’t like sugar on his.
“I don’t care what he does,” Cade said. “I’m not writing any stupid essay.”
“You love to write.” He’d been so proud of his entries in the past. Each year, he’d won the school competition for his grade. Once he’d even won at the county level, and his entry had earned him an honorable mention at state.
“Not this year.”
“Why?” Sam turned back to the stove, soaking two more slices of bread in the mix and dropping them into the pan.
She was pretty sure she knew why. But the doctor was right. No matter how much Sam wanted to soften the blow, Cade needed to work his own way through what was troubling him.
“Why don’t you ever talk about it?” Joshua asked over his next bite.
“Why don’t I ever talk about what?” Sam flipped the last two slices.
When she turned back, Cade pulled something from his pocket. It was a crumpled, stained Post-it. The one she’d left Brian Monday morning after they’d argued in the park.
I’m so sorry.
“The 9/11 stuff,” her son said, his voice quiet but fierce at the same time. “How about you talk about that? And then I’ll do my essay.”
“Wh-what?” Her hand curled around Brian’s note in her pocket, holding on to her husband’s confidence, his love. “Why do you need to hear about that now?”
Talk about it?
Share with her already traumatized son what it was like to be a 9/11 survivor, and how it had felt all these years as if parts of her had never really left Ground Zero or the students she’d refused to keep up with after that day?
Is my mom going to be there? little Krista asked again, over and over again in Sam’s mind. Please…
Sam gripped the edge of the countertop to keep the memories and the panic that swooped in with them from dropping her to the floor.
“Why not?” Cade accused. “No one makes you talk about what you don’t want to. Why are you making me?”
Her unattended toast was burning. She grabbed the handle of the iron skillet without thinking—without a pot holder protecting her skin. Searing pain made her yank her hand away. But not in time.
“Ah!” she gasped to the sound of the school bus pulling into the cul-de-sac.
“Gotta go!” Joshua bounded off his stool and hugged her good-bye as if it were any other morning. “See ya later.”
He grabbed his backpack off the kitchen table and raced out the garage door, slamming it behind him in such an ordinary boy way. Sam wanted to rush after him and hug him again and not let go until he, too, reached his older brother’s age and began asking difficult life questions that deserved answers.
Only would she be strong enough then to give her boys the answers they needed, without falling apart herself?
She scooped ice out of the tray in the freezer, twisted the cubes in a kitchen towel, and then wrapped it all around her hand. She glanced at Cade, picking up the pot holder and then the frying pan and walking to the sink to dispose of the burned toast.
She sighed as she scraped.
“What don’t you want to talk about in your essay?” she asked, focusing on teaching him, while she felt like an absolute failure as a mother.
She remembered like it was yesterday, Cade recognizing her fear the morning of the bake sale and saying she didn’t have to talk about it. That she never had to talk about it. She and Brian had done more than become pros at hiding from their own awful feelings. They’d taught their son how to hide as well.
“The hero stuff,” Cade said over what sounded like a mouthful of syrup and toast. “Everyone says you’re a hero, but you’re scared all the time. Everyone’s talking about Nate and me like we did something big just by not getting dead like Bubba… like we’re not scared all the time now, either. And I don’t want to talk about it, just like you don’t.”
The hero stuff.
The 9/11 stuff.
She dropped the frying pan with a thud. She braced her hands on her hips. The one she’d burned throbbed while she tried to think of something, anything, to say.
Now get to work, Teach!
“Mom?” Her eleven-year-old sounded as young as Joshie now.
“It’s…” She turned to face him. She’d almost said it wasn’t the same. But it was. She knew it was. She knew just how difficult a thing she was asking of him—and how important it was for Cade to get his feelings out, before keeping them in became a habit. “I just can’t, Cade. What happened in New York, it was like…”
Dying.
Every time the memories came back, whether she wanted them close or not, it was as if another part of Sam died.
“Well, I can’t
either.” He pushed his half-eaten breakfast away.
“That’s not an option for you.”
Her heart was breaking for him. But he needed to say it, write it, shout it, even if he was shouting at her while he did it—whatever it took to get his fear out there, instead of holding it in. Sam had spent too many years trying to ignore her panic into oblivion, instead of honestly dealing with it. And look at where that had gotten her. She dropped the dripping ice into the sink and used another towel to dry her burned hand.
“Don’t make the same mistake I did, buddy. Don’t let yourself off the hook with the stuff you and Dr. Mueller are talking about, or with your Expressions entry.”
“Then you do it first.” He stepped down from his stool and crossed his arms like she had earlier. “You do it, or I won’t.”
“Do what?”
“You write an essay about heroes, too. Anyone can enter Expressions. Mrs. Baxter said so. It’s not just for schools and kids. You write an essay about the stuff you don’t want to talk about. And I’ll write mine.”
He was deadly serious.
“Cade—”
The doorbell interrupted them.
“Don’t you move a muscle.” She pointed a finger at her soon-to-be teenager. “We’re going to finish this conversation, and then you’re getting to work.”
She left him to his French toast. She tried not to run away from her child like a coward as she stumbled across the living room to the front door.
She pulled it open, not bothering to plaster on a smile for whoever was there.
“May we come in?” Mallory Phillips stood on the porch, beside Beverly and Nate Turner. From the look of things, Mallory was the only one who really wanted to be there. Her companions didn’t bother to make eye contact.
“Maybe,” Sam said. “How can I help you?”
The question was for Beverly, who had been standing silently beside her husband Tuesday morning when James had slammed their door in Sam and Brian’s faces. Beverly wasn’t saying a word now either, while she kept a viselike grip on Nate’s arm.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Mallory gave Beverly’s shoulder a gentle shove, and suddenly the three of them were in Sam’s living room, and Sam was shutting the door and turning to face them.
Cade wandered in from the kitchen.
“This has gone on too long,” Mallory said to the lot of them. “I’m late for school. Mrs. Turner and Nate turned up on my stoop this morning, and I’ve been talking with them for over half an hour. We’re not getting anywhere. Your families have known each other since the boys were practically in diapers. Fix this. Together. Now.”
Mallory headed out the door before Sam could respond, shutting it again, this time behind her. The oxygen in the room seemed to leave with her.
Sam and Beverly stared at each other. Cade stepped to Sam’s side, surprising her when he kept walking until he and Nate were face-to-face.
“Hey,” he said to his friend, sounding for all of his eleven years as if he were a hundred instead.
Nate looked at Beverly and Sam, and then at Cade and said, “Hey. Whatcha doin’?”
“Breakfast.” Cade shrugged in the direction of the kitchen. “Mom burned it, but I think there’s cereal. Do you… do ya want some?”
Both mothers watched and waited.
Nate pulled his arm away from Beverly’s hold. “Sure. Why not?”
The boys walked away side by side, humbling Sam with the simplicity of the acceptance and healing they were giving each other after so much arguing and pain. She turned back to Beverly, wondering whether the grown-ups in Chandlerville would ever be as wise.
Sure. Why not?
“Would you like some coffee?” she asked.
Beverly shook her head. “No… I…” Her thin laugh made the last of Sam’s anger melt away. “I should be getting to work. Nate… He’s made it clear he doesn’t want me to stay home with him. He doesn’t want his tutor. He won’t do his work, and he says he misses his teachers and his friends at school, even though we barely talked him into trying to go back on Monday. And his therapist doesn’t want him to try Chandler again until they’ve had more sessions and Nate opens up about some of this. He has to complete his makeup work, though, and I’m tired of putting up with his attitude, even though I’m worried about what disciplining him might do. And…”
Another mother’s confusion should have been overwhelming to hear, the way other people had overwhelmed Sam for so long. Except Beverly’s issues were Sam’s issues, and both of them were trying to understand the unexplainable.
Cade and Nate laughed, the familiar sound filtering into the living room from the kitchen. Beverly’s answering smile made her look ten years younger.
“What were you going to work on with Cade today?” she asked.
“The Expressions essay. It’s… not going well.”
Beverly’s eyes rolled. “I can’t convince Nate to do it, either.”
“I was about to resort to threatening when you rang the bell. Then maybe move on from there to extortion.”
Beverly laughed again.
They fell into a strained silence.
“Does James know you’re here?” Sam asked.
Beverly shook her head. “He’s in New York through the weekend.”
“Would he mind?” The last thing they needed was to throw the boys together, only to have James forbid Nate from coming over again.
“I don’t really give a damn right now. I have to do what’s best for our son, and that’s clearly not me. I’m not a teacher. And another tutor he’s never met is a bad fit right now, with the way he’s feeling.”
“But I’m not a teacher anymore either. Not really.”
Sam hadn’t even been able to agree to do the one thing her son had finally asked of her to do, so he’d get down to work himself. Mallory shouldn’t have put her in this position with the Turners. Beverly shouldn’t be looking at Sam as if she were the answer to all of Nate’s problems.
“Of course I’m happy to talk with Nate,” she said, “anytime he wants to. But I don’t know why you think he’d respond to me any better than he does you.”
“He told me… about you two meeting at night. He said it helped. Just like talking with you at school on Monday helped. You got him to be honest about what he needed. You got him talking with me, at least for a few hours. You’re really good with kids still, Sam.”
“Yes.” Right up until they were depending on her to be brutally honest with herself.
Beverly blushed. “I can’t believe I’m asking you this…”
“And it means a lot to me that you are, really, after how difficult things have been between our families. But—”
“I’m mortified about how we’ve behaved, Sam. How James and I forgot what you and Brian have been through. I know my husband feels just as bad as I do.”
Sam wasn’t so sure of that. But she nodded, accepting the apology for their boys’ sake.
Another round of laughter reached them.
“Do you think…” Beverly asked. “Could Nate stay, at least for today? Can’t we see how it goes?”
How it would go?
While her son was calling her out on how she was still too closed off to be helping him open up about his own feelings?
“Beverly, I don’t think—” She never got the chance to finish.
“Mom!” Cade ran into the living room and right up to them, Nate sprinting behind him. Both boys had transformed. It was like seeing them again the way they’d been in early January—full of energy and enthusiasm and hope. “Mom, can Nate study with us today? Please?”
“Honey, I don’t know—”
“You don’t have to help me now. I promise I’ll do my work. Nate and me, we’re going to help each other write our Expressions essays. I won’t have to do it alone, and you won’t have to do it with me. Isn’t that great? Please, Mom. Let Nate and me do it together…”
Chapter Seventeen
“My intention
was never to take your business away from Whilleby & Marshal,” Brian said to Jefferson Kelsey, across the table they were sharing at the Thanks a Latte, in historic downtown Chandlerville.
“You’re not.” Jeff added a packet of raw sugar to the chai tea he was drinking instead of coffee. “Whilleby gave the commission away when he took you off our account. I’ve decided I don’t want to deal with another associate. I came to you when Ginger turned our plans for a nursery into creating the Taj Mahal in the middle of a three-story colonial. Because I knew I could count on you not to pick my pocket, while your designs blew my socks off.”
Jeff’s southern accent complemented his good-ol’-boy grin. But there was no mistaking the power he effortlessly exuded. He was a man who knew what he wanted, and always negotiated for whatever that was until he got it at a steal.
“I’m afraid I didn’t give the partners much of a chance to change their minds when they pulled me from your project.” Brian was still a little stunned by the proposal Jeff had made. And he refused to even consider it until they were clear on the circumstances surrounding his leave of absence from W&M. “I asked for time off. Not because of your project, though I was sorry to see it transferred to another associate. My family… needs me to be more available to them than I can be working the hours I have to at the firm. And clearly my attention has been distracted away from the work Jonathan Whilleby and the other partners need me to be doing.”
“Both good reasons why you should start your own firm. Here, in Chandlerville. Make the work what you want it to be. Work only the time you can, and do it where you don’t have to spend hours a day in the car, commuting.” Jeff took a long drink, eyeing Brian the way Whilleby had a time or two, when the older man had been debating Brian’s future in the firm his father’s father had started seventy years ago. “Unless what you’re saying is that you don’t have what it takes to design and manage projects on your own. I’m betting you do.”
Other than his wife and family, there was nothing Jeff Kelsey enjoyed more than a good bet.
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