by Miley Maine
Maya had taken those photographs.
I knew if she had been alive to see Gavin, she would have taken so many photos of him. She always had an artistic eye. And though I tried, I could never quite get a good photo like she could.
She always seemed to capture the light just right, the mood of the subject, and just the general air around things. You looked at some of her photos and you immediately got the sense of laughter. She was just like that.
She had been the first one to think to decorate the house.
When we bought it, she had complained that it was so empty, that it had no touch of home to it. She wanted to make it personal to us, just the two of us.
The first painting we hung up was the one she had been painting when I met her, though she complained all the while that it really wasn’t her best work. Then she set about creating art for all the rooms of the house.
Though it made me sad every time I saw a piece of her work, I didn’t have the heart to take them down. It felt insulting to her memory and I wanted to remember her as much as possible.
It hadn’t been so hard when Gavin was here. It felt like I still had a living part of her with me and he was a reason for me to keep on living, to keep on being happy.
But now? It felt like there was no reason to be happy. None at all.
I sighed, setting down my briefcase next to my desk and taking a look at what my cook had prepared for me today. It was a plate of roast chicken and veggies, a glass of fine red wine, and a slice of apple pie accompanying it for dessert.
I recognized what he was trying to do. It was a simple meal, but it was composed of comfort foods. He knew that I was having a rough time of things.
While I appreciated the sentiment and knew the food would be good, it didn’t do much to ease the sense of loss inside my chest. At this point, I honestly didn’t think that anything would.
Not wanting to leave any time for the thoughts inside my head to coalesce into things that would hurt me deeper, I pulled out some more of the relevant paperwork from my briefcase and set it up on my desk so that I could work on it while I ate.
This was my evening routine. Work until I was exhausted enough to sleep. There wasn’t anything else of importance to do. At least, not that I saw.
The paperwork was for a particularly difficult case that my firm had taken on.
My parents had both been lawyers and they had started an extremely successful law firm. They died when I was young, so I got a degree in law to follow in their footsteps and take over the firm.
While I was with Maya or when Gavin had been the center of my universe, I hadn’t taken on many cases. I stuck to supervising and making sure that the company ran smoothly so that I could spend lots of time with them.
But now there was no reason not to take on cases. I supervised the more difficult ones and took on those that were even more difficult. The case I was currently working on was one that one of the newer lawyers had taken on. I was helping him form the argument for the defendant right now, as the case had turned out to be more difficult than expected. I was thankful to have the distraction.
I began shuffling through the case files, reading them over again as I dug into my dinner. It was a puzzle, finding the evidence and the argument that would appeal most to the jury and the judge and leave no doubt that the defendant was innocent.
This was one of the few criminal cases we had. We usually dealt with civil cases—disputes and divorces, that type of thing. But this particular case had come to us through a previous client. He was being wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit and so we decided to take it on.
As I said before, it was turning out to be a bit more complicated than we had previously thought. Though the defendant insisted that he was innocent, there were quite a few pieces of evidence that were being brought forward that might point to otherwise. The important part then was to remember that he was innocent until proven guilty, so it was a matter of saying that the evidence was not concrete enough to prove him guilty. Therefore, under the law, he was still innocent.
There was a fairness in the law, at least in the philosophy of it, if not in the practice, that did not seem to exist in life. In life, the good might experience great loss while evil continued to gain. There was no rhyme or reason to the way God decided what he would take from your life and when. It was one of the things that I could never understand, one of the things that made my losses all that more difficult.
I had done nothing to deserve the death of my parents and they had done nothing either. They had been driving late at night when a car had crashed into them—a drunk driver. He had lived, while both of them had perished. How cruel was that?
And no matter how many doctors I had at my disposal, Maya had still died in childbirth. That was something incredibly rare in this modern age and she had been the kindest of women. She had not deserved it. I had not deserved it.
So why then had it happened?
If there was some good that was supposed to come to me in the future to make up for it, it hadn’t happened yet. I had no hope that it was coming.
My life didn’t follow the fairness of law.
Chapter Three
Emma
“Now we’re going to work on painting the trees, is everyone ready for that?”
I looked out to my small class of ten students, awaiting their answers of affirmation. They all nodded and some let out a “yeah,” so I moved on with the painting lesson.
“Now, I don’t want you to feel any pressure,” I said. “These trees don’t even have to come out perfect. Remember, there are many many trees, and none of them are exactly the same. This is just how I paint my trees.” I dipped my brush into the dark green acrylic paint I had mixed up and began to dab the paint on the canvas in the shape of a tall pine tree. I tried to keep my techniques simple, as all of my students were in elementary school, but I also didn’t treat them like they were stupid, or couldn’t make things that were advanced. Some of them had been in my class for a few years (one had only been here for a few weeks) but all of them progressed quickly and were eager to learn.
I supposed part of it was their living conditions. Every one of my students was in the foster care system and quite a few had entered it recently. While their foster families were loving, they still had demons from their past that they tried to forget or escape. Sometimes they came into the class reluctant to participate, but I quickly showed them that art could be a very good escape from the real world.
I had been trained in social work and art therapy, but I never thought I would get a job at a school like this.
When I had first been approached with the offer, I was surprised. A little incredulous even. But I had always wanted to work with kids and it had been a great opportunity.
I was glad I took the job in the long run. There was so much good that I was able to do because of it, so many lives that I was able to change. Many of the kids that I worked with were deeply disturbed in some way. Either they had been hurt by their blood relatives or they had been cruelly impacted by their loss. No matter what it was, they all found solace in art.
And through art, I was able to reach them, and help them work through the things that were troubling them.
Just as I was finishing showing my students how to paint the trees, there was a knock on the door and one of the other teachers poked her head through.
“Ms. Richards?” she said. Her name was Rebecca Adelberg and she came in to teach lab science to the third and fourth graders. She must not have been teaching at the moment, because we were never supposed to leave our students alone.
The school that the two of us worked at was a little different than most elementary schools. Besides having a teacher that taught most subjects for one class, we also had specialized teachers, like Ms. Adelberg. Most of them just came into the class to teach their specialized subjects and didn’t have classrooms.
Because I worked with a very specific group of kids, I had my own classroom and I go
t to see each class for an hour every other day. I also taught art to the regular classes, but that was once a week per class.
“Yes?” I said, wondering what Ms. Adelberg might want.
“The office wants to see you,” she said.
There was a chorus of ooohs from my class, as if I might be in trouble.
“Alright, will you watch them for me?” I asked.
“Of course, that’s why they sent me,” she said.
“Be good for Ms. Adelberg, she’s in charge until I come back,” I said to my students. They were all very good at obeying me now, but I didn’t exactly know how they would be under another teacher when they were in my classroom.
“They’re just painting,” I whispered to Ms. Adelberg as I brushed past her. “Don’t worry about trying to move the lesson forward and let me know if you have any problems.”
She nodded, then moved to stand in the front of the classroom so she could properly survey the class.
I wondered what could possibly be going on as I made my way to the office. I hadn’t done anything recently that would warrant a talking to, and as far as I knew we still had plenty of funds to keep the art program going.
In fact, we received some good donations from wealthy benefactors as well as some smaller donations from the foster families to make sure that we could keep the program going. As those donations were specified to go to the art program, I didn’t think that there should be an issue of budget cuts within it.
I guessed I would have to see when I got to the office.
The secretary sitting at the front desk told me to go to the principal’s office. She had a big smile on her face and she liked me, so I was assuming it was good news. What could it be? Another donation? Usually they wouldn’t pull me out of my class to tell me about that.
I opened the door to the principal’s office to see the principal, Dr. Vanessa Hurley, looking at me with the largest smile on her face I had ever seen her with.
She was an older woman, usually stern, with her doctorate in literature. Specifically, she loved old English literature. Why she had become the principal of an elementary school, I would never know. But she did a very good job at running it, so I wasn’t questioning her decisions.
“Ms. Richards!” she said. “Please sit down.”
“I’m assuming it’s good news?” I joked as I pulled out the chair in front of her desk and took a seat.
“Oh most definitely. I think you’ll be quite excited,” she said.
“Well, tell me. I’m dying to hear.”
“We received a call yesterday from an assistant at a law firm. Apparently the man who runs it, Mr. Vincent Eldrige, would like to partner with the school, specifically your class, Ms. Richards, to honor the one year anniversary of the death of his son.”
“Oh dear,” I raised my hand to my mouth, a little shocked at how she could say this with such a smile on her face. Yes, it was probably good news, but I never liked to hear about death, especially the death of children.
“He would like to take your class to Disney World,” Dr. Hurley said.
“Oh, that’s great news,” I said, still a little unsure what to think. I knew that my class would definitely appreciate it and I supposed it was very good of the man to honor the death of his son by doing something for kids that were generally considered underprivileged.
“Good, I thought you would think so,” Dr. Hurley said, and then she must have noticed the expression on my face for her own softened. “Don’t think too much about the circumstances dear. From what I’ve heard, this is just how he wants to honor his son’s memory.”
“Right.”
“Well.” She clapped her hands together. “I pulled you out of your class so that you could tell them the good news before they have to leave and give them these permission slips to be signed.”
She handed me a stack of papers. I looked down to see that they were indeed permission slips for the trip to Disney World.
“The date is coming up soon, so I figured the sooner you got these to them, the better. Mr. Eldrige will be covering the cost of transportation, food, tickets, mickey mouse ears, and another gift for each child, so make sure to let them know that their parents do not need to send them with any money.”
My head was starting to spin. How rich was this Mr. Eldrige that he was able to pay for that much? Even if it was only for ten students?
Only ten students. I could just about laugh at the thought. He must really be rich.
“I’ll tell them the good news,” I said, gathering up the papers and standing. “I think they’ll be quite pleased.”
“They should be,” Dr. Hurley said. “This is a very generous gift, a great opportunity for all of them to make some good memories.”
I nodded and then headed back to my classroom. Ms. Adelberg was still standing at the front of the classroom looking a little flustered. It seemed my students had stopped their painting to bombard her with questions about her personal life.
“That’s enough,” I said as soon as I entered. They all piped down immediately and looked at me with guilty expressions on their faces. “Next time I leave you with someone to supervise you, I expect you to behave.”
“Yes Ms. Richards,” they said in unison.
“I’m sorry, thank you for watching them for me,” I said to Ms. Adelberg. She nodded and quickly exited the room.
“Now, I do have some exciting news for all of you, but I need you to wait patiently until the end of the class. That is your punishment for not behaving for Ms. Adelberg.”
Some of them sighed, while one or two piped up in protest.
“I promise it will be worth the wait. Now, let’s finish our trees,” I said, going back to the painting lesson.
As I had expected, my students were quite excited by the news. I smiled at this as I drove back home to my apartment. I knew that they would have a great deal of fun and it was something they all deserved considering how much some of them had gone through.
My apartment was maybe a ten-minute drive from the school. It was a little complex, and I was up on the second floor. My door and front windows looked out to the center garden and fountain.
Inside was really what I liked though. I had truly worked to make the place my own and I think it really showed through.
There were intricate rugs overlapping and covering the floor in bright colors. On the walls hung tapestries that I had woven and some brightly colored paintings of fantastical landscapes and characters that I had done. The furniture was all thrifted and I had reupholstered some of the chairs and the couch with fun fabric.
There was a bookshelf that I had painted with scenes from The Arabian Nights and it was crammed full of old books that I had read over and over again.
I lit some candles as I came inside and shut the door, kicking off my shoes and placing them in my shoe basket. I picked up the most recent book that I had been reading and curled up in my favorite armchair with a plush blanket, all ready to lose myself in the world.
But today, I found that I couldn’t concentrate on the words in front of me. Instead, my mind kept wandering back to the tragic and mysterious Vincent Eldrige.
I wondered what type of a man he was. He must be kind, that much was evident. I imagined him as maybe a little sullen too, like Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre.
I supposed he must also be handsome. In my mind, all rich, tragic heroes were. And he seemed like exactly the kind of man to be a hero.
I mean, in some other world maybe I would have been the guardian teacher of an orphanage, and he would be the sponsor after his son died and left a hole in his heart. Perhaps in that world, we would fall in love, for else it wouldn’t be a very good story.
I shook my head. No, I shouldn’t think of Mr. Eldrige in that way. I would be meeting him soon. To have such expectations of him would be...well, inappropriate.
He had just lost his son and I had no idea if he had a wife or if he had lost her too. To think these thoughts of him was not li
ke me, and I did my best to push them from my mind, instead forcing myself to concentrate on the words before me.
I would meet him soon and then I would know what kind of a man he was. There was no use in speculating.
Chapter Four
Vincent
The day had arrived. It would have been Gavin’s fifth birthday, but now it was just the first anniversary of his death. And the fifth of my wife’s.
I was beginning to regret my decision. Why had I thought this would be a good idea?
I mean, honoring my son was a good idea, but why I had insisted that I would be coming along with the group? It would have been a better idea to go to work, or stay home and work on more case files.
Because now...I didn’t know how I might handle myself, how I might react. Even if it was someone different who was going to be driving the bus, there was still the fact that we would be driving the route on which my son had died.
And then Disney World. I knew everything would remind me of him, bringing pain to my heart as I wished that he could be there with me, experiencing everything that he should be.
Even now, my feelings were getting the better of me. My thoughts were turning to things that I would rather not think about and they wouldn’t go away.
As I headed outside and started my car, I tried to remind myself that this was really just another day of work. I was doing something that would bring good publicity to the firm and improve my image. There didn’t have to be anything sentimental about it. It was just another day of work. Just another day of work.
I kept repeating those words to myself as I drove to the school. I was meeting the class, their teacher, and two more supervising adults in the parking lot. The school was closer to Disney World, and it made sense for being the place to meet. A small bus would pick us up and drive us to the theme park and then that same bus would take us back to the school after the day was over.