Chapter 4 - The Story at School
The other student was named Caleb.
Eight years old.
Missing one front tooth.
Terrified that he was in trouble.
Robert sat beside Ethan in the assistant principal’s office while Ms. Patterson spoke gently to Caleb across the table.
“Nobody is angry with you.”
Caleb stared at his shoes.
“I didn’t make it up.”
“I believe you. Who told you?”
“My mom.”
Robert frowned.
Caleb’s mother was Denise Walker.
He barely knew her.
“She said what?” Ms. Patterson asked.
Caleb shrugged.
“She said Ethan’s new mom wants her own family now.”
Ethan’s face turned red.
Robert placed a hand on his shoulder.
Ms. Patterson asked, “Why did your mother say that?”
“Because she talks to Aunt Rachel.”
Robert’s stomach tightened.
Rachel again.
Denise and Rachel worked at the same dental office.
Suddenly the chain became clear.
Vanessa complained to Rachel.
Rachel vented to Denise.
Denise repeated something at home.
Caleb heard it.
Caleb told Ethan.
A private adult frustration had become a seven-year-old’s certainty that he was being replaced.
Robert wanted to be furious.
But at whom?
Vanessa.
Rachel.
Denise.
Caleb.
Himself.
Mostly himself.
Ethan had been living inside a rumor adults created around him.
After Caleb returned to class, Ms. Patterson closed the office door.
“This is why I called.”
She placed several drawings on the desk.
Ethan’s work from the past month.
In the first, four people stood together.
Robert.
Vanessa.
Ethan.
A baby represented as a circle inside Vanessa’s stomach.
In the second, Vanessa and the baby were inside the house.
Robert stood at the door.
Ethan stood in the yard.
In the third, Robert was no longer drawn at all.
“What does that mean?” Robert asked.
Ms. Patterson shook her head.
“I’m not going to diagnose a child through drawings.”
“Thank you.”
“But the pattern tells me he’s preoccupied with belonging.”
Robert looked at Ethan.
“Buddy?”
Ethan stared at the picture.
“Daddy works.”
“I know.”
“You’re always at the hospital.”
“The construction site at the hospital.”
“Same thing.”
Despite himself, Robert smiled.
Then Ethan whispered, “Vanessa said when babies come everything changes.”
Robert’s smile disappeared.
“She wasn’t wrong.”
Ms. Patterson spoke gently.
“But change does not always mean losing people.”
Ethan shrugged.
“My mom changed.”
The room went quiet.
His biological mother, Melissa, had collapsed in the kitchen one Saturday morning.
She died two days later.
Ethan had been three.
For him, change was not theoretical.
Change meant someone disappeared.
Robert had known this intellectually.
He had not connected it to the pregnancy.
“Have you talked to him about the baby coming?” Ms. Patterson asked.
“Of course.”
“What have you told him?”
“That he’ll be a big brother. That it’ll be exciting.”
“Anything about what will be hard?”
Robert hesitated.
“No.”
“Anything about how routines will change?”
“No.”
“Anything about what won’t change?”
His silence answered.
Ms. Patterson nodded carefully.
“Children fill empty spaces with whatever information they can find.”
Robert looked at the drawings.
Adults did too.
He had filled Vanessa’s irritability with the explanation pregnancy.
Vanessa filled Ethan’s withdrawal with jealousy.
Ethan filled overheard fragments with abandonment.
Everyone had guessed.
No one had talked.
After school, Robert took Ethan for grilled cheese at a diner.
“No vegetables?” Ethan asked suspiciously.
“Don’t tell Grandma.”
That earned a smile.
Robert leaned forward.
“I need to tell you something about the baby.”
Ethan stiffened.
“You’re not in trouble.”
“Okay.”
“When she comes home, things will change.”
Ethan stared at his sandwich.
“She’ll cry.”
“Probably a lot.”
“At night?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll be tired?”
“Definitely.”
“Vanessa will be tired?”
“Definitely.”
“Will you still take me to soccer?”
Robert paused.
He had not thought about it.
That was exactly the problem.
“Yes.”
“What if the baby needs you?”
“Then we make a plan so someone stays with her.”
“Will you still read the dragon book?”
“Yes.”
“Every night?”
“As many nights as I can.”
Ethan frowned.
“That’s not a promise.”
“No.”
Robert smiled sadly.
“It’s the truth.”
Ethan considered that.
Then nodded.
“What about my room?”
“Still yours.”
“And Grandma?”
“Visits. Sleepovers. Not moving.”
Ethan ate another bite.
Then asked:
“Where will the baby sleep?”
Robert looked out the diner window.
He knew the answer now.
The room he had refused to enter for four years.
“Near our room.”
“Where Mom’s paintings are?”
Robert looked at him.
Ethan said it casually.
As if the forbidden room were not forbidden at all.
“What do you think about that?”
“Mom doesn’t use it.”
The simplicity hurt.
“No.”
“She’s dead.”
Robert swallowed.
“Yes.”
Ethan dipped his sandwich into tomato soup.
“You said dead people don’t need stuff.”
Robert remembered saying that when Ethan refused to donate a pair of Melissa’s shoes.
Children remembered everything convenient adults forgot.
Robert nodded.
“You’re right.”
That evening he went home and stood outside the guest room.
The handle felt cold.
He had not opened the door in months.
When he finally did, dust floated through the late sunlight.
Melissa’s canvases leaned against one wall.
Boxes of clothes filled the closet.
An old easel stood beside the window.
There was enough room for a crib.
More than enough.
Robert stepped inside.
On the easel was the last unfinished painting Melissa had worked on before she died.
A house.
Their house.
Three figures on the lawn.
Robert.
Melissa.
Tiny Ethan.
Behind them, Melissa had sketched another shape in pencil.
A fourth figure.
Never painted.
Robert stared.
Then his phone rang.
Vanessa.
He almost ignored it.
Instead he answered.
Her voice shook.
“Robert, I need to tell you something about the baby.”
He gripped the phone.
“What?”
“I went to the doctor today.”
May you like
A pause.
“My blood pressure is worse.”
