Chapter 3 #2
Unfortunately for him, she’s excellent with Max. And Max loves her. So for now, she’s staying as his nanny. I don’t have time to initiate someone new. Not to mention the impossible feat of finding a nanny who doesn’t want to sleep with Miles.
“Even Birgitta what?”
“You’re coming to school with me, and Daddy, and Uncle Miles,” Max shouts because it’s his only volume. “We’re all going.”
Birgitta looks at me for confirmation because it’s not what I told her this morning when I went to wake Max up. That she’d need to do pickup and drop-off until further notice. Until I caved.
It’s the God’s honest truth. I thought I’d last longer than one day.
“Yes,” I reply reluctantly. Miles is right.
I can’t avoid Story forever, no matter how much I want to.
But if I have to be wildly uncomfortable, then so does Miles.
Therefore, Birgitta is coming with us. I turn back to my son.
“Now stop wriggling and sit still so I can do your tie, or we’re going to be late. ”
Easing his collar up, I fasten his top button and loop the tie around his neck. I have vague memories of my father doing the same to me, but it was Alex who taught me how to tie one for myself.
Max’s eyes are on me as I cross the thicker end over the narrow part, loop it around, and thread it through the knot.
He knows exactly what I’m doing, and if I get it wrong, he’ll call me out on it.
It’s the mirror he gets confused in front of, but soon, he’ll be tying his own tie, so I want to savor these moments for as long as possible.
Once I’m done, I tuck it inside his school jumper—gray with red piping—just like the rest of his uniform, the same all five of us wore, and lift him off my lap.
“Did you brush your teeth after breakfast?”
Max’s face screws up. “Um . . .”
“Go brush them, and I’ll meet you by the front door.”
“Oh-kay,” he groans dramatically with a well-practiced eye roll, but he rushes off with Birgitta following close.
My cheeks puff out on a long exhale.
Miles picks up my phone and passes it to me. “You need to cancel your cat thing.”
I snatch it out of his hand with a tut.
“C’mon, it won’t be that bad. What did Story always say?”
A hazy memory flashes in my brain, and I huff a laugh.
Everything was a story for her. A chance to build up experiences she could look back on.
Nothing ever went wrong because she wouldn’t allow it.
She’d just change the direction and say, “More fuel for the plot, Hen,” then add a wink that always made me laugh.
“I’m not sure this is a plot.” Plots aren’t supposed to feel like someone’s reached into your chest and ripped your heart out.
“Of course it is.” He slings his arm around me. “Come on, let’s get it over with.”
Clemmie’s heading down the corridor toward the kitchen when we walk out. She’s still in her pajamas and looks barely awake.
“Are you off to school already?” she asks, rubbing her eyes.
“Yup.”
Her gaze darts to Miles and widens. We all know Story is Max’s new teacher. I’m just glad my mother’s still in Switzerland with her girlfriends, because I literally wouldn’t hear the end of it. I’m surprised she’s not called already this morning.
“Oh. Okay, good luck then.”
I’m about to say thanks, but my sister crosses her arms over her chest and pops a hip. Her eyes drop down to my feet, and by the time they arrive back up to the baseball cap I’m pulling on, her lip’s quivering.
“What?”
“Nothing. You look good, is all.” She leans in and takes a long sniff. “Smell good too.”
I’d like to think I don’t care in the slightest what I look and smell like on this particular morning, but based on how my tummy flips slightly, that would be a lie. Instead, I grumble, “Thanks.”
One of the Burlington staff has the car ready for us as we walk into the cold, and Max is already in his seat, with Birgitta next to him. It’s been a while since I had an entourage for the school drop-off, but I slip into the driver’s seat.
Max is waiting for me to catch his eye in the rearview mirror. “Ready?”
“Ready, Daddy. Music, please.”
Switching on his favorite tune—a clean version of “It Was A Good Day” by Ice Cube . . . Miles’s influence, obviously—we make our way out of the Burlington Estate, and so begins the journey to school.
I drive in silent contemplation while Max and Miles rap along with impressive accuracy.
When the song finishes, we start again, only this time without singing but with questions.
Max asks when he can next ride Chester, Miles’s favorite polo pony, followed by Max listing all ponies in order of his preference, which can change daily.
He then quizzes Miles on the rules of polo and the new handicap rankings, which take effect at the beginning of each January.
Ten goal is the best and rarest. There are currently only nine ten-goal players in the world, ninety-five percent of which are Argentinian.
Miles was a ten but dropped following a nasty accident a couple of years ago.
He’s just gone back up to nine and plans to be ten by the summer. Something Max is very supportive of.
If I could bet money on him following Miles into polo, I would.
He’s as talented as Miles was at his age.
“Thunder and Sunday are out. Have we got any polos? Can we stop?” he shouts, followed by, “Can we go to Foxleigh tonight? Can we see the baby goats?” It all comes out in one long, breathless sentence. A stream of unpunctuated words.
I find his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Sorry, buddy. No to all the questions. We don’t have time, but I’ll bring polos this afternoon so we can stop on the way home.
It’ll be too late for the goats, but we’ll see them at the weekend, deal?
And we’ll go to Foxleigh then too. You have a swimming lesson tonight. ”
“Okay,” he replies, content with my answer because it means he’ll have something to look forward to. Plus, he’s too busy waving at Thunder. So I slow down at the fence for him to gallop along with us, with Sunday doing his best to keep up.
As we pass through the main gates, Miles turns around to face Max. “Maxy, what are you most excited about for school this term?”
“Um . . . break time.”
Miles grins. “I used to like break time too—”
“I have a new teacher—”
“I’ve heard.”
The conversation continues, and the car eats up the road.
We pass fields and fields I know intimately, worked by farmers I’ve known since I was Max’s age, locals walking their dogs, cows I’ve helped birth, and horses I know by name. It’s everything I inherently love about living here, but this morning, I barely notice.
My heart pounds harder with each mile because it’s somehow only now dawned on me that this will be the first time Story has met Max.
The first time she’ll have seen him, if you don’t include the photos I sent when he was born, which she never acknowledged.
She never acknowledged anything I shared, and after a few years of radio silence, I finally gave up.
Aside from the interaction at the Christmas tree stand, we haven’t spoken in over six years. Since the day she left me at the fountain after I told her about Sienna being pregnant.
I wonder if she’ll see me in Max. See the boy I was when we first met.
“We’re here!” Max squeals, banging on the window as his best friend crosses the path ahead of us. “There’s Owen. OWEN.”
“Max, we need to get out of the car before we start shouting. Remember your inside voice,” reminds Birgitta for what’s likely the thousandth time as she unbuckles his car seat.
But even after they’re both unbuckled, they stay there. And I remain in my seat because I’m not ready.
“Hendricks, the child locks are on. You need to let us out,” she says eventually in that tight, Scandinavian accent, which makes everything sound like disapproval.
“Right. Sorry,” I reply with a groan, flicking the latch so she can open her door and let Max out.
“You okay?”
Twisting in my seat, I find Miles staring at me.
“What if she gives him a hard time because he reminds her of me? Maybe I should have requested a class change—”
“She wouldn’t—”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, and so do you. Even though it pains me to say this, she’s not that much of a dick.” He snatches up a baseball cap from the floor that he likely left in here the last time and slips it on. “Let’s get this over with. I’ll hold your hand if you want.”
A laugh snorts out of me, loosening a little of the tension in my chest at the same time.
Max runs ahead with Birgitta while she tries to put his blazer on, leaving me to gather up his school bag, sports bag, and the rest of the paraphernalia that children need for the start of the term.
I soon lose sight of them in the sea of pupils and parents fresh from Christmas break, all making their way through the gates. Some I recognize from school, though most I know because they’ve brought their dog/cat/rabbit, etc. into the practice.
“D’you remember our first day here?” Miles asks quietly. “I really didn’t want to be apart from you.”
“Only until you found out all our friends were in your class.”
“Yeah.” He chuckles.
Up ahead, Max comes back into sight only to disappear around the corner toward the reception building, where his classroom is, dragging Birgitta by the hand.
In contrast, each footstep of mine is increasingly slow and sludgy like I’m walking through mud.
My insides become knotted, and my eyes are on stalks as I scan for the first sighting.
It doesn’t happen until Miles and I turn the corner, and all it takes is a flash of lilac to realize she’s standing in the entrance to Max’s classroom.
Regardless of how many flowers of the same name my mother fills the house with—the long, woody stalks and delicate petals in varying shades of purple—it’s a color I’ll forever associate with Story.
Her smile burns into my brain, beaming out at the children arriving, and I pause in my stride to watch her entire face light with happiness as she greets each one with a warm “good morning,” taking time to introduce herself to her pupil first, then to the parent.
This is the Story I remember. The one who was desperate to become a teacher, the one who practiced her morning greeting in front of the mirror and wrote her name over and over in her notebook for the day when she’d write it on the board.
I’m so proud of her for achieving exactly what she wanted, even if I wasn’t a part of it.
Even if I didn’t get to see how she arrived here.
Her hair bobs along her shoulders—I knew she’d cut it—something she swore she’d never do. But it suits her.
And suddenly, I realize I don’t know this person.
She’s a stranger yet familiar. A stranger in a cloak of memories.
She was the one person I could tell anything to, and now, I don’t know how to talk to her. Don’t know where to begin. There’s so much I want to say that it would take weeks and weeks.
And now is definitely not the time.
I’m stuck in place as I watch Max reach her, still holding Birgitta’s hand, and I know the second he tells her his name. Her body stiffens, her smile freezes, and her big liquid-chocolate eyes dart around until they find mine.
My chest stalls. Six years of bottled-up anger and a heart mended together with Band-Aids. It’s like my confrontation a few weeks ago never happened. That this moment right here is the first time we’ve seen each other since the fountain.
Neither of us blinks. Parents and kids flit around us.
Her gaze holds mine as we assess the changes between us that time has brought on.
The broken pieces of our hearts, the corners of our souls that we knew better than our own but no longer do.
We stay there for what feels like hours but is, at most, seconds.
We stay until Miles brushes against me, and her focus flicks to him.
I don’t need to look at him to know he’s glaring because I see it all play out on Story’s face.
The way her eyes narrowed like they always did when he pissed her off before turning away to a parent calling her name and another child to greet.
We walk inside, and I hang up Max’s bag on his peg, put his sports kit in his locker, and ride the wave of flashbacks to my first day with Story sitting next to me.
I smile at all the parents I know and nod knowingly at a couple of the dads dropping off their kids on their way to work. The ones I occasionally meet for a beer or commiserate with on the really tough parenting days. Everyone else, I keep my distance from, because Max sprints back to me.
“Bye, Daddy.”
I kneel, kiss him, and run my hands through his thick curls. My mini-me. The other half of my soul. My life. “I love you, bud. Have a good day. See you later.”
Wrapping his hands around my neck, he says, “Have a good day, too. Don’t be sad that I’m back in school, okay?”
It’s enough to form a lump in my throat, but I smile anyway and kiss him again. “I’ll try not to.”
“Good.” He grins, and it’s fucking heartbreaking.
I know Story’s eyes are on me. I can feel them. But when Max runs back to the classroom, and I look up, she’s not there.
I hate it.
And I hate that her absence has been the story of my life for the past six years.