13. Hannah
HANNAH
Julia's classroom smelled like dry-erase marker and old paper.
She was already there, arranging worksheets on a table near the back, and she looked up when I walked in.
Her smile was careful, the kind people gave you when they knew you'd been through something and didn't want to make it worse by saying the wrong thing.
"You came," she said.
I nodded. I'd been thinking about not coming all morning, lying in her guest bed and staring at the ceiling while my mind went in circles.
Seven days of sitting in Julia's house was making me restless.
I needed to move. I needed to do something that wasn't thinking about Pierce and the mess I'd left behind. "You said you needed help."
"I do." She pointed at a row of paperbacks stacked on the counter by the window. "Those need to go on the shelf, alphabetical by author. The labels are already up."
It was simple work. Busy work. The kind of thing you gave someone when you wanted them to feel useful without asking too much of them. I wanted it anyway. "Okay."
Julia watched me for a moment, like she was waiting for me to say something else, but I didn't. I didn't know what to say that wouldn't sound like I was falling apart, and I'd spent the past week trying not to fall apart in front of her.
She went back to her worksheets, and I carried the stack of books to the shelf.
They were heavy, and my arms protested, but I didn't care.
The shelf was labeled with strips of masking tape, one author to a strip—Austen, Bront?, Dickinson, Shakespeare. I'd kept my own shelves the same way when I taught here, back when the students knew me as well as they knew Julia. It felt like forever ago. Like a different life entirely.
I shelved the books one by one and kept my head down.
My hands moved on their own, checking the names on the spines and sliding each book into its place.
The pregnancy made it harder to crouch. My belly got in the way, and I had to shift my weight every few minutes to keep from losing my balance, but I didn't stop.
The work felt good. It felt normal. I needed normal.
Julia didn't try to make conversation. She knew me well enough to leave me alone when I needed it, and she'd spent the past seven days being patient with me in ways I didn't deserve. I owed her for that. I owed her for a lot of things.
The students came in loud. They always did. Backpacks hit the floor, voices carried across the room, and someone knocked over a chair before Julia could even tell them to sit down. A few of them noticed me right away, their eyes going wide like they couldn't figure out what I was doing there.
"Who's that?" one of the boys asked, pointing.
"That's Miss Ashford," Julia said. "She used to teach here, and she's helping me today."
A girl in the second row stared at me, her mouth open a little. "Are you having a baby?"
"Yeah," I said.
"When?"
"A few more months."
"Is it a boy or a girl?"
I didn't know. Pierce and I had decided to wait, back when we were still deciding things together, back when I thought we were on the same page about what mattered. "It's a surprise."
"Girl," a boy near the window said. "You're carrying high."
The girl looked satisfied with that and sat down at her desk.
The rest of them filtered into the room, dropping their things and chattering to each other like I wasn't even there.
Julia started the morning routine—attendance, a quick review of the day's schedule, the line of poetry she wrote on the board.
I stayed by the shelf and finished the last few books.
When I stood up, my back ached and my legs felt stiff.
God, I was tired all the time now. The baby wasn't even here yet, and I was already exhausted.
Julia called a few of the students over to work with me—four of them, all behind on the sonnet unit and needing extra help.
They came over with their books and pulled their desks into a half circle by the shelf.
One of them, a boy named Marcus, looked at me like I was going to make him do something terrible.
His shoulders were hunched, and he kept his eyes on the floor.
"We're just going to read it out loud," I said. "That's it. No big deal."
He didn't look convinced, but he opened his book anyway. The cover was bent at the corner, and the pages were dog-eared from being shoved into a backpack too many times. I'd seen a hundred books like it.
I started them on a sonnet, each one taking a couple of lines.
They stumbled over words, lost their place, guessed at what a line meant.
I corrected them gently and asked them to try again.
It was slow going, but I didn't mind. I'd forgotten how much I liked this part—watching them work through something hard and come out the other side of it.
It reminded me why I'd wanted to teach in the first place, before I gave it up for a man who didn't even notice when I wasn't there.
Marcus got stuck on temperate. He kept saying temp-rate, and I could see him getting frustrated. His jaw was tight, and his hands gripped the book hard enough to bend the cover even more. He looked like he was about to throw it.
"Break it into chunks," I said. "Tem. Per. Ate."
He tried it again, his voice small. "Tem-per-ate."
"Good. Now put it back in the line."
He read the whole line without stopping, and when he finished, he looked up at me like he'd just done something impossible.
Maybe he had. I smiled at him, and he grinned back, wide and a little proud, like he'd just climbed a mountain.
Something in my chest loosened. I'd been holding myself together so tightly for the past week, keeping everything locked down so I wouldn't cry or scream or fall apart completely, that I'd forgotten what it felt like to let go, even just a little.
"You got it," I said.
The girl next to him wanted to read next, and I let her.
They passed the book around, and I sat with them, listening and helping when they needed it.
One of them mumbled through eternal three times before I showed her how to say it a syllable at a time.
Another one asked me what it meant when the poet said summer's lease had too short a date, and I told him a lease was like renting a place, and summer only let you stay so long. He seemed happy with that.
I wasn't thinking about anything except the words on the page and the kids in front of me. I wasn't thinking about Pierce or the nursery or the wedding ring I'd left on the nursery shelf. I wasn't thinking about the life I'd walked away from. It felt like breathing after holding my breath for days.
Julia came over after a while and crouched next to me. "Can you take them through the sonnet?" she asked quietly. "I need to make a phone call. It'll just be ten minutes."
I hesitated. Teaching the whole class was different from working with a small group. It meant standing in front of them, holding their attention, being the one in charge. But Julia was looking at me like she trusted me to do it, and I didn't want to let her down. "Okay."
She stood up and called the kids back to their desks.
I walked to the front of the room, and twenty-three faces turned toward me.
My stomach flipped. Not from the baby—from nerves.
I hadn't stood in front of a class in six years, not since I married Pierce and quit teaching to focus on his life instead of my own.
He never asked me to. I'd chosen it because I thought that was what a good wife did.
I thought if I gave up what I loved, he'd love me more. I'd been wrong about that, too.
"Okay," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "We're doing a sonnet."
I wrote the first line on the board. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? One of the students groaned, and I turned around. "What?"
"Nobody talks like that," he said.
"It's a question," I said. "He asks it, then spends fourteen lines answering. Read it like someone talking, and it gets easier. Write what you think each line means on a sticky note."
They took out their sticky notes and started writing.
I gave them the next line, then the next.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade. They asked questions, I answered them, and the ten minutes Julia said she needed turned into fifteen.
I didn't notice. I was busy watching a girl in the front row mouth the words to herself as she wrote, her pencil moving carefully across the note, and listening to a boy in the back ask if rough winds meant actual weather.
It did, mostly. I told him it meant trouble too, and he nodded like it made sense.
When Julia came back, I was halfway through the poem.
She leaned against the doorframe and watched me finish, her arms crossed, a small smile on her face.
I felt self-conscious under her gaze, like she could see right through me, but I didn't stop.
The kids were paying attention, and I wasn't about to lose them now.
"Good work," I said when they finished the last word. "Stick your notes under the line on the board, and we'll read them together."
They did, and I stepped aside so Julia could take over.
My hands were shaking a little. I didn't know why.
Maybe because I'd just done something I loved and hadn't realized how much I'd missed it, or maybe because standing there, in front of those kids, I'd felt like myself again—not Pierce's wife, not the woman who ran his house and hosted his dinners and kept his calendar full, just Hannah.
The person I used to be before I gave her up for him.
I walked back to the shelf by the window and sat down in one of the student desks.
The seat was too tight for me, and my belly pressed against the desktop, but I stayed there anyway.
My chest felt full and tight at the same time, like something was trying to get out and couldn't. I missed him.
God, I missed Pierce. I hadn't let myself think it for seven days, keeping it buried under the anger and the hurt and the bone-deep exhaustion of being pregnant and alone, but sitting there in that classroom, feeling whole for the first time since I left, I missed him so much it hurt.
I wanted to tell him about Marcus getting temperate right.
I wanted to tell him how the kids asked about the baby and how one of them thought it was a girl because I was carrying high, whatever that meant.
I wanted to tell him about the sonnet lesson and the way the girl in the front row mouthed the words to herself.
I wanted him there, not at his office or on a call with someone who mattered more than I did. Just there. With me.
I touched my ring finger without thinking.
The skin was bare. No ring, no weight, nothing.
I'd taken it off the afternoon I left and set it on the nursery shelf next to the gray elephant, like I was giving up more than just a piece of jewelry.
I didn't know if it was still there, or who might have moved it, or what that would mean. I didn't know what any of it meant.
My throat tightened. I swallowed hard and looked down at my hands. They were empty, and they felt wrong that way. Like I'd lost something I couldn't get back.
Julia dismissed the students for lunch, and the classroom emptied in a rush of noise and motion.
Chairs scraped, feet pounded, voices shouted.
When the last one left, she came over and sat in the desk next to mine.
She looked just as ridiculous in it, her knees jammed under the desktop, but she didn't seem to care.
"You were good," she said.
"Thanks."
"I mean it, Hannah. They listened to you. They liked you."
I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't say anything. Julia didn't push. She just sat there, her hands folded in her lap, waiting for me to say something or not say something, whichever I needed.
"I could use the help again," she said finally. "If you want. Tomorrow, or whenever you're ready."
I looked at her. She wasn't asking me to come back to teaching full time. She wasn't asking me to make a decision about my marriage or my life or anything bigger than one day. She was asking me if I wanted to come back tomorrow. I could do tomorrow. "Okay," I said. "For now."
"For now," she repeated, like she understood that was all I could promise.
The bell rang, and the kids came back in, louder than before. Julia stood up to meet them, and I stayed by the window, watching. The classroom was exactly what it had always been—bright and messy and full of motion. The kids were loud, the work was hard, and I was tired. But I felt whole.
I also felt lonely inside it. Whole and lonely at the same time, like I'd found a piece of myself I thought I'd lost, but it wasn't enough to fill the space Pierce used to take up.
I didn't know what to do with that. I didn't know if I was supposed to feel this way or if it meant something was wrong with me.
Maybe I was supposed to be glad I felt like myself again and leave it at that. Maybe missing him made me an idiot.
Julia started the afternoon lesson, and I helped where she needed me.
The kids asked more questions, I answered them, and the day kept moving forward the way days do.
But even with the noise and the work and the feeling of being exactly where I was supposed to be, I couldn't stop thinking about him.
I couldn't stop touching the bare place on my finger where my ring used to be, running my thumb over the skin like I could bring it back if I tried hard enough.
The hours passed. The kids packed up, Julia said goodbye to each of them, and the classroom emptied out again.
I stood by the window and watched them leave, their backpacks bouncing, their voices carrying across the parking lot until they disappeared.
The room felt bigger without them in it.
Quieter. Like it was holding its breath.
Julia came to stand next to me. "You okay?"
I nodded. I didn't trust myself to say anything else.
She didn't ask me what I was thinking or what I was going to do. She just stood there, steady and patient, the way she always had. After a minute, she went back to her desk to pack up her things, and I stayed where I was, my hand on the windowsill, my eyes on the empty parking lot.
The classroom was empty now. Just me and the chairs and the books I'd sorted that morning. I felt whole. I felt lonely. I felt like myself again. And I didn't know if that was enough.