Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Cadence tapped her fingers on the steering wheel to the music that was idly playing in the background as she waited in the line for school pick-up.
No matter how many signs the school put out directing people where to go, there was always somebody who did the wrong thing and created a massive traffic jam that set the whole process back by several long minutes.
Cadence had long since learned not to sweat it. There was nowhere urgent she needed to be on a Friday afternoon, anyway.
Eventually, her car was the one in the front, and the teacher on pick-up duty waved and called out for Isabelle, who was standing in the cluster of kids waiting for their parents. Cadence watched as Izzy called something over her shoulder, then ran to the car, her backpack bouncing with each step.
“Hi, Mom,” Izzy said as she climbed into the back seat, struggled with her backpack for a moment, and then began buckling herself into her booster seat.
Cadence watched in the rearview mirror, smiling as she so often did at how big and competent her child had become.
It was almost hard to remember that this was the same person as the little baby who couldn’t do much of anything on her own, or the toddler who had been so resistant to potty training that it had nearly driven the whole family mad.
Now, there was this big kid, who could buckle herself in, who knew how to read on her own, who called Cadence Mom more often than Mommy.
Time really did fly.
Once Izzy was safely buckled, Cadence pulled out of the queue and down the long driveway that led away from the school.
“How was your day?” she asked, turning down the radio as her eyes flicked between her daughter in the back and the road ahead.
“Fine,” Izzy said vaguely, looking out the window at the familiar streets.
Cadence struggled not to react. This was one part of having a bigger kid that she didn’t love; every piece of information she had to practically pry out with a crowbar. What happened to the kid that told her every single thought in her head all the time?
“Did you learn anything interesting?” Cadence asked, trying not to sound too curious. She knew from experience that this was only likely to activate Izzy’s stubbornness.
“Not really,” Izzy said.
“Did… you have fun with your friends?” Cadence tried.
“I guess,” Izzy said.
“Can you tell me something that happened?” Cadence nudged.
Finally, Izzy looked away from the window, but there was a frustrated set to her brow that Cadence could relate to all too easily.
“Mom,” she said, exasperated. “It was fine. Just normal. Okay?”
“Okay, honey,” Cadence said, although something inside her said that things were anything but okay.
These past few weeks, Izzy had stopped liking going to school, had started treating it like a chore.
Cadence really wanted to believe that it was just a phase, but some deep-down maternal instinct told her to probe a little further.
If only Izzy would let her in!
She held her tongue for now, though, promising to try again later.
Maybe Isabelle just needed to decompress after a day at school.
Cadence could understand that; she sometimes wanted nothing more than an hour of peace and quiet after a busy day at the art gallery, especially if it was a day in which lots of patrons had been asking her questions.
It could just be too much, sometimes. Everybody needed a break every now and again.
So, when Izzy asked if she could play in her room after they got home, Cadence agreed, even though a big part of her wanted to sit her daughter down and demand that she tell her what was going on right now!
She was too jittery to relax, so she decided to begin the lengthy process of making a homemade lasagna for dinner.
That would butter Izzy up too. She loved lasagna, and it was a rare treat, since Cadence didn’t usually have enough time in the evening to go through the whole process of layering the noodles, adding the sauce and the cheese, sautéing vegetables to go in between the different layers, and baking it all in time for them to eat at a decent hour.
Tonight, though, she let herself fall into the comforting routine of cooking, let the smells and sights of working in the kitchen soothe her frazzled edges.
It worked too, right up until she put the lasagna in the oven and moved to unpack Izzy’s backpack.
It wasn’t the lunchbox full of half-eaten food that bothered her.
There was always something left over from the lunch that she’d packed, and it was never what Cadence expected.
Indeed, today, Izzy had taken one bite from each of the apple slices that Cadence had packed, but hadn’t finished a single one of them.
That part actually made Cadence laugh. Kids were so delightfully strange sometimes.
The thing that made her hands still with worry was Izzy’s spelling test.
Which was marked with a D.
Anxiety and the accompanying sense that something wasn’t right flared in her.
Cadence herself had been a good but not stellar student; she knew that sometimes, you had a bad day, or there was some concept that simply eluded you, and a bad grade came home as a result.
She wasn’t the kind of parent who would get angry with her kid for doing poorly on a test.
But Izzy had always been pretty good at spelling. It wasn’t one of the areas where she usually had to work that hard to succeed.
It set off Cadence’s ‘mom radar,’ making it ping unpleasantly.
She was still looking at the test when her husband, Tyler, came home a little while later.
Even though she was still anxious, Cadence felt something in her chest unclench a little at the sight of him, his sandy blond hair a little mussed from the long day working, even though he kept it short.
He smiled when he saw her, and immediately crossed the room to kiss her, warmth and kindness beaming from his chocolate brown eyes.
Cadence was instantly reminded of how grateful she was to have him in her life, and how glad she was that they’d worked through their communication issues after suffering from fertility challenges. Life had been so much harder and so much sadder when he wasn’t by her side.
“Hey, Cady-girl, what’s wrong?” he asked, taking in her worried expression. He was wearing his work clothes, like he always did when he was out doing electrician work, and their sturdy fabric reminded her of his emotional sturdiness too. It already helped to make her feel better.
“I just saw this in Izzy’s backpack,” she explained, handing over the test. Tyler’s brow furrowed as he took in the low mark, but he shook his head.
“It’s just one test, right?” he said encouragingly. “I bet she just had an off day.”
Cadence was already shaking her head in return. “That’s what I would have said too, except earlier this week, she got a C-minus on a math test. And, I don’t know, it could just be a couple of bad days. I know that sort of thing happens. But… I’m not sure,” she hedged.
“You don’t have to be sure,” he told her, pulling her into his arms. “You can just tell me what you think and we can work it out together.”
Cadence laid her head on his shoulder, then smiled a little as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“There’s just something that isn’t sitting right with me,” she confessed, pulling back just enough to look up at him.
“I feel like recently she’s been so reticent about sharing the details of her day.
And that could just be a phase too, but it just doesn’t feel like Izzy. I don’t know. It’s got me worried.”
Tyler nodded, absorbing this.
“Well, you’re her mom,” he said. “Your instincts are usually good. Why don’t we try talking to her together, see if she’ll give us any clues about anything?”
“Yeah,” she agreed, heaving a sigh of relief at no longer feeling quite so alone in her troubles. “I think that’s a great idea. Can we go now? The lasagna has another twenty minutes.”
“Ooh, I love your lasagna,” he said. “But yeah, let’s go talk to her. Maybe then it’ll be celebration lasagna because we’ve sorted everything out.”
Cadence huffed a little laugh at this, although she wasn’t entirely compelled by Tyler’s optimism. It was just another hunch that was sticking with her…
Up in her room, Izzy was working on one of the crafts from a “learn-to-sew” kit that had been a gift from Diana.
For a moment, Cadence just watched her daughter, her tongue sticking slightly out of her mouth in concentration as she tried to thread one of those big, plastic needles that they made for kids to learn without pricking themselves… and totally miss the eye.
Izzy was grumbling in annoyance as Tyler knocked on the doorjamb.
“Oh, hi, Daddy,” she said, smiling, looking up. “Also, Mommy, that smells so good. Are we having pasta?”
Isabelle’s cheerful demeanor soothed Cadence a little bit more, although this also didn’t completely banish her worries. Yes, something might be a little amiss, but that didn’t mean that everything was amiss, or that Izzy was suddenly miserable.
“Lasagna,” Cadence said, then smiled again as Izzy did a little fist pump in celebration. “But before we eat, there’s something that your dad and I want to talk to you about.”
Izzy was a smart kid; she immediately knew that this wasn’t a conversation she was going to enjoy. Face set in a mulish frown, she looked between her parents.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“It’s nothing bad; nobody is in trouble or mad or anything,” Tyler said, sinking down to sit on the floor beside his daughter. “But your mom and I noticed that you had a tough time with two tests this week, and we just wanted to make sure that everything is okay at school.”
Izzy’s gaze darted between her parents, and Cadence could practically see the moment when her kid decided to lie.
“Everything is fine,” she said.
“Babe,” Cadence said, dropping to the floor with Tyler. “If there’s something going on that you think we’ll be mad about, you can tell us. We promise not to get mad, okay? We just want to know if something is upsetting you.”
Izzy made her eyes go wide in an expression of exaggerated innocence that wasn’t all that convincing.
“Nothing is wrong,” she said. “School is fine.”
“Well, what did you learn about today?” Tyler prodded.
Izzy shrugged, going from her puppy dog eyes to avoiding their gazes in an instant.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Stuff.”
Cadence and Tyler exchanged a glance, and now she could see that her husband was worried too.
“Is someone being mean to you?” Cadence asked, horror stories about bullying flashing through her head. Izzy’s teacher was very attentive and responsible, so Cadence thought she would have noticed something, but kids could be clever and sneaky if they wanted to be.
Fortunately, Izzy looked genuinely baffled by this question.
“No?” she said, like she couldn’t believe she was even being asked.
“I mean, the other day Amira said that she didn’t like Lucy’s bracelet, and Lucy was mad for, like, the whole day, and it was super annoying because Amira thought I should be mad at Lucy, and Lucy thought I should be mad at Amira, but I told them I wasn’t going to be mad at either of them because I don’t even care about bracelets.
But then they made up, so that’s fine,” Izzy concluded with a shrug.
That story was too detailed to be anything but true, and Izzy had delivered it with a sort of unconcerned exasperation. That at least made Cadence feel better about her daughter’s social life at school, although she was still left with lots of other things to worry about.
“Is the material seeming harder all of a sudden?” she asked. “Or is something distracting you?”
Now, Izzy’s exasperation was clearly directed at her.
“Mooom,” she said in such a long, whining tone that Cadence had an unfortunate vision about what life might be like when Izzy was a teenager, full of hormones and attitude. “I told you. It’s fine.”
“Let’s try to use a nice tone, shall we, kiddo?” Tyler corrected lightly. “Your mom and I are just looking out for you. It seems like you’re not your usual self, and it’s making us a little worried.”
“This is my regular self!” Izzy insisted with a huff that danced right at the edge of true distress.
Cadence and Tyler exchanged another look and, with it, a silent conversation. They clearly weren’t getting any information from their daughter now. But they also agreed that there was something amiss with Izzy.
“Okay, honey,” Cadence said after a minute. “We’ll let you play a little bit more before dinner. But you know that if there ever is anything bothering you, you can tell us, right?”
“Anything, sweetie,” Tyler reiterated. “Any time. We are always, always here.”
“Yeah, I know,” Izzy said, with a sort of duh undertone to her voice.
Well. Cadence wouldn’t say that she was thrilled with the attitude or with the fact that her daughter was clearly keeping something a secret, but she did take some reassurance from the fact that Izzy took her parents’ support as a given.
“Okay,” Cadence repeated, pushing to her feet. “We’ll call you down for dinner in a little while.”
“Okay, Mommy,” Izzy said, shoving her craft back in its box before turning to play with her stuffed animals, toys that didn’t get that much attention these days. This was as good a sign as any that Izzy was feeling vulnerable, that she wanted to be babied a little.
But she didn’t seem to want to be babied by her parents, at least judging from the way that she shifted away from them, already returning to her toys.
Cadence and Tyler left the room and headed back downstairs, remaining quiet until they’d reached the kitchen, which was far enough away from Izzy’s room that there was no chance of her being able to hear them.
“I’m not nuts, right?” Cadence asked, shifting her weight from side to side fretfully. “That was weird, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” he agreed, a distressed set to his mouth. “She’s definitely got something on her mind, but she doesn’t seem ready to tell us what it is.”
She heaved a sigh. “Which I guess means that there’s nothing we can do except wait for her to be ready to talk about it,” she said resignedly.
With a wry little laugh, Tyler put his arms around her shoulders, letting her rest her forehead against his collarbone.
“It’s tough, raising these independent, self-sufficient kids, huh?” he asked.
“The worst,” she agreed with a moan, although it tapered off slightly into a laugh.
“But at least we’re doing it together,” he said.
She tipped up her head for that, since it more than deserved a kiss.
“Doing anything with you makes it better,” she promised, hoping he saw the depth of feeling in her eyes, before pushing up on her toes to seal that promise with a kiss.