Ava cried when we moved. She said she didn’t want to leave her room.
June didn’t understand any of it. She just wanted to know if the new house had a bathtub. (It did. She was very relieved.)
Max got the girls every other weekend and Wednesday nights. He’d pick them up in his new car, a black SUV with leather seats. Claire would sit in the passenger seat with her blond ponytail and her sunglasses and her perfect arms, and she’d wave at the girls.
She never waved at
me.
The only good thing about that year was Edward.
Edward Hale teaches woodshop at Lincoln Middle School. Has for nine years. His classroom is right across the hall from the library.
Before the divorce, I barely knew him. We’d say good morning in the hallway. Once a year he’d come into the library and ask if we had any books on furniture making, and I’d say, “Still the same three, Edward,” and he’d laugh and check out the same three.
He’s tall. Very tall. Broad shoulders. He looks like he should be on a construction site, not in a middle school. The kids are a little scared of him until they meet him. Then they love him. He’s the teacher kids go to when something’s wrong at home.
I found that out the hard way.
It was a few weeks after Max left. I was in the back room
of the library during my lunch break, eating crackers out of the sleeve because I couldn’t face the teachers’ lounge. I was reading something on my phone from my lawyer. And I started crying. Just quietly. I couldn’t stop.
Somebody knocked on the door.
It was Edward. He was holding a stack of returned books.
He looked at me. At my face.
He didn’t say, “Are you okay?” He didn’t say, “What’s wrong?”
He just set the books down on the cart, pulled out the other chair, sat down across from me, and said, “Do you want me to stay or go?”
