Chapter 95

Chapter 95
I woke before the alarm, before June, before the house had remembered how to make its morning sounds. For a few seconds I lay still beneath the quilt, listening to the refrigerator hum and the old pipes tick inside the walls. Then I reached across the bed without thinking. My hand met a cool, empty sheet. The first quiet days after Eli’s funeral had taught me that absence was not one large thing. It was a hundred small interruptions. No warm shoulder beside mine. No second toothbrush angled in the cup. No sleepy voice asking whether June had found her socks. I dressed in the dark and moved through the house as if I were visiting someone who might wake if I made too much noise.In the kitchen, I filled the kettle and set two mugs on the counter before I stopped myself. I put one back in the cupboard. The gesture felt private and foolish, though no one was there to see it. Eli had made coffee too strong and left the spoon balanced across the saucer. He had stood at this same counter on school mornings we had imagined but never reached, talking about walking June to her classroom and pretending not to cry when she let go of his hand.I opened the curtains. Pale September light spread over the floor, touching the stack of library books beside the sofa, the shoes Eli had never come back to move from the entryway, the framed photograph of June asleep against his chest. I looked away from it and started breakfast.

June came downstairs wearing one purple sock and carrying the other. Her hair stood out on both sides of her head, and she had a crease on her cheek from the pillow.“Is it morning already?” she asked.“It is. First-day morning.”She considered this, then held up the sock. “I can’t find the match.”The missing sock became more urgent than kindergarten for nearly five minutes. We found it beneath the coffee table, beside a crayon.

June pulled on her yellow dress with the tiny white flowers, the one she had chosen because it had pockets. Into those pockets went a smooth green stone, two plastic dinosaurs, and a folded picture she had drawn of our family beneath a blue sky. I packed apple slices, crackers, a cheese sandwich, and a note with a crooked heart. Eli had always drawn the hearts better than I did.At the bathroom mirror, I brushed June’s hair into two braids while she asked whether kindergarten had nap time, whether the teacher would know she liked whales, and whether I would be allowed to stay until lunch. I tied purple ribbons at the ends. She studied herself.“Do I look ready?”“You look exactly ready.”“Do you?”The question landed softly but went all the way through me. I fastened her backpack and crouched in front of her. “I’m nervous,” I said. “But I’m ready to take you.”Hattie knocked before I could answer the door and Hattie took June’s hand while I locked the house behind us.

The school stood at the end of a wide sidewalk lined with sycamores, its brick walls brightened by painted paper suns in every window. Children moved toward the entrance in every direction, some dragging parents behind them, some racing ahead with backpacks bouncing against their shoulders. A little boy cried because his mother had packed the wrong juice. Two girls compared glittery lunch boxes. Somewhere near the doors, a whistle shrilled and a crossing guard called for everyone to slow down.Maisie waited beside the front steps in her flour-dusted blue coat holding her little boy in her arms. She had brought no bakery bag, no excuse about needing to pass by. She simply opened up for one arm hug, and June ran into them.“You came,” June said.“Of course I came. I wouldn’t miss your first day.”Maisie hugged her once, firmly, then turned to me. “And I’m here for yours.”My throat tightened. Hattie squeezed my elbow. Neither of them said Eli’s name. They did not need to. They knew this was the morning he had promised to walk me to the kindergarten classroom, even if June insisted on walking between us. He had said he would carry the backpack, take too many pictures, and make a speech about how brave she was. I had laughed and told him she would be too busy being a social butterfly.

Inside, the hallway smelled of wax, tempera paint, and damp coats. The noise pressed in from every side: sneakers squeaking, parents whispering, teachers calling names, doors opening and closing. June’s classroom had a paper moon on the door and a row of cubbies labeled with children’s names. Her teacher, Ms. Alvarez, wore a green cardigan and a necklace made of wooden beads.“June?” she asked, kneeling to meet her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here.”June tucked herself against my leg. “Will you be here when I come back?”“Yes,” I said. “I’ll be right here after school. Hattie and Maisie will help me come get you, and I’ll be waiting at this door.”“Promise?”I held out my little finger. “Promise.”She hooked hers around mine, then added our old secret handshake: fist bump, palm press, two taps over the heart. Eli had invented it after June’s first tumble from her tricycle. I repeated the phrase he had given us then. “Same team.”“Same team,” June whispered.

She let go. I watched her cross the room, past the block shelf and the bowl of sharpened pencils, toward a table where a girl in silver shoes was arranging animal stickers. June looked back once. I smiled because she needed me to. Then she crossed the threshold, and the door swung almost closed.For one terrible second I could see Eli beside me, hand lifted, ready to point out every detail. He would never see her first classroom, never hear her say her teacher’s name, never ask what she had learned. The grief rose, quiet and physical, like water filling my chest. Hattie stood on one side of me and Maisie on the other. I kept my eyes on the narrow window in the door until June disappeared from it.

Maisie had told me to stay home. She had said it twice at the bakery and once in a text before breakfast: Take the day. Let the house be quiet only if you want it to be quiet.But after June disappeared behind the classroom door, home was the last place I wanted to be. The thought of the empty kitchen, the untouched second mug, and the long afternoon waiting in rooms that still held Eli’s shape made my hands go cold.“I’m coming with you,” I told Maisie in the parking lot.She studied my face. “You don’t have to prove you can work.”“I know.”“You can. You can go home. You can cry in the walk-in freezer, though I’d prefer you warn me first.”Despite myself, I almost smiled. “I need the bakery.”

The bell over the door chimed when we entered. Warmth met me first, then the smell of yeast, coffee, browned butter, and sugar. The ovens were coming alive with low metal breaths. Hattie stayed long enough to set my cinnamon roll beside the register, kissed my temple, and told me she would see me at pickup. Then Maisie tied an apron around my waist and put me beside the mixing table.Routine gave my hands somewhere to go. I weighed flour, added salt, watched the dough gather beneath the hook. I slid delivery boxes toward the front, checked the timers, and piped pale frosting onto the morning cakes. A customer asked for six blueberry scones, and I wrapped them while listening to the paper crackle under my fingers.I measured espresso into the grinder and forgot to put the cup beneath it. Coffee scattered across the counter and onto the floor.“I’ve got it,” Maisie said.“I’m fine.”“I didn’t say you weren’t.”She swept the grounds into her palm. The oven timer rang. Its sharp, familiar beep stopped me cold. Eli used to imitate that sound from the hallway when June was small, making her laugh while I pretended to scold him. For a moment I expected to turn and tell him about the yellow dress, the green stone, the way June had asked if I was ready too.Maisie touched the counter near my hand. “You can leave, Taylor.”I looked at the rows of cooling loaves, the flour on my sleeves, the steam fogging the front windows. “Working doesn’t mean I’m done grieving.”“I know.”“It’s just the only way I know how to get through the next hour.”Maisie nodded. “Then we’ll get through this hour. After that, we’ll decide about the next one.”By late morning, the bakery had filled with the ordinary music of a weekday: cups set down, chairs scraping, the bell chiming, timers calling from the ovens. I moved through it carefully. Beneath the competence, I was still tender enough to break. At noon I checked the clock, then checked it again.Soon June would come running toward me with a story she had been saving all day. Maybe she would tell me about the silver-shoed girl. Maybe she would forget everything except the snack. I would listen to every word.I wiped flour from my hands and reached for the next box. The life ahead was not the one Eli and I had planned. It was empty in places I could not yet look at. Still, the clock moved forward, and my daughter was waiting at the end of it. I took the next step.