Chapter 96

Chapter 96
At 2:47, I looked at the bakery clock for the sixth time in ten minutes. The hands had barely moved. Flour dusted my forearms, and the smell of cinnamon clung to my sweater, but my attention had already left the bakery. It was across town, waiting at the school gate.“You’re going to wear a hole in that clock,” Hattie said from the counter. Maisie slid a paper bag toward me. “Apple slices, cheese crackers, and one emergency chocolate chip cookie.”“Emergency?”“First-day emergencies are unpredictable.”At 2:55, I untied my apron with fingers that felt too clumsy. Maisie hugged me quickly, flour and all.

The afternoon air smelled of warm pavement and cut grass. I walked too fast, then faster, my shoes striking the sidewalk in an uneven rhythm. Every red light felt personal. I pictured June sitting in a classroom I had never seen, her small backpack hanging from a hook, her feet swinging beneath a desk. At the school, parents gathered along the fence, talking in low, eager bursts. I checked the clock above the office door. 2:59. Hattie stood beside me, holding the snack bag for June. Then the bell rang. The doors opened, and the children began spilling out.

I saw her before she saw me. Her yellow dress had paint on it and one of her braids had come loose. Her backpack sagged behind her like it contained rocks. Then she looked up.“Mama!”June ran so hard that her backpack bounced against her shoulders. I caught her just before she crashed into my knees. Her arms locked around my waist, her cheek warm against my ribs.I closed my eyes for one second and breathed in her familiar smell—shampoo, crayons, and the faint sweetness of the cookie she must have found somewhere.“You came,” she said.“Of course I came.”I wanted to tell her that I had been counting every minute, that Eli should have been standing on my other side with his camera already out, but it was Hattie. Which I am truly grateful for. I could almost hear the questions he would have asked: What did you learn? Who did you sit with? Did anybody make you laugh?But June pulled back and grabbed my hands.“I learned the letter M, and it goes down and up and down and up, but sometimes it looks like a mountain. And we had music, and Ms. Alvarez played the triangle, and I got to hold it, but only if I didn’t hit it too loud.”“That sounds like a very important job.”“It was. Also, I played kitchen with Nia. She has sparkly shoes, but she said they’re not for running, so we ran very slow. We made soup with pretend carrots, and I put in a block because it was a potato.”Her words tumbled over one another. She told me about painting a paper sun, the class fish that hid behind a blue castle, and how everyone had to put their hands on their head when the teacher rang a little bell.

Hattie crouched beside us. “What was the best part?”June considered this with great seriousness. “The triangle. No, Nia. No, the soup. Can the best part be three parts?”“It can today,” Hattie said.She handed June the paper bag. June peered inside and gasped at the apple slices as if they were treasure. Hattie took the backpack from her shoulders.“I can carry it,” June protested.“I know,” Hattie said. “I’m carrying it because I’m your honorary first-day helper.”June accepted this explanation and took my hand. We walked through the gate together, her fingers sticky from an apple slice, her voice bright beside me. Eli’s absence moved with us, quiet and familiar. I could not make it disappear. I could, however, keep listening. Hattie drove us home and dropped us off, before she left she gave us both a hug and a kiss and told me that she would see us tomorrow.

Once we got inside, June put her backpack in the middle of the kitchen floor and emptied it upside down.Two crayons, a tissue, a bent folder, and a single yellow bead rolled beneath the table.“This is my school paper,” she announced, rescuing the folder. “It’s a sun, but the sun is also me because I’m yellow.”The drawing showed a round face with orange rays and a mouth almost as wide as the page. In the corner, June had written three crooked letters.“M,” she said, pointing. “And this one is maybe a W. Or a chair.”“I see both.”She chose the blue plate for her snack, arranging the apple slices in a careful circle around the crackers. “This is our after-school plate,” she said. “We need it every day.”“Every day?”“Except maybe soup days.”I sat across from her while she ate and told me the same stories again, changing small details each time. Nia’s shoes became silver instead of sparkly. The fish had hidden under a castle, then inside it, then possibly lived there.After snack, we practiced writing M’s on the back of an old grocery list. June pressed too hard, snapping the pencil lead. I showed her how to loosen her grip. She tried again, tongue peeking from the corner of her mouth.“Would Daddy like my mountain letters?” she asked.The question opened a tender place in me.“He would,” I said. “He’d ask you to teach him.”June smiled. “He didn’t know kindergarten.”“No. But he knew how to listen.”She nodded as if this solved something, then asked whether the fish had parents.I made pasta for dinner while June stood on a chair and stirred the sauce with a wooden spoon. Steam fogged the window. The sauce popped onto the stove, and she giggled every time I wiped it away.For a moment, I reached automatically toward the empty chair at the end of the table, ready to tell Eli about the paper sun and the pretend potato. My hand stopped in the air.June saw it. “That’s Daddy’s chair.”“Yes.”“Can we leave it there?”“Yes.”She set down the spoon. “Will every school day be like this? Blue plate, letters, pasta?”“Some days will be different,” I told her. “I’ll be there whenever I can. If I can’t, I’ll tell you, and Hattie or Maisie will help. But I’ll always come back to you. We’re a team.”June thought about that while I tied her bathrobe. “Team Taylor and JuneBug?”“Exactly.”She raised her hand for a high five, and I met it.The bath filled the room with lavender steam. June made a mountain of bubbles and put two foam circles on her head like ears. I washed the day from her hair while she sang the triangle song, mostly off-key and without the triangle.

After I got her dressed in her flower pajamas she climbed into bed, and I tucked the quilt beneath her chin. The room was blue with evening. Outside, a car passed, tires whispering over the street I bent down and gave her a kiss on her forhead.She smiled, satisfied, and closed her eyes. Within minutes, her breathing deepened. I stayed beside her, watching her for a moment. Our life had narrowed to two. There were still empty places in it: Eli’s chair, his missing voice, all the questions he would ask June about her first day of school. Nothing about a blue plate or a backpack hook could replace him. Nothing was supposed to.But ordinary things could hold us. A hand to hold at pickup. Pasta on a Tuesday. I got up slowly and tipped toed out of the room and closed the door half way. Outside, the house settled around us. Tomorrow would come with another clock to watch, another walk, another day I could not control.For tonight, June slept, and I sat beside her until the room grew still—two people, imperfect and tender, moving forward one ordinary day at a time.