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Lily looks over her shoulder at Denise, but I can see in her face that Lily’s mind was momentarily somewhere else, that she wasn’t listening.
“Where?” she asks, blinking.
Denise says it again. “The forest preserve. In Lemont. Langley Woods.”
“Oh,” says Lily trying, I think, to remember whether she was there or not. “I did go there,” she decides. “The other day. For a walk. It was such a pretty day. But I don’t remember when.”
Denise knows.
“It was Monday,” she says.
The days of the week are starting to blend together. I have to think through what day it is. Tomorrow is Friday. Today is Thursday which means that Monday was three days ago.
Monday was also the first night that Jake didn’t come home.
I walk back toward my classroom to get my things and leave. Already I’m dreading the thought of going home to an empty house. It makes my physically sick to think about. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself, how I’ll pass the time.
The hallways are vacant now. The kids are gone and practically everyone else has left. The building is much different at this time of day. It’s almost unrecognizable without kids. The halls are hollow and the classrooms are empty, the only sound the tapping of my heels against the terrazzo floors. The emptiness overwhelms me. I feel so lonely I could cry. Before coming to my own classroom, I stop by Ryan’s. I’ve changed my mind. If he’s there, I think that I’d like to talk to him about Jake after all, because I feel so alone and confused, and wouldn’t mind a man’s take on what’s happening with Jake. I go to the door, which is shut, though the classroom light is on. I don’t bother trying the handle. The classroom doors are always locked from the outside; it’s a safety precaution. It makes sense, but it also makes it difficult when students need to use the restroom and have to be let back in. I press my face to the glass, looking for Ryan, but he’s not inside the room. I must have missed him.
Disappointed, I turn and go to my own classroom. My door is also closed; I have to use my key to get in. My student teacher closed the door before he left. I’m grateful, because my purse is still in the classroom under the desk. I only brought my keys with me. I’m wondering if the janitors have already been through to clean, but when I come inside, I see that they haven’t. Everything is almost exactly the way I left it, except that on my desk now is a vase of flowers. They’re wrapped in cellophane with a bow, as if from a florist. I physically stop in the open doorway, taken aback by the flowers.
What have I done to deserve them? It’s not anywhere close to my birthday and I wonder where they came from, who gave them to me. Jake isn’t the type to give flowers. It’s not that he never has. It’s just that he hasn’t in years. I remember him giving roses to me when we were first dating, leaving them in unexpected places like beside my coffee in the morning or flattened inside a book I was reading, which was always a nice surprise, to turn the page and find a rose waiting for me inside. It’s just that he hasn’t given flowers to me more recently. He thinks they’re impractical because they die—Jake doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body, he’s far too pragmatic for that—though I’ve told him before that everything dies, it’s just a matter of time. But Jake thinks flowers are uninspired. These days, he prefers something unexpected and longer lasting like jewelry or my Tesla, which came on my birthday, also wrapped with a bow.
I go to the flowers, thinking, hoping that maybe they’re from Jake. For a second, my heart feels lighter. I cut the cellophane off with a pair of scissors, looking for a card. The flowers are gorgeous, an arrangement of roses, carnations and eucalyptus in a glass vase. I sink my nose in to smell them. They’re divine. They make me smile. I read the card, hoping for answers, to see Jake’s name on the card and a simple but sweet message—Love you always, or something like that—but instead I find myself at a complete loss. My smile disappears. I turn the card over to see what, if anything, is on the back and then stand, pouting at the vase.
Pam, the school secretary, is still in the main office when I go to check. She’s alone, pecking away on the keyboard. “I wasn’t sure you’d still be here,” I say, coming into the empty office. She looks up at me, over the computer, and smiles.
“Hi, Nina,” she says over the noise of the printer, which springs to life at the same time, spitting out pieces of paper.
“You work too hard, Pam. You should go home.”
“Look who’s talking,” she says.
I smile. “The flowers in my classroom. Do you know where they came from?”
“Some florist,” she says offhand, shrugging. “He delivered them today, during seventh period. I didn’t want to bother you when you were in class, so I walked them down after school,” she says, rising from her chair to go to the printer. “You weren’t there, so I left them. I hope that was okay.”
“Yes, of course. That’s fine. Thank you for bringing them down.”
“No problem,” she says. She takes the document from the printer. She looks at it to be sure it printed correctly, and then, satisfied, she goes back to her chair to sit. “That sweet husband of yours,” Pam says with a wink from behind the large desk. “Lucky you. Hell will freeze over before my husband ever sends me flowers at work. Is it a special day or did he do something he needs to make up for?”
I do a double take. Why does Pam think the flowers are from Jake? I ask her, “How do you know the flowers are from Jake?”
Pam doesn’t, I realize. She’s just speculating. She giggles. “How many men do you have sending you roses at work, Nina?” She’s right. None. But Jake never has either.
A look on my face must give me away. Pam realizes that I don’t actually know who the flowers are from. “Well, what did the card say?” she asks, her eyes narrowing.
“Nothing,” I tell her.
“Nothing at all? It was blank?”
“No, it wasn’t blank. There was a message,” I say, but the message didn’t help. If anything the message was so cryptic, it made it worse. “It said something likeI hope these make you smile, because I love to see your smile. But the card wasn’t signed.”
“It wasn’t?” Pam’s face practically lights up. She says, “It sounds like either the florist forgot to include the sender’s name or you have a secret admirer, my dear.”
I leave the flowers on my desk when I go. I have too much to carry, and I don’t know that I want them going home with me anyway because what Pam said got under my skin. A secret admirer. It’s not that much different than a stalker.
I walk across the parking lot. I stayed so long after school that the teacher parking lot has cleared almost completely out. It’s close to four thirty now. School ended over two hours ago.
