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“Will carry on without me. I haven’t driven a tractor since the boys were teenagers. And they can make their own mid-day meal.”
Laney sniffled as she laughed. “Oh, the horror.”
“Right?” Eleanor gasped as the baby moved under her hand, then rubbed gently, more for mommy than baby, Laney figured. “It’ll be just fine. I remember being so scared when I was pregnant with Ian. I kept having a recurring dream that I’d left him at the store, and I couldn’t remember his name. What new mother doesn’t know her own baby’s name?”
“I have a dream like that, too,” Laney whispered. She couldn’t even tell Kyle about it, but something about her mother-in-law’s confession gave her the courage to share as well. “I take Bean to surgery with me and leave him or her in my locker.”
Eleanor laughed. “It’s every woman’s fear. That we’re going to be terrible mothers. But you know what? You’re going to be just fine. I was. Your mother was. Carrie and Evie are, right?”
“Yes.” But Laney didn’t feel like everyone else. She hadn’t wanted this like they had. She did now, of course. She closed her eyes. I want you so much, Little Bean, she promised silently. But what if she’d put off having kids because she didn’t have that maternal urge? What if that was a sign?
“Are you sleeping at your mom’s again tonight?”
Laney smiled as Kyle’s warm voice worked its way into her heart. “Yeah. I went over to the schoolhouse to do some quiet work this morning, but I didn’t want to buy any groceries. And it’s kind of rude to eat here but sleep there.”
The real reason was that one of their mothers had been into the renovated house and washed the sheets, which was a really nice thing to do…But now the sheets didn’t smell like her husband. If that faint memory of Kyle had still been imprinted from their visit over the holiday, she’d have stayed there. Or brought a pillow over to her mom’s, although it would have been a toss-up. She loved the little turn-of-the-last-century schoolhouse that he’d bought and slowly turned into a home before they got back together, and was so glad they’d decided to keep it as a second home when he’d moved to Chicago.
But it wasn’t quite the same without him.
Nothing was. She closed her eyes and urged him to keep talking. “Tell me about your lesson for tomorrow.”
“I’ll send you the slide deck.”
She laughed at how he totally missed the point. “Okay. But still tell me about it. I like listening to your voice.”
“I like listening to yours, too. Tell me more about those lemon squares.”
“Oh my God, don’t get me started. I brought three back with me, I might need to go raid the kitchen. Carrie is freaking artist with sugar.”
“Tease.”
“If you keep talking to me until I fall asleep, then I might save one for you.”
“No way will it last until Tuesday. You and the Bean don’t have that kind of will power. Nobody does.”
She laughed. “Okay, I’ll pull the pregnant lady card and ask Carrie to make another tray.”
“A double tray.”
“Deal.” She smiled and closed her eyes again as he lowered his voice and told her about his lesson plan for the next day. At some point in the middle of an explanation about the small group discussion he hoped to get going, she drifted off into a blissfully dreamless sleep.
If you counted being a swim instructor and lifeguard in high school, Kyle had been teaching for nearly twenty years, fourteen of those as an elementary school teacher. And he was still nervous about his guest lecture to the B.Ed. class. He wasn’t just talking to them, teacher to teacher, about the realities and challenges of managing a classroom—that he could do in his sleep. Today he was giving them a lecture that he could get behind, in theory, but in reality was fraught with problems. But he was being graded on this lesson by an old-school prof who wouldn’t take kindly to the “get real” version of the lecture that was racing around in Kyle’s head.
The one he’d accidentally told Laney about the night before, although she may have fallen asleep before he got to the meat of it.
He’d arrived in the classroom twenty minutes early, so his laptop was already hooked up and his name was written on the whiteboard.
Kyle Nixon, M Ed class of 2016
Guest Lecturer
He watched the students file in. Some of them looked tired. Others distracted, either by conversation or technology.
None of them looked interested in the least, and he couldn’t blame them. They were halfway through their intensive program and they all just wanted to be out doing practicums, learning from teachers on the job.
He remembered these bullshit lessons from his own undergrad degree. Had sort of forgotten them in the last year and a half, as he’d sunk into the conversations with peers that really cared and instructors who pushed them to the next level.
But right now, it all came racing back, and he knew they weren’t going to like his lecture. Hell, he wasn’t going to like his lecture.
