“I didn’t want you guys picking up the boxes and shaking them and figuring out what I had gotten you before we even got to Christmas,” Marjorie said, like it was obvious.
“If you had kids, you’d know that,” Isadora called from the other end of the table.
They all laughed, although there was a bit of sadness on Isadora’s face that bothered Roland.
Still, he couldn’t expect that a person would lose their husband and have their family be broken up and not have scars to show for it.
Later that evening, after the discussion at the table had ended, Roland found himself sitting on the floor in the living room, working on some props for the school play, and listening to the kids talk about their school and what they were doing.
Robert caught his ear when he talked about Miss Bushnell and the lines he was memorizing for their classroom play.
He knew exactly who Miss Bushnell was, and again, he tried to stop his sneer that automatically came when he heard her name.
It was an instinctive thing. Though Robert thought that she was a great teacher.
“We’re really blessed to have Miss Bushnell as his teacher,” Gilbert leaned over and said to Roland and Marjorie, who was sitting in the chair behind him.
“I know,” Marjorie said with her voice low. “The other third grade teacher is a good teacher. Above average even. But Miss Bushnell is just absolutely extraordinary. She turns school into an experience that can’t be replicated.”
His mother would know. She’d been a teacher herself, homeschooling them at times when they were growing up. Plus, she had enough grandkids in school to know a good teacher when she saw one.
It felt odd, listening to his family go on about Miss Bushnell and all of her charms as Summer joined the conversation, speaking lowso that the kids wouldn’t hear. The adults certainly didn’t want them to think any less of the other teacher, just in case the kids coming up didn’t have Miss Bushnell. Although, they would certainly ask for her, which is what Summer said.
Roland figured that he ought to learn to at least have a tolerance for Nelly, since he probably was going to be hearing a lot about her over the years, because his siblings were almost certainly not done having children.
Unless he moved away, which he had absolutely no intention of doing. Who would take care of his mother? Who would run the Christmas tree farm? Who would be the Secret Saint?
He had really enjoyed the bit that he’d done and couldn’t wait to get into more.
Later, before he left, he approached Wilson. “Have you noticed Mom?” he said as he zipped up his coat.
“What about her?” Wilson asked as he held up a coat for his wife.
“She just seems extra tired, doesn’t she? Have you noticed anything?” He wanted to go on about the tiredness in her eyes and the fatigue that he’d seen, but he didn’t want to put words in Wilson’s mouth.
Wilson looked up to where his mother was deep in discussion with Amy and Terry.
“She looks fine to me,” he said with a shoulder shrug.
Roland sighed and closed his mouth tight. It was frustrating that Wilson wouldn’t at least give some credence to his words and look a little closer.
But he supposed he was in a hurry to get his wife and kids home and put them to bed.
Maybe Roland should have brought that up earlier in the evening.
But he knew as the baby of the family, he was the least likely to be taken seriously, even though he lived with his mom and saw her every day. It was hard to outgrow the “baby status” of being theyoungest. Everyone treated him like he was still a kid, instead of a thirty-year-old adult.
“It was crazy. Somehow someone knew that we needed a special kind of dog food for the newest addition to our rescue, and that exact kind showed up the next morning—fifty pounds of it.” Amy was speaking in hushed tones to Summer, and Roland stopped to listen.
“Do you think it’s a Secret Saint thing?” Summer asked, sounding intrigued.
“I can’t imagine who else it would be. I mean, that stuff is expensive. We had known that we were going to need it and were organizing a fundraiser just to buy that particular brand, but…someone heard about it, somehow, and dropped it off.”
“I thought you had cameras up. Did they catch it?”
“We did. But the person was careful to park out of sight of the cameras, and they carried the dog food inside this cape thing. The hood was down low, and you really couldn’t even tell whether it was a man or a woman because the cape hid the entire figure.”
“Wow. That’s really sweet. And I guess… It doesn’t really matter if we ever find out who it is, does it?”
