I didn’t say that to Silas, who didn’t seem to have a shortage of self-confidence and wouldn’t have understood about the need to have someone love you. “Have you ever had a serious relationship?” I asked. “Like, were you were ever thinking of marriage?”
He actually laughed. “No,” he finally managed to say. “No, I never would have married any of the women I was with and I never lived with anyone. No kids, either, thank fu—” He glanced toward my parents’ bedroom. “Thank goodness.”
That was what I had figured about him: he just wasn’t a settle-down kind of guy. “You only have Lyra.”
“She’s my sister,” he reminded me. “I’m glad every day that I don’t have kids of my own.”
“You’re a good parent to her, though.”
“Yeah? Is that why I got another email from the school today while we were on the road?”
“Oh, no!” I groaned. “What now?”
He hadn’t wanted to read any further as soon as he’d seen the “from” field with the teacher’s name, but I said that he had to. So he took out the nice phone that he hadn’t admitted to owning and started to look for the message.
“Why did you hide this from me?” I asked, tapping its cover gently.
“My phone? Did I? Shit, here’s the email.” He squinted. “What could it be? She’s doing better, right?”
“Open it.” I sat up and leaned over, so that I could also see.
And both of us were stunned. “Really?” Silas asked.
“It actually makes a lot of sense,” I said. “We know how smart she is.”
“’Accelerated,’” he read from the screen. “Does that mean gifted?”
“They’re recognizing that she needs more than what she’s getting in her classroom right now, but I don’t know how they’ll handle it. The teacher wants you to come in for a meeting and she’ll probably explain everything.”
“Yeah.” He looked up at me. “Will you come?”
“I’m not her real guardian,” I pointed out. “They might not want me there.”
“I want you, though. You’ll ask the right questions and they’ll pay attention when you talk.”
“People pay attention when you talk, too,” I said, but he shook his head.
“Because they’re intimidated. They listen to you because you’re gifted, too. You must scare the shit out of the people you work with.”
“I don’t,” I protested. “You saw them at Rashelle’s wedding, and they weren’t scared of me.”
“I used the wrong words. I mean that they’re scared of messing up because they want to do their best for you. You’re good at your job and they know that you’re worth listening to. You’re their boss for a reason.”
“Thank you, Silas.”
“You’re welcome.” He thumped the cushion beneath him. “This couch isn’t much better than the one at my house. You think you can sleep here?”
“Maybe. And I’ll definitely go to the meeting at Lyra’s school if you want me to.”
“Thanks, Camille,” he said, and stood up. “My sister sleeps like a starfish.”
“Good luck,” I told him, and he sighed as he walked back to my old bedroom.
The next morning, both he and I were a little cranky, but Lyra was raring to go. She had remembered what I’d told her about the animals here, so my dad took her on a tour while my mom made breakfast. Both she and Silas tried grits for the first time and were not huge fans, but they loved her biscuits, and eggs were always well-received. We shooed my mom out of the kitchen to clean up and then did the softball demo, and the day went by easily. I was so happy to be home.
“Cammie, let me get your hair out of the way,” my mom said at one point, which was what she always said when she thought the dark waves were getting unruly. I dutifully sat in front of her chair on the porch while she braided it for me, and then she looked over at Lyra.
“Could I do yours?” she asked. Lyra jumped up to take my spot and I joined my dad on the porch swing. Silas sat on a step, because I’d seen him testing out the furniture and then maybe deciding that it wasn’t going to hold him. “Camille can help youwith your hair for school,” my mom mentioned as she carefully brushed, and Lyra’s lip poked out. “I know that she’d be happy to.”
