“I’m wondering what you’re doing?”
Nodding, I sit back on my bottom, and the cold, damp ground seeps into me. I already know I don’t have anything spare to change into. At least my trousers are black.
“Miss MacIntosh, what are you doing?”
“Right. Yes. Good question, good question. I’m looking for something I lost a long time ago.” Lost. Left here on purpose.
“Hmm,” he ponders, finger tapping his chin. It’s something he does a lot, I’ve noticed, and it always makes me smile. I get to relive all the little mannerismsHendricks had. “Do you want some help?”
“That’s very kind, thank you. But I think break time is almost over, so perhaps another day.”
There won’t be another day because the tree is coming down tomorrow. It was a long shot anyway, and it’s not like they were Roman artifacts, but I kind of wanted to see if they’d survived even though I can’t remember what we left except the map.
“Okay then.” He stands up and holds his hand out. “Do you need help to get up?”
“Oh no, thank you.” I don’t think he notices me struggling to hold in the laugh as I pull on the branch to get my balance, and it’s not that I can’t stand, it’s that when I’m at my full height of five feet five inches, I hit my head. It’s why I crawled in. There was definitely more space in here when we planted the map. But his comment has set off the usual paranoia I have about getting one year older. “Out of curiosity, how old do you think I am?”
He shrugs in that way five-year-olds do when posed a question they’ve never given any thought to before replying. “Fifty?”
“Do you know how old your daddy is? Or Uncle Miles?”
He shrugs again, shifting around a low-lying branch that I have to fully bend to avoid. “Fifty?”
I cancel the list of anti-wrinkle products I’m mentally compiling. “No, Daddy and I are a little younger than that. Miles is fifty, though.”
Max nods, and I almost feel bad, but then I think about Miles’s face of objection, and it warms my heart. Childish, yes, but also funny.
The bell rings as we make it out from under the gianthorse chestnut, and play gradually stops, and everyone starts making their way back into school.
“Break time’s over, Max, if you want to hurry and change,” I say, brushing myself down and freeing all manner of twigs and leaves from my hair.
Crawling along the ground during school hours wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had, but I’ve been meaning to do it since Mrs. Benson announced the trees were coming down, and seeing Hendricks this morning reminded me.
Instead of him running off, a little hand slips into mine. “That’s okay. I’ll walk with you.”
“Oh,” I say, “thank you.”
“Then you’re not alone,” he adds, moving himself up into the top spot of my favorite children I teach.
In all seriousness, Maxwell Burlington is one of the sweetest, kindest children I’ve ever had in my classroom. Friends with everyone, conscientious, thoughtful. An old soul trapped in a five-year-old’s body.
Whatever Hendricks is doing, he’s doing it right, and it’s hard to begrudge his reasoning for putting Max first. Especially after everything they’ve been through. It’s what makes the fresh bruises around my heart hurt a little bit less.
“Do you have a dog?” he asks.
I smile. “Yes, I have a golden retriever called Oxford. Do you?”
“We have three. Dolly, Hamish, and Maud. And all the farm dogs, but I don’t have any that are just my own.”
“Dogs need a lot of looking after,” I reply only for Max to nod solemnly in agreement.
“You know that tree you were looking under?”
“Yes.”
“I found a treasure map there once.”
I stop walking, and Max stops with me, peering up. “Did you?”
