The Summer I Saved You (The Summer #2)(27)
18
LUCIE
I’m walking fast toward aftercare when Mrs. Doherty, the head of school, stops me. She’s not normally here this late and the way she’s jumped in front of me out of nowhere makes this all feel intentional.
“Lucie,” she says with a practiced smile. “Do you have a moment?”
No. No, I do not. I’m tired and Henry is undoubtedly sitting at that table staring at the clock...but you don’t say no to St. Ignatius’s head of school, not when there are four hundred families dying to take your child’s spot.
I follow her to a spacious office, outfitted for a college dean rather than the head of a school that ends at sixth grade. She offers me a beverage from the small glass-fronted refrigerator full of Topo Chico and Diet Coke. I shake my head, sitting on my hands to keep them from tapping out my impatience.
“I wanted to discuss Henry’s progress with you,” she says. There’s a warning in her fading smile. “Mrs. Kroesinger has mentioned he isn’t progressing with his reading the way we’d like.”
My stomach knots. “Yes,” I reply. “She gave me some things to work on with him at home.” And I was doing so, religiously, until I started working. The realization that we only did the flashcards once this week makes my breath stick in my chest.
“We’d like to get him evaluated before we plan for next year,” she says. She hands me a typed list of names. “To see if there are any issues we’re unaware of.”
“Issues,” I repeat. I don’t want him to have a reading problem. I don’t want to know he’s going to struggle for the rest of his life. But what worries me most are those fears I’ve kept to myself. Because what if it isn’t only reading? What if it’s something more?
She gives me a forced smile. “We just want to make sure we can meet his needs going forward.”
Which sounds less like concern for my son…and more like the process of kicking a kid out of St. Ignatius. We’ve reviewed the evaluation, she’ll tell me later, and I’m afraid we aren’t equipped to provide what he needs.
Would this be happening if I’d played the game? If I’d told anyone and everyone that my father is Robert Underwood? I doubt it.
I thank her, the words sticking like glue in my throat, and arrive at aftercare to find Sophie playing while Henry does a puzzle alone.
Why couldn’t it all have been easier for him? Why couldn’t he have gotten a touch of Sophie’s extroversion to help him socially? Or her joy, her grasp of phonics? I just want him to be happy and the fact that I can’t guarantee it’ll happen breaks my heart.
As soon as I have the twins buckled in, Sophie is asking about dinner, which I haven’t even thought about, and demanding time at the beach, and telling me she needs me to find her baby photos for show-and-tell tomorrow and I want to scream at her to stop. It’s what my mother did to me, constantly, and for far less. I hate that I’m tempted to emulate her, but I need a second to breathe, to not be in charge.
We climb out of the van just as Caleb exits his garage. His timing could not be worse—I’m not sure I can manage even a brief, neighborly conversation.
He walks over to us with something in his hands. “I was about to—” he begins and then looks at me and falls silent. He hands both Henry and Sophie pieces of metal. “See if you can figure out how these go together. Your mom and I will be right back.”
With a hand on my elbow, he leads me around the corner. “What’s wrong?”
His quiet concern threatens to break me, and I cover my face with my hands. I’m about to insist that it’s nothing, but it’s not nothing, and I need to tell one other person. One person who won’t insist that it’s my fault, the way Jeremy and my mom will.
“The school wants me to get Henry evaluated. They said it was for reading, but I’m worried there will be other things too and—” Saying it aloud makes it so much more daunting. I’ve known there was something different about Henry’s development, about the way he interacts with people. I’ve known it for years. But Jeremy told me it was that I coddled him too much, and the pediatrician blew me off and oh, God, why did I listen to them? Was it because I wanted them to be right? Because I didn’t want to know? What kind of mother just lets it go? “I’ve been worried for a while, and I should have pushed harder to figure it all out.” My voice breaks at the end and I have to stop.
“Lucie,” he whispers, desperation in his voice, his hands on my biceps. “He’s a great kid and it’s going to be okay. No matter what you find out, he’s the same little guy who left the house this morning. All that will change is that you’ll have a name for it and can make plans.”
God, I hope he’s right. And God, I wish I’d married someone who would tell me things were going to be okay, even when they’re not.
“I have to pull myself together,” I whisper, forcing myself to step back though I really don’t want to, wiping my face with my hands. “If the kids see I’m upset, they’ll know something’s wrong.”
“Go home and get it out of your system. I’ll order a pizza and keep them here as long as you need.” He turns me toward the house, and I’m too broken to resist.
I stumble home and start calling the specialists on Mrs. Doherty’s list. Most of them have a long wait, and while a part of me thinks yes, yes, let’s wait as long as possible, it’s not in Henry’s best interest. Every week that slips by without us figuring out what’s going on with him is a week he’s not learning as well as he could be. I take the first opening I find, months and months from now, and there’s nothing left to do… but tell Jeremy.