Lauren confirmed that was the amount of time she’d discussed with Eddie’s caseworker, and after Jolene gave Eddie another warning that he was to behave, she left.
Being alone with Eddie hadn’t necessarily been the plan, but his caseworker and mother were apparently running even later. Lauren fired off a quick text under the table, inquiring as to their estimated time of arrival, before turning her attention to Eddie.
“When’s my mom going to be here?” he asked.
She checked her phone, but of course it was too soon for a response. “Uh, any minute now. Do you want a hot chocolate or anything while we wait?”
“No,” he said, and then, after a long beat, “thank you.”
“How’s school been going?”
“Yeah.” He was staring around the place, as if taking in his surroundings for the first time. “How cold is it here?”
“The main areas are kept around sixty-eight degrees,” Lauren said. “The Snow Globe is colder. I’ll take you there once your mom comes.”
“How cold does it have to be to snow?”
Lauren realized she didn’t know exactly—the effects of growing up in a state where she’d never seen it happen. “Like thirty-two degrees, I think? There are a lot of factors that go into it.”
“Like what?”
His questions were almost aggressive, as if he was challenging her rather than just curious. “The altitude,” she said. “Water vapor in the atmosphere. That kind of thing.”
She was actually impressed at how semiscientific her answers sounded, but Eddie didn’t let up. “How cold does it have to be for someone to die?”
Well, that was a morbid question. Lauren glanced helplessly at the door, then at her phone. Still no text. “I don’t know,” she said. “It would depend on a few factors . . .”
On the ice skating rink, people were laughing and gliding around in circles—happy couples, families with young children, several teenage friend groups. Asa was working the rink that night, and she could see him skating in slow, deliberate laps, his hands clasped behind his back as he watched everyone on the ice.
She missed him. She’d hated the way they’d left things. She also didn’t know what else there was to say.
“You’re sure you don’t want a hot chocolate?” Lauren asked Eddie.
“My mom will get me one,” he said. “She knows how many marshmallows to put in.”
“She’s probably stuck in traffic,” Lauren said. “This is a busy time of year.”
Eddie was staring at the ice rink, too, and for a second his sullen expression split into something else. Next to her, Lauren’s phone buzzed, and there was a text message from the caseworker: Mom can’t find a ride. We’ll have to reschedule.
Lauren started typing a response before giving up. If the caseworker were willing to drive Eddie’s mother there, she would’ve said so. Lauren wasn’t allowed to transport anyone, and she didn’t know enough about Orlando’s not-great public transportation system to be much help there.
One imperative Lauren had given herself before taking on this volunteer position was that she’d always be as honest as possible with Eddie. It had been one of the parts she’d struggled with the most when growing up in the foster care system—this idea that there was a big machine in charge of your care and sometimes you didn’t even know the most important details of your own life. It was tempting now to keep making excuses for his mother, to delay the point when she’d have to tell him that the woman wasn’t showing up. But she knew it would be better to get it over with.
“Eddie,” she said. “I’m really sorry, but it looks like your mom’s not going to make it tonight. She’s having trouble finding a ride.”
“We can go get her,” he said. “You have a car, right?”
Lauren shook her head. “I’m not allowed to do that. I’m sorry, Eddie.”
“This sucks,” Eddie said, slumping down in his seat. “This place sucks. You don’t even know any cool facts about cold stuff.”
Lauren couldn’t argue with him there. She hated this feeling of helplessness, of inadequacy. She’d advocated for Eddie to have more visits with his mother, and then his mother hadn’t shown up, leaving Lauren to wonder whether she’d done the right thing or just set up Eddie for more disappointment. She’d thought meeting up at Cold World would give them something fun to do together, but she couldn’t seem to find a way to make the outing enjoyable—from her lack of knowledge about how he liked his hot chocolate to her lack of knowledge about “cold stuff.” Eddie kept looking toward the ice skaters, but she couldn’t even offer to take him skating, because she’d never learned how.