After breakfast, I walked the children back to their house.<\/p>\n
I wanted to see what else they might need.<\/p>\n
Bentley stayed close to Maddie.<\/p>\n
He held the front door open for her and waited until she had stepped inside before following.<\/p>\n
The house was quiet.<\/p>\n
Not peaceful.<\/p>\n
Quiet in the way a place becomes when the person who usually fills it is missing.<\/p>\n
I went into the kitchen.<\/p>\n
The refrigerator still stood dark and silent.<\/p>\n
I opened it again, although I already knew what I would find.<\/p>\n
Mustard.<\/p>\n
Ketchup.<\/p>\n
The two shriveled apples.<\/p>\n
The spoiled food in the plastic container.<\/p>\n
I closed the door.<\/p>\n
I wasn't going to let the children eat anything from it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBentley, where's the blue jar your mom mentioned?\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed toward the counter.<\/p>\n
It sat near a stack of unopened mail.<\/p>\n
The jar was blue glass, with a metal lid that didn't quite fit.<\/p>\n
I lifted it.<\/p>\n
There was money inside.<\/p>\n
I didn't count it.<\/p>\n
It was Amber's money, left for her children, and I had no intention of treating it as mine to manage.<\/p>\n
I set it back where I found it.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid your mom tell you what to do with this?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said it was for food.\u201d<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou did what you could.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked toward the refrigerator.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought there was food.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had believed his mother.<\/p>\n
Of course he had.<\/p>\n
When she told him there would be food in the freezer, he had expected to find it.<\/p>\n
When she said she would return, he had waited.<\/p>\n
When she said she would call someone if she couldn't come home, he had believed that help would arrive.<\/p>\n
Nothing about that was foolish.<\/p>\n
He had been a child trying to follow instructions from the person he trusted most.<\/p>\n
I walked through the kitchen and looked toward the living room.<\/p>\n
A few toys lay scattered across the floor.<\/p>\n
Maddie's small shoes sat beside the couch.<\/p>\n
A blanket had been folded over the armrest.<\/p>\n
Nothing looked dramatic.<\/p>\n
Nothing announced that two children had been left alone.<\/p>\n
That was part of what troubled me.<\/p>\n
If I had walked past the house without knowing, I might have assumed Amber was simply out.<\/p>\n
The place looked lived in.<\/p>\n
It looked ordinary.<\/p>\n
But the ordinary details had changed meaning.<\/p>\n
The empty refrigerator.<\/p>\n
The untouched mail.<\/p>\n
The telephone that had not rung.<\/p>\n
I glanced toward the hallway.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere does Maddie sleep?\u201d<\/p>\n
Bentley pointed to the back bedroom.<\/p>\n
I walked to the doorway.<\/p>\n
Maddie had followed us and was standing beside her brother.<\/p>\n
Her small bed was neatly made.<\/p>\n
A stuffed animal rested against the pillow.<\/p>\n
I didn't go farther into the room.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to make the children feel as though I was searching their home for evidence of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
I wanted to understand what they needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHas Maddie been sleeping all right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Bentley nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cMostly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes she wake up looking for Mom?\u201d<\/p>\n
He hesitated.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you tell her?\u201d<\/p>\n
He rubbed the back of his neck.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat Mom is coming home.\u201d<\/p>\n
I had to look away.<\/p>\n
He had been repeating the same promise to his sister that he had been repeating to himself.<\/p>\n
He had no way of knowing when Amber would return.<\/p>\n
He had only her words from that first night.<\/p>\n
I crouched beside Maddie.<\/p>\n
\u201cSweetheart, would you like to come back to my house for a while?\u201d<\/p>\n
She looked at Bentley.<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
Then she reached for my hand.<\/p>\n
I took her back across the yard.<\/p>\n
Bentley followed with his backpack still on his shoulders.<\/p>\n
He hadn't taken it off since arriving that morning.<\/p>\n
I noticed that now.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he had been ready to leave at any moment.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he had been afraid that if he settled down, something would happen and he wouldn't be prepared.<\/p>\n
At my house, I put the kettle on.<\/p>\n
Maddie sat on the floor with a few toys I kept in a basket near the living room.<\/p>\n
Bentley stood by the kitchen window.<\/p>\n
\u201cWould you like to take your backpack off?\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked surprised by the question.<\/p>\n
Then he slipped it from his shoulders and set it beside the chair.<\/p>\n
I watched him do it.<\/p>\n
He looked smaller without it.<\/p>\n
I wondered how long he had been carrying that bag around as if it were the only thing he could count on.<\/p>\n
I made sandwiches.<\/p>\n
Nothing special.<\/p>\n
Bread, cheese, and a little butter.<\/p>\n
Maddie ate hers in small bites.<\/p>\n
Bentley finished his and asked if he could have another.<\/p>\n
I gave him one without comment.<\/p>\n
He didn't try to save half for his sister this time.<\/p>\n
I was glad.<\/p>\n
After lunch, I sat beside him.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you tell me a little more about the last time your mom called?\u201d<\/p>\n
He picked at a loose thread on the chair.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou said she sounded sleepy.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWas she upset?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don't think so.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid she sound like she was in pain?\u201d<\/p>\n
He thought about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid she say she was going to call again?\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said she'd try.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd she hasn't?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cSometimes I thought I heard the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven when it wasn't ringing?\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
I understood then that he had been listening for it constantly.<\/p>\n
Every time the house made a sound, he must have wondered whether Amber was calling.<\/p>\n
Every time he passed the telephone, he must have checked it.<\/p>\n
Six days of silence could feel much longer to a child who was waiting for one particular voice.<\/p>\n
I reached for my own telephone.<\/p>\n
I checked whether the hospital had returned my call.<\/p>\n
There was nothing.<\/p>\n
I didn't like waiting.<\/p>\n
But I knew I had to be patient long enough to get reliable information.<\/p>\n
I could not invent an explanation for Amber's silence.<\/p>\n
I could not tell Bentley she was fine when I didn't know.<\/p>\n
And I couldn't let the children return to an empty house simply because I hoped the situation would resolve itself.<\/p>\n
I put the phone down.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I thought about Amber's childhood again.<\/p>\n
Three homes in four years.<\/p>\n
I had never asked her for the details.<\/p>\n
She had spoken about it once, and I had listened.<\/p>\n
Now her fear seemed to have passed to her son.<\/p>\n
Bentley believed that if the wrong people learned what had happened, he and Maddie might be separated.<\/p>\n
He had made himself responsible for keeping that from happening.<\/p>\n
He was ten.<\/p>\n
I couldn't stop thinking about that.<\/p>\n
At his age, Ray and I had worried about schoolwork, scraped knees, and whether we could stay up late on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Bentley had been trying to manage a household.<\/p>\n
I looked at him sitting beside the window.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you understand that none of this is your fault?\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded automatically.<\/p>\n
I wasn't convinced.<\/p>\n
\u201cI'm serious.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou didn't cause your mom to get hurt. You didn't make her stay in the hospital. And you didn't do anything wrong by telling me.\u201d<\/p>\n
His eyes grew wet.<\/p>\n
I let the words settle.<\/p>\n
He didn't need another lecture.<\/p>\n
He needed someone to repeat the truth until he could begin to believe it.<\/p>\n
I got up and checked on Maddie.<\/p>\n
She was arranging her toys in a row.<\/p>\n
When I asked what she was doing, she told me they were waiting for their mother.<\/p>\n
I sat beside her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sounds like a long wait.\u201d<\/p>\n
She nodded.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what else to say.<\/p>\n
So I stayed with her until she moved on to another game.<\/p>\n
The afternoon passed slowly.<\/p>\n
I kept the telephone close.<\/p>\n
I kept the children close.<\/p>\n
And every time I looked toward the kitchen counter, I thought about the blue jar next door.<\/p>\n
Amber had tried to leave them something useful.<\/p>\n
But money in a jar couldn't replace an adult.<\/p>\n
Food in a freezer couldn't explain what to do when a child became frightened.<\/p>\n
A promise to call couldn't help when the call never came.<\/p>\n
I had spent years believing that being a good neighbor meant offering help when someone asked.<\/p>\n
Now I knew that sometimes a child could need help so badly that he didn't know how to ask for it.<\/p>\n
And sometimes, the hardest part was noticing before he gave up trying.<\/p>\n
After breakfast, I walked the children back to their house. I wanted to see what else they might need. Bentley stayed close to Maddie. He held the front door open … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36389"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36409,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36389\/revisions\/36409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}