“I will meet you at your car with your things.”
Scoffing and grumbling nasty things under her breath, she started around the side of the house. I hurried back inside, fisting my shaking hands after shutting and locking the patio door.
I glanced at Ryla. “Everything ok?”
Chocolate smeared across her face, Ryla nodded silently, her eyes watching me warily. I smiled brightly at her in what I hoped to be taken as reassurance, causing her to resume eating her last few bites of a donut. I had never been more grateful that she ate at sloth speed. I found what looked to be Clarice’s purse and went outside. Neither of us spoke as I held out her bag to her. But Clarice did give me one last grumbled salutation before leaving: “Good luck, frosty bitch.”
I stood outside long after her car drove down the driveway, past the gates and out of sight, feeling pressure behind my eyes for the second time today. But I wasn’t going to do it. I wasn’t going to cry.
My kids were inside the house, hurting, and looking to me to fix it. I had to pull myself together to have a chance at keeping everyone and everything together.
Even if I was more broken than they’d ever be.
* * *
“Mom?” Max was drawing with his favorite colored pencils at the island as I made dinner.
“Yeah, bud?”
“Does this mean we have to keep going to summer school?”
Leah had indeed worked her magic, and Ryla and Max were able to attend the Green Valley summer school day camps a few days per week since Mrs. Simon left. Leah’s plan to have Max stick close to her all day to help him with his anxiety was working well, all things considered.
This February, Max developed panic attacks anytime he, Ryla, or I left our apartment. It became so severe I ultimately pursued a pediatric intensive outpatient behavioral program for him. He’d made significant progress, but he still had trouble with leaving the house and finding the words to express himself. If I was being honest, I suspected there was something else underlying the anxiety, like an autism spectrum disorder. But at the time of his testing, anxiety was his main problem, so it was hard to determine anything else that may be contributing to his symptoms.
“I know I said you wouldn’t have to start school until this fall. But I’m so proud of you and how brave you are being every day,” I told Max.
Never one to take compliments, he continued looking down at his picture as his cheeks warmed. I put the meal in the oven to cook, then stood up and glanced around. Max was still coloring intently but Ryla, who was at the table last I checked, was missing. Max shook his head when I asked if he’d seen where his sister went. I still needed to talk to Ryla about what happened with Clarice today. I glanced at my watch. Dinner took forty minutes to cook. Then after dinner I had another hour of charting to finish on my computer, which consisted of finishing any medical notes, answering messages, reviewing results, and answering any staff messages that had come in. Once I finished that, I had my own personal emails to check, a few bills to pay, and a new weighted blanket to order for Max; his current one was too warm, so he’d begun kicking it off at night and wasn’t sleeping as well.
“Mom? Is it ok if I watch my tablet?” Max asked. Being on their tablets had become an unfortunate habit for both kids when I needed time at night to collect my sanity and get things done.
“Sure, just for a little while. I’m going to go talk to Ryla.”
I finally found the absconder in the basement theater room, which she had transformed into a couch cushion fort.
“Ryla?” She popped up from a hole in the middle of the cushions. “We need to talk about this afternoon.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly.
“I appreciate that, but we still need to talk about why it happened.”
Ryla threw her head back dramatically then disappeared like a gopher into her hidey-hole.
“It’s dangerous to leave the house without telling someone,” I yelled out. “You could get hurt or lost.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Her little voice came out muffled. “She was always looking at her phone and didn’t play and yelled at me and let Max be in his room all day!”
“What happened that made Clarice yell?”
Silence.
I paused. “Did she do something you didn’t like?”
More silence. Or maybe it was muttering.
“What was that?”
Ryla’s head suddenly appeared. “I SAID,she called me A STUPID BRAT!”
