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Sandra left adult Sunday school under the pretense of using a restroom. She didn’t actually announce this, of course, but she knew that’s what everyone assumed she was doing. Why else would she leave in the middle of class? Well, to snoop around and make sure no one was picking on her son—that’s why.
Trying to be invisible, she peeked through the small window in Peter’s classroom door. Unfortunately, Peter sat facing the window, and she jerked her face out of his view. Though her body had loosened up immensely, this sudden change of motion caused muscles she didn’t even know she had to cry out in protest.
Deep breath. He hadn’t seen her. But she hadn’t seen anything.
She couldn’t resist the temptation of a second look. She slid one eye toward the glass and immediately made eye contact with her son. She jerked her face away from the pane again. This was silly. She still hadn’t seen anything. And there was no need to be sneaky, now that she’d been caught, as Peter appeared to be the only one facing the window. So she just blatantly looked inside.
It was evident that her son was furious with her. She didn’t care. He sat alone on one side of the table, with his tablet in front of him. Two girls sat on an adjacent side, pressed so closely together they seemed to be wearing the same outfit. And there were Jack and Ethan, on the opposite side of the table. The scene looked amicable enough, but Sandra’s stomach was unsettled. Something was amiss, whether she could see it or not.
She heard a familiar noise, but by the time she placed it, it was too late. The door swung open, and the bottom ridge of the window smashed her in the face. She cried out, more in surprise than in pain, though it had certainly hurt, and staggered backward. The teacher appeared in the doorway. Where had she been lurking? And why was Jack’s mother teaching Peter’s Sunday school class?
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Casey said, sounding sincere enough.
“Tis okay,” Sandra said through her nose, sounding like she’d suddenly come down with a terrible head cold.
Casey motioned toward the open doorway, as if Sandra had been trying to come inside, maybe even preparing to knock like a normal, polite person would, before the collision had occurred.
“No, thank you,” Sandra said, pulling her hand away from her face, hoping that would take away some of the new overpowering nasal quality. “I just needed to talk to Peter.”
He looked surprised, but unbothered by this news. He grabbed his tablet and was standing beside her outside of the classroom in less than a second. She smiled at him and turned to walk away. As expected, he followed. She opened the door to the stairwell, and they both stepped inside.
As soon as the door clicked shut behind them, Peter whispered, “What are you doing?”
“I was just checking on you!”
“I don’t need checking on. I’m not a baby!”
“I know that, honey. Why is Jack’s mother teaching your class?”
Peter shrugged. “Mr. Emmons is sick, I guess. It’s okay, though. Jack is better when she’s around.”
“So they’re not giving you any trouble today?”
Peter looked at the carpet.
This was ridiculous. She wasn’t sending him back in there. “You want to go get a coffee?”
He wrinkled up his nose. “Not really.”
She knew he thought she meant a weak coffee from the dirty coffee pot in the church kitchen, and he didn’t even drink coffee. She snickered. “No, I mean a real coffee from Dunkin’, and I meant that I would be the one drinking it.”
He smiled. “Can I get a donut?”
“If you don’t tell your sister. I’ve got to go grab my purse. Meet you in the car.”
He vanished up the stairs, taking three of them at a time.
She didn’t really want to return to Sunday school to retrieve her purse and then disappear again, but she thought the price was worth the gain of spending time with Peter and keeping him away from Jack and Ethan. Besides, she could get a donut too. She’d earned one, after all the calories she’d burned the day before, right?