As Olivia’s young class filed out the door, she erased the board and placed workbooks for the next class at each seat. She glanced repeatedly at the door as the next class trickled in, watching eagerly for Aditi to appear and take her seat, feeling like she might burst with excitement. She’d stayed up late the night before, reading the second Harry Potter book by candlelight. She imagined the girl’s face when she saw the book, knowing how it would light up with delight.
Her middle-grade students entered and took their seats, greeting her with shy smiles. She instructed them to continue their lessons and watched more intently for Aditi. No one had far to travel from one class to another in the tiny school, and the girl typically arrived right away.
Eventually she had to start class. Her eyes kept flicking to the door as she discussed the four seasons and weather in America. But Aditi never appeared.
When Mrs. Gupta signaled the end of class, Olivia met her in the hallway. “Aditi was absent today. I hope she’s not sick. Do you know?”
“She is not sick,” Mrs. Gupta said. “She will not be back.”
Olivia opened her mouth to ask for additional information, but Mrs. Gupta turned on her heel and spun away.
She continued through her classes, concern for Aditi gnawing at the back of her mind, fueled by Mrs. Gupta’s terse response about the girl’s wellbeing.
Chris showed up at her door when the last class of the day ended. He helped her erase the chalkboard, gather up supplies, and straighten the room. “I thought maybe we could run to the market before dinner? Go get a stockpile of candles for your room?”
“Oh, yes! I’d forgotten. Thanks for the reminder.”
He seemed atypically quiet on the drive. Normally she longed for silence, longed for the safety of keeping to herself. But today she found it unbearable.
“So, you’re a math major.” She already knew this bit of information. It was a statement, not a question. Something to break the stillness and hopefully lead to light conversation.
“Yes. Master’s degree. No PhD. Eventually I expect to teach. I had planned on community college, like you. But maybe I’ll check into high school math. The upper-level courses like Calculus. These kids are getting under my skin, you know?”
“I do know.” Warmth flooded through her at the discovery of more they had in common. “How long will you stay here?”
“I only planned to stay two months initially.”
Disappointment turned her stomach inside out, envisioning life here without him. How strange to think she’d disliked him such a short time ago when he picked her up at the bus station. She hadn’t considered how painful leaving behind friends would be. But then she hadn’t expected to form friendships. “Are you thinking of leaving earlier now?”
He laughed softly. “I’ve been here a year already, so no.”
“Oh. Oh!” She let that sink in. “Not to be rude—and please tell me if it’s not my business—but how?”
They’d arrived at the market. He parked and turned to her, stretching an arm along the back of the seat. “What do you mean?”
He’d drawn up one leg, his posture and gentle demeanor so relaxed it would put even the most hardened attitude at ease. She tried to ignore how adorable he was in the male version of shalwar kameez. Averting her eyes, she debated how to discreetly ask her question. She couldn’t, so she just went for it. “Are you independently wealthy? I mean—”
His laughter filled the car. “Oh, boy. I wish.” His face fell, and he looked away.
She recognized that turning inward, going somewhere else mentally, somewhere unpleasant and painful. She should have left him alone. Prying into other people only dislodged their pain. Chris normally maintained such a bright, positive outlook, she’d assumed he hadn’t been through anything horrible. His smile and eagerness to help labeled him a fortunate soul in her mind, someone unmarred by tragedy and abuse. But the look on his face she’d just witnessed made clear she’d been wrong. She opened her door and started to get out. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”
He rested a hand on her arm. “No, no. It’s okay. You’re a fellow volunteer. You know our housing and basic meals are free. Our living expenses are extremely low once we get set up.”
“Sure. I get it. I paid for my travel over here out of some . . . money I’d saved up.”
“Me too. And I lived frugally during graduate school, kept loans to an absolute minimum, worked part time as a teaching assistant, got financial aid and grants, so I didn’t have a lot of debt weighing me down. It doesn’t take much to keep going.”
“Well, sure. But we need a little money, right? I mean, I’m using up savings to be here, but that’s finite. Eventually I’ll need to go back and work. Did you just have a lot saved up?”
He laughed again. “No. In fact I’m using this hiatus to work on paying off my loans, while our financial responsibilities are so negligible.”
“But—”
“I tutor students,” he explained. “It pays reasonably well. The income is enough to live on here and still make student loan payments.”
“By tutoring? I didn’t think anyone around here could afford something like that.”
“Oh, no! I tutor online. Students back in America. At night here, after dinner but before bed, it’s morning there and I can answer last-minute questions and offer tips before they head to school. Then I get up early in the morning and catch them after school. I make myself available to anyone who needs homework help for a few hours.”
She never would have guessed. His work ethic was incredible. “Wow. You work a lot. Really.”
“It’s worth it. Doesn’t pay a fortune, but it pays. And I’ve always had to make money stretch, so it’s no big deal.” He glanced away again.
“Me too,” she confided. “Things are so cheap here. It feels strange being able to afford things. My mom would—” She stopped herself, not ready to share too much personal information yet.
“Yeah. Mine would too. Except she’s distracted with other things now.” He clenched a fist, squeezing his eyes tight. When he opened them again, he smiled. “Sorry. Shall we?”
They meandered through the market, stopping at stalls and perusing the proffered wares of the vendors, even those who didn’t offer candles. She got the feeling Chris needed to decompress, that he perhaps needed a break. But the silence weighed on her.
“Do you think the tutoring service needs English tutors, too?” Hoping to lure him back into conversation, she dangled the most recent topic in front of him.
“Oh, yeah! Definitely. You want to try it?”
“A source of income is extremely tempting.”
“I’ll email you the info. The only frustrating thing is when we lose power. The dial-up internet is always a little slow, and you’ll pay per minute. But it’s a negligible expense. Losing power is the worst. I stay as caught up as possible, as a safeguard. But still, from time to time I miss an assignment or question when I can’t get online. I hate that. Hate leaving my kids hanging. You know?”
She did. And she saw him in an entirely new light. Flustered with the increased heartrate he seemed to be prompting, she nodded and looked away. She simply was not ready to deal with that.
“Here we go. Candles!” he said.
She picked up several boxes along with some candlesticks and insisted on paying, even though he offered. “I already owe you,” she reminded him. “And now that I know you’re on a fixed income—”
“Hey, now! Them’s fightin’ words. Disparaging a man’s net worth is nearly as bad as calling him short. Or husky. Or weak.”
She twisted her face into a frown and looked up at him. “You’re not any of those things so why would I?”
He curled an arm. “I used to go to the gym regularly. None around here. I’ve definitely lost some muscle mass this past year.”
He’d lost muscle mass? He looked pretty darned good. “A buff mathematician? You’re supposed to wear glasses and a pocket protector and be a skinny little nerd.” She laughed and elbowed him, then looked away. What was she doing? Was she flirting? Was he? Why else would he flex for her and apologize for his physique—which did not require any apology.
They arrived back at the car. He opened the door for her before getting into the driver’s seat. She still hadn’t adjusted to sitting on the opposite side of the car.
“It was just my mom and me growing up,” he said as he pulled into traffic.
“Me too,” she admitted. “In fact, I moved back in with her about a year ago, after—”
Silence hung between them for several minutes.
“I can tell you don’t want to share,” he said. “I get the feeling something bad happened and you needed to get far away too.”
Too?
“I really, really hope no one put their hands on you.” He squeezed the steering wheel, and she saw his jaw tighten.
“It’s not that. I promise. At least not recently.”
He relaxed a little. “Not recently?”
“My dad . . .” She shrugged and stared out the window. “My mom was his primary target, not me. I don’t really like to talk about it. Sorry.”
“I tried to keep it secret, too, when I was little. The whole reason I started going to the gym was to be strong for her. He’s not my bio dad. Never knew him. But after a string of shitty boyfriends, she let the shittiest of all move in. He won’t marry her, but she won’t throw him out. No matter what he does. This has gone on for years. Last year, he put her in the hospital.”
“Oh, my God! Is she okay?” Though her father had terrorized her mother, he had never hurt her so badly it put her in the hospital. She supposed she should be grateful for that. But it wasn’t any underlying compassion that stayed his hand. He didn’t want hard proof of his abuse.
“She was, once they stitched her up. I called the cops to have his ass thrown in jail. But she wouldn’t press charges. They released him, he went right back, and she let him in. She called me for help. She always called me for help. Locked herself in the bathroom and called me, crying, pleading for me to come handle it. Same thing we’d been doing for years. And I went. I always went. I told her to stay in the bathroom and wait for me to get there. But she didn’t listen. When I got there, he was smacking her around. She was still black and blue from the last beating and there he was smacking her around again. I hit him. Knocked him on his ass.”
“Good,” she said through gritted teeth. His story had propelled her back in time and pulled up old recordings of Dad throwing Mom around. Her fists clenched, nails digging into her palms, itching to pummel her father for what he’d done to them both. But she remembered her inability to change anything, too. She wished someone had been there to knock her dad on his ass back then and put a stop to it.
Chris glanced at her. “You’ve been there. I can tell. Here’s the thing though. After I pulled him off and punched him, she threw herself over him and yelled at me to get out before she called the police on me.”
“What? How could she do that? It doesn’t make any sense. She called you!”
He nodded, a grim half-smile on his face. “I’d been seeing a counselor and finally accepted what she’d been telling me. I can’t save my mom. My mom has to decide she wants better for herself and until she does, we will keep going through the same cycle over and over. Because I can’t tell her no when she calls me crying.”
“Who could? You’d be a pretty callous jerk.”
“But I can’t fix her problem. She has to throw that man out. And I had to stop running to her rescue.”
She saw where the story was leading. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Hardest decision I ever had to make. Mom wouldn’t break the cycle, so I had to. I can’t run across town at her beck and call anymore. It was killing me slowly, seeing her like that. My counselor said it’s the same with family members of addicts. We want to help, but ultimately we can’t stop them from making bad decisions.”
He’d run away too. And if she was honest with herself, from a far worse situation. She’d misjudged him. “Is she . . . okay?”
They’d arrived back at the school complex. He parked the car and turned to face her. “I don’t know. I severed all contact with her when I came. And maybe that’s part of the reason I stay. Maybe I’m scared to go back, afraid of what I’ll find.”
“I’m so sorry.” She didn’t know what else to say.
“Tisha is a good listener. I talk to her some. She’s a counselor, you know.”
“Yes. She told me. I think she was trying to get me to open up to her.”
“Well, whatever you’ve been through, she can help. At least a little. I mean, I still struggle with guilt. But . . .” He shrugged. “Shall we go inside?”
He was finished talking, she could tell when he opened the door and got out. The little car had functioned as confessional, and now they were moving on. But she could not absolve Chris of the heavy burden he carried.
Guilt. She knew how grappling with that day in and day out wore you down, exhausted you in a wrestling match of sorts. Her own guilt always pinned her. She’d never yet bested it.
She got out of the car too, and grabbed his arm as he passed her by, staring at the ground. His brow furrowed. Without a word, she opened her arms wide and threw them around him, pulling him into a fierce hug. He didn’t deserve to suffer from his mother’s behavior.
He rested his head on her shoulder, relaxing into the embrace, and curled his arms around her in return. “Thanks.”
She didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. Or maybe she did. Her jumbled thoughts yelled at the emotions churning in her guts to get their act together and knock it off. She didn’t know what she wanted. For that matter she didn’t know what he wanted. But he needed to know the truth. “I . . . uh—I’m divorced,” she confided, waiting for him to stiffen in response.
Instead, he shrugged. “We’re all adults with lives. People our age generally have been married. Or come close at least. I never got that serious with anyone because my mom got jealous anytime I dated someone.”
“Jealous?” She tried to imagine her mom jealous of Scott instead of supporting them and encouraging them to seek help, to lean on each other during troubled times. On the contrary, Scott had been jealous of Mom.
“Yep. Another woman took my attention away from her.”
Sounded like his mom had some pretty serious emotional issues, in addition to the codependent relationship. But perhaps that wasn’t surprising. What did it matter anyway? She wasn’t here to get entangled with anyone. She came to escape emotional baggage, not to pile more onto the heap. Until she made peace with her own demons, the worst of which she had not shared with Chris, she would not become ensnared in someone else’s.