Saturday, June 30, 2007
Chapter 1 - One Promise
Recurrent thoughts tumbled through Teresa Parker’s mind: a promise, a tragic accident, an orphaned child. But she pushed the scenes away and leaned against the railing on the back porch of her house. The eastern sky began to brighten as the first light of dawn appeared in shades of gray over the horizon. Wisps of steam trailed up from the hot mug of freshly brewed coffee that sat untouched beside her on the rail.
Birds flitted about in the branches of the swamp maples overhanging the briskly running creek that meandered through the back of her property. A week’s worth of rain had filled the stream at a time of year when it would normally be dry. A large deer stood at the water’s edge; its tail flicked nervously before it ducked its regal head and drank the cold water.
Teresa lifted the mug to her lips and carefully sipped the hot beverage. She tasted the brew and closed her eyes briefly, enjoying the peaceful solitude she came to look forward to at the beginning of each day.
The days just seemed to blend together in a blur of activity. They started with getting Brian ready for school, then working long hours on the latest construction project that demanded her attention, helping with assignments sent home from school, and taking care of the regular household chores before collapsing into bed exhausted each night.
Her hectic schedule left little time for her to consider her personal life. Last night, as she put away laundry, she got lost for a brief moment staring at an old picture she found lying in the bottom of a drawer.
The picture was one of Brian’s christening. Someone had taken it in the church when Teresa was holding Brian and was standing amid on either side by his parents—her brother, David, and his wife, Fran. Everyone was smiling and blissfully unaware of what fate held in store for them.
Again, the memory brought home, with devastating clarity, how much her and Brian’s lives had changed over the past two years.
After a few more minutes of quiet reflection, Teresa headed into the house. She turned on the faucet inside the shower. The pipes groaned briefly in protest and then spit out a steady stream of hot water. After she stripped off her sweats, she stepped beneath the running water and let it pound on her shoulders to lessen the ache in her muscles that she woke with each morning.
After showering quickly, she towel-dried her short, dark-brown hair. At one point, she had worn it much longer, but for practical purposes she preferred the wash and wear style better these days.
She dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, and well-worn work boots and then walked down the short hallway to Brian’s room.
Opening the door, she poked her head into the room. His body was curled up under the blanket, only the top of his head visible. She walked over and shook him gently.
“Brian, it’s time to wake up.”
He stretched and yawned, before answering. “Mornings start too early.”
“I know, but it’s time to get up.”
He grumbled his dissent and rolled over. “Do I have to?”
A hint of a smile twitched at the corner of her lips. “It’s a school day, so yes, you have to. Do you want cereal for breakfast?”
He slowly sat over the side of the bed and eyed the clothes he had chosen the night before with Teresa’s help.
“Cheerios.”
“Okay. Don’t take long to get dressed.”
When Brian walked into the kitchen ten minutes later carrying his sneakers, Teresa had finished another cup of coffee and set out two bowls and a box of cereal for them. She watched as Brian filled his bowl and then poured in the milk. The simple motions were a stark reminder of his father.
At six, Brian was the spitting image of Teresa’s brother, David. He had wavy dark hair, thick eyebrows, angular cheekbones, and hazel eyes that changed with his moods. The family resemblance between Teresa and Brian was unmistakable, and most people who didn’t know them well assumed he was her son and she, a single mom.
Teresa remembered when David asked her to be Brian’s legal guardian almost five years ago. Touched by the request, she felt honored, and of course, she accepted. She never gave the conversation with her brother another thought until three years later.
It was common for Brian to spend one weekend a month with Teresa, so David and Fran could have some time alone. What became a running joke between Teresa and Brian brought a bittersweet smile to Teresa’s face as she remembered.
“You’re my favorite aunt, Aunt Teresa.”
“Brian.” Teresa lifted him high into the air. “I’m your only aunt.”
“I know, but you’re still my favorite aunt.”
Teresa could VIVIDLY recall everything she did with Brian that particular weekend. After spending part of Saturday at a water park, she took him to a newly released movie he had been begging to see.
On Sunday, they went fishing, and Teresa remembered how excited Brian was about showing his father the large trout he caught.
That opportunity, tragically, never came.
When David and Fran were late returning, Teresa figured they hit Sunday traffic coming back from the Jersey Shore. She started to worry as the evening wore on, and there was still no word from them. After she got Brian off to bed, she made several phone calls to see if any family or friends had heard from them.
A hospital emergency room called her three hours after they were due home.
There had been a car accident. A drunk driver ran a red light at an intersection and plowed into David’s car. Both David and Fran had died.
In the blink of an eye, Brian’s and Teresa’s lives were irreversibly changed.
Teresa’s mother was overwhelmed with grief. Fran’s parents had been traveling, and it took a day just to track them down, so it was up to Teresa to make the funeral arrangements and console a boy whose world had just been destroyed.
Breaking the news to Brian was one of the hardest things she had ever done in her life, and the memory still brought tears to her eyes.
After the phone call from the hospital, Teresa called her best friends and fell apart crying on the phone. Rich Adams and his wife, Betty, arrived on Teresa’s front porch thirty minutes later, and the three of them hugged, cried, and talked long into the night about how to tell Brian.
In the end, Teresa went into the room where Brian was sleeping, sat on the edge of the bed, and watched him. He woke shortly after the sun brightened his room, and as soon as he saw Teresa, he asked the question she’d been dreading.
“Where are Mommy and Daddy?”
She tried not to cry, but the tears came anyway, and her heart felt like it was breaking with every word she uttered. “Brian, there was a car accident, and your mom and dad were hurt very badly.”
“Where are they?” He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes.
She held her arms out to him, and he crawled into her lap and rested his head against her chest. “The ambulance took them to a hospital. The doctors did everything they could, but they couldn’t save them.” She choked on the last words. “I’m so sorry, Brian. They both died.”
“When are they coming back?”
Teresa hugged him tighter and kissed the top of his head. “Oh, sweetie, Mommy and Daddy aren’t coming back. They’re in heaven now.”
Brian had simply started to cry.
For months after the funeral, Teresa suffered through the dark dreams that filled her nights and the bitter memories that sucked her down like quicksand without warning. Every day she woke up, there was that split second between sleep and full wakefulness when her mind played tricks on her, and she believed David and Fran were still alive, and Brian was just sleeping over.
At first, a few well-intentioned friends called frequently to see if there was anything they could do, but it was like having salt thrown on an open wound. So she learned to function alone despite the grief and despair.
There were days when the depression would crash down over her, and it took a great effort just to get out of bed.
For Brian’s sake, she continued going through the motions of daily life.
If all that wasn’t enough, six months after the funeral, Teresa’s lover ended their relationship. Despite their five years together, Erin was not about to put her life on hold to raise a child.
Devastated by the onslaught of emotional losses, Teresa buried her feelings and threw herself into working and providing Brian with a safe and loving home.
Subtly, over time, she sensed a change in how she felt. The feelings she had tried to banish from her heart became an insistent reminder of that soul-deep connectedness that human beings crave.
She wanted to share the simple things in life with someone, to feel that bond with another person. Someone to share a home-cooked meal with, someone to talk with about the ordinary matters that shaped their daily lives, and most important, someone who also had enough room in her heart to love Brian.
It wasn’t too much to ask out of life, was it?
Teresa cleared her throat and forced away the well of self-pity she was allowing herself to fall into. “Don’t forget, Brian, I’m working late, so Aunt Betty’s bringing you to her house for dinner.”
“I like going to Aunt Betty’s for dinner.” Brian tilted the bowl to his mouth and slurped the milk.
“I’m glad you do.” She ruffled his hair affectionately. “Go brush your teeth.”
After cleaning up from breakfast, putting dishes into the dishwasher, and making sure Brian had everything he needed for school, Teresa settled the backpack on his shoulders. At the front door, he reached up and Teresa gave him a hug.
“I love you, Brian.” She planted a kiss on his forehead.
“I love you, too, Teresa.”
Teresa walked him to the bus stop at the end of their street. Brian was too young and the walk just a little too far for Teresa to feel comfortable letting him go by himself. After the bus picked him up, she walked back home and got ready to drive her truck into town.
MADELINE GEDDES’S APARTMENT was quiet as she got ready to go to work. It was in stark contrast to the rowdy noise that surrounded her throughout the school day. While she waited for her kettle to boil, Maddy sliced cucumbers and tomatoes from the small garden she planted in the spring and tossed them with some lettuce in a plastic container for her lunch. When the kettle whistled, she poured the water into her travel mug and then gathered her tote bag full of lesson plans.
The first few weeks of the school year were exciting for her—meeting new students and enjoying their exuberant energy at seeing old friends and connecting with new ones. The eager young faces made her smile and reaffirmed her belief that she had made the right choice in becoming a teacher.
This year it was especially so, because she was new to the community and delighted with the opportunity to be starting her life over with a clean slate. For the first time since her relationship with Christine ended, she felt like she was finally emerging from the dark cloud of misery that had been hanging over her.
Their relationship had lasted nearly seven years. They met at college her senior year, lived together through the second semester, and moved into an apartment in New York City after graduation.
Maddy started teaching in a Manhattan public school, and Christine worked her way to junior partner at a prominent law firm on Park Avenue.
She still wasn’t quite sure what went wrong. Maybe, it was the long hours they worked or the vastly different worlds in which they moved. All she knew was that whatever had drawn them together and made her believe that this was forever had slipped away without much fanfare.
She could have accepted that they no longer loved each other, as painful as the realization was, but learning that Christine betrayed her long before by taking a new lover was too much for Maddy to bear. The clues were all there, but Maddy still listened in shock one evening as Christine announced that she was in love with someone else and was moving out.
The confrontation disintegrated into an ugly shouting match punctuated by Maddy throwing a ring Christine had given to her across the room and screaming at her to get the hell out.
That was over a year ago.
During that time, Maddy’s aunt died and left her some property in Morristown, New Jersey. Maddy considered moving there, and her older sister, Angela, encouraged her to look for a job teaching in one of the surrounding towns. It couldn’t have worked out better. She went on an interview and received an offer for a teaching position at Woodland Elementary School.
She had been saving money to buy a house, but one look at the old Dutch barn on her aunt’s property, and the view overlooking a small pond, and Maddy fell in love. With Angela’s help, she found a reputable contractor, Rich Adams, to work with.
Together, Maddy and Rich drew up plans to build a single family home on the open lot. He gave her a reasonable estimate for the project, and a little more than a week later they signed a contract.
Maddy liked Rich at once. He was completely professional and every few days brought her up to speed on what was happening. As permits and approvals were obtained, the day finally arrived when construction began.
That was in June. Through the summer as the excavation made way for the poured concrete foundation and framing, Maddy finished decorating the upstairs apartment over the barn, so she could live in it until the new house was ready.
Now that the school year had started, she had somewhere else to focus her energy. She looked forward to the challenge of making a difference in her students’ lives. She cherished the successes she shared with them because those moments tempered the times when she wasn’t able to connect with a student on a level that she wanted to.
Not all the students were as receptive to learning as others, but it didn’t stop her from trying.
She spent her evenings alone preparing lesson plans. Her favorite spot to visit on the weekends was Lewis Morris Park where she could hike or sit quietly at Sunrise Lake early in the day when it wasn’t too crowded. When she needed to escape from the din of daily life, she would drive to Hacklebarney State Park, enjoy a day beneath the canopy of tall trees, and soak in the roar of the sun-dappled waterfalls.
As she drove to the elementary school, Maddy’s thoughts turned to her class of first graders. They were a lively bunch with enthusiasm to spare. As usual, the students fell all along the continuum of where they should be academically and socially. Each and every one was special to her, but one child in particular struck a chord in her heart.
Brian Parker was a slender, quiet boy with dark, neatly groomed hair.
When the students chose their seats on the first day of school, she noticed that Brian gravitated to a desk closest to one of the windows overlooking the playground. She knew it could mean something as innocuous as the boy being a daydreamer, but Maddy also understood from her teaching experience that it could be a sign of other potential problems. That concerned her.
Brian was polite and a little shy, but what struck her most about him was the quiet air of sadness that seemed to emanate from deep within his soul. On one particular day, while she walked around the classroom as the students worked on an assignment, she saw Brian rest his head down on folded arms. Thinking he might be sick, Maddy knelt beside his desk. Tears were rolling down his face and a wet stain was growing on the sleeves of his sweatshirt.
“Brian, honey, what’s wrong? Are you sick?”
He shook his head and wiped away his tears.
“Can you tell me what’s making you cry?”
“I’m sad today,” was the painfully honest answer.
Since he wouldn’t tell her anything else, Maddy vowed to make a special effort to spend some time talking with him, so she could get to know him better.
It didn’t take long. After a week of working with all the kids on various assignments, Maddy realized that Brian was having difficulty focusing in class. Despite moving his seat away from the window and closer to the front of the class, she frequently had to remind him to focus his efforts on an activity the class was doing when it was obvious that his attention was elsewhere. She also noticed that he tended to shy away from the boisterous groups of kids at recess and often seemed lost amidst all the activity in a school day.
When she sat with him and worked one-on-one, Brian could listen and follow directions and he could read and write with some effort. But left to his own devices, he seemed incapable of finishing even the simplest of tasks.
After watching him struggle, Maddy decided to talk to his kindergarten teacher. She found the young woman in her classroom one day after school putting together a project for her class.
Miss Kathleen looked up at Maddy when she knocked on the door. “Come on in, Maddy. How are you?”
“Good, Kathleen. How’s your class coming along?”
“I have a good bunch of kids, so I’m hoping for a good year.”
“I need to ask you a question about one of your students from last year who’s in my class.”
“Brian Parker?”
“How did you know?”
“I figured you would be coming down here at some point to talk to me about him.” Kathleen opened her desk drawer, pulled out a folder, and handed it to Maddy. “Here, this will probably answer most of the questions you have.”
Maddy carefully opened the cover, and her eyes scanned over the words in the newspaper article. “Dear God. Why didn’t anyone tell me his parents were killed in a car accident?”
“It was more than two years ago. He had counseling after it happened. The principal here at the time felt it was in Brian’s best interest to focus on what was ahead of him and not dwell on the past, so that was what we did.”
Stunned, Maddy shook her head in dismay as she closed the folder and handed it back to Kathleen.
“You can keep it.”
“I don’t need to. I knew there was something wrong, but I had no idea it was something like this.”
Maddy’s heart ached when she realized the magnitude of what happened to Brian. In one devastating instant, his secure, familiar, nurturing world had been shattered.
Over the years, she had dealt with kids going through their parents’ divorce, a sick parent, and even a couple of cases that involved child abuse at home. They were all tragic, but maybe because of the losses she recently suffered, Maddy found that she was deeply affected and concerned about Brian. The signs of trouble were there, and she feared Brian would fall hopelessly behind if he didn’t get the help he needed. That was when she decided she needed to meet with his guardian, Teresa Parker, and figure out a way to help him.
Chapter 1 - One Promise
Coming November 2007
