Page 6 of Single Dad's Fake Bride
My throat tightened unexpectedly.
"He told you that?" Being there for a student sometimes meant helping them with difficult emotions, and I wondered if this was one of those times for me.
"Not exactly. But I can tell. He gets this look when he talks about when I was little. Like he was scared or something."
She moved to the bookshelf and straightened the spines with the same careful attention she'd used on the pencils and then glanced over her shoulder as she asked, "Do you have kids, Miss Quinn?"
"No, I don't."
"Do you want them someday?"
The question caught me off guard.
Most children didn't ask such personal questions, but Eloise had always been different—more observant, more direct in her curiosity about the adult world.
And she was very grown up too, probably the most mature child in this class.
I chalked that up to her life as an only child with no mother, but what did I know?
"I think I would," I said carefully. "But it's complicated."
She nodded as if this made perfect sense. "Everything good is complicated. That's what makes it worth it."
I stared at her, wondering where this philosophical nine-year-old had come from and how she'd learned to articulate things that took most adults decades to understand.
"Where did you live before you came to Hawthorne?" I asked.
"I've always been at Hawthorne…" She moved to the reading corner and fluffed the cushions methodically. "But I don't sleep here." Eloise stopped and looked up at me with full concentration. "He says children should sleep in their own beds down the hall from their own parents."
"What do you think?" I asked her, now more serious.
A student who didn't board here at the school must've felt like an outsider, especially one with Eloise's eccentricities.
It made me feel compassion for her.
She considered this with more seriousness than necessary, but that was just how she was.
"I like it here. I like my school, and my room, and the way Dad makes pancakes on Sunday mornings. But I don't think I'd like sleeping away from my dad." She paused, then added quietly, "But I like you too, Miss Quinn. You make learning feel fun instead of hard."
The simple honesty of it made my chest ache.
"You make teaching feel fun instead of hard."
She grinned, and for a moment she looked exactly like the child she was instead of the small adult she often seemed to be.
"We make a good team."
"We do indeed."
The sound of footsteps in the hallway interrupted our conversation.
Eloise's face lit up as she recognized the familiar cadence.
"That's my dad," she said, shouldering her backpack with a grin on her face. "He's always exactly on time."
Harrison Vale appeared in the doorway, and I registered it and moved past without dwelling on it.
He was tall and lean, dressed in dark jeans and a charcoal wool sport coat.
