Page 32 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

She made coffee, very strong coffee, and drank a little bit too much before she went to get Benny up.

He grumbled the whole time. But she managed to get some oatmeal in his system, and trundle him out the door in time to drive slowly over to the one-room schoolhouse.

Her heart rattled around like a caged bird when they approached the blue building.

There were kids pouring into the building, but there weren’t any parents. She wondered if most of the children walked. There were quite a few of them Benny’s age, and she was grateful for that.

A pretty, dark-haired woman was standing in the doorway, and Elizabeth got out of her car to greet her. “Hi,” she said. “You must be Elizabeth. I’m Tala Everett.” She looked down at Benny. “And you must be Benny. You can call me Mrs. Everett.”

“This is the whole school?” Benny asked.

“Yes. And we go on a lot of adventures here. The school is so small we get to do a lot of special things. You’re going to have a lot of fun.”

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t know if he needs...”

“I have everything he needs. I’m so lucky that all the families here put so much into the schooling.”

“That’s... That’s wonderful.”

And she was feeling more and more at ease with all of it as the moments ticked by.

Because the teacher seemed so nice, and the school was quaint, and there were only a handful of children, all different ages, and she was confident that Benny would get just the right kind of attention here.

She knew that he was hesitant, and she understood that. New schools were never easy. When she’d been young she’d changed schools all the time. The hazards of foster care.

She blinked, and she did her best not to think too far back. There was no point to it. This was now. And she had Benny now. And he had her.

He always would.

Sure, things were a little more back-and-forth than she wanted, and it had really upset her at first that he was going to have to move between houses at all. But that was her own baggage. Her situation hadn’t involved moving between two stable parents.

Stability mattered more than traditional family. She knew that well.

The only time she’d ever had real stability was when Denise Newton had taken her in for the last three years of high school.

She had been an older woman with no children, and had seen a TV spot about the crisis in the foster care system, and had taken Elizabeth in. She’d been the most steady influence Elizabeth had, other than Carter’s mother.

Her death when Elizabeth had been nineteen had been devastating. But she was always grateful for the years she’d had with something like her own family. And maybe it had been part of what had spurred her to marry Carter and...

She was going to not think about that.

“You okay, Benny?” she asked, trying to look as upbeat as possible, and not at all nervous.

“Yeah,” he said, shifting his backpack on his shoulders.

“Come on, Benny,” said Mrs. Everett. “Let’s go.” And Benny followed the pretty young teacher into the building, with a cautious smile on his face.

Elizabeth felt...untethered. She was used to Benny being in school at this point, and given her busy schedule, she frankly looked forward to the school year at the end of every summer. But it had something to do with being in this new place. This new place that she had chosen. This new place that was better.

She took a deep breath, trying to shift the weight from her chest. The guilt.

She didn’t know why the more distant past was on her mind right now. She had done a pretty good job of not obsessing about it. She’d had a full-on PTSD panic attack the first time she had walked into the apartment that she moved into after separating from Carter. It had reminded her too much of foster care.

Of being moved on when she wasn’t ready.

Sometimes, going from somewhere nice to somewhere small and cramped and terrible. The good places had never lasted as long as she would’ve liked. They were like vacations, she’d tried to tell herself.

But her life with Carter wasn’t supposed to be a vacation. It was supposed to be her life. Her real, permanent life. But it hadn’t been. Any more than one of those lives that she’d stepped into during her time in care. She hated those thoughts. They made her feel as sad as she sounded. Reminded her too much of being that tragic little girl with a garbage bag.

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