Chapter 2 - The Same Woman, Every Time
Then, on a Tuesday afternoon, while I was picking Caleb up from school, Ms. Dunlap stopped me.
"Hi, Melissa. Do you have a minute?"
"Of course," I said, leaving Caleb with another teacher who was watching the last few kids waiting on parents.
I had no idea that a stack of crayon drawings was about to unravel everything I thought I understood about my son's afternoons.
I sat down across from her in the empty classroom, coat still on, car keys clutched in my hand. She had that careful look teachers get right before they say something delicate.
"Thanks for staying. I wanted to show you something." She spread Caleb's drawings across the desk like a deck of cards. Waffles with his crooked tail. Our house with its crooked chimney. Caleb in a red cape.
"Has Caleb ever mentioned someone new in his life?" she asked.
I smiled, because of course he hadn't — he told me everything. "No. Why?"
She tapped the corner of one drawing, then another, then another. My smile started to fade as I followed her finger. The same woman appeared in every single picture. Standing behind Caleb. Sitting on a bench near the school's front gate. A small figure in a red scarf, watching my son from the sidewalk by the crosswalk.
I frowned. "I thought she was just someone he made up."
Ms. Dunlap shook her head and opened a folder I hadn't noticed sitting in the corner of the desk. More drawings slid out — ones I'd never seen before.
"I asked him about her back in the fall," she said quietly. "He told me she had gray hair and gave him butterscotch candies. Very grandma-like, so I assumed she was a relative, an aunt, a family friend, someone I'd just never met. But after months of seeing the same woman in every single drawing, I finally pulled his emergency contact card last week to double-check. Nothing matched. That's when I knew I had to ask you."
The woman showed up in the park, at the classroom window, on the school steps, in our own front yard. Always watching him.
"I've never seen her before in my life," I whispered.
Ms. Dunlap didn't answer right away. She reached under the folder and slid out one last drawing, pushing it slowly toward me across the desk. Caleb had drawn himself holding the woman's hand, standing near the bench by the school gate. Above their heads, in his careful, wobbly kindergarten letters, he'd written seven words.
She always waits for me after school.
I felt my heart stop. The room suddenly felt too small and too warm. I could hear my own pulse in my ears.
"Melissa," she said gently. "If that isn't a relative — who is she?"
I couldn't answer. I couldn't even breathe evenly. I just stared at the drawing, at my son's little handwriting, at a hand I didn't recognize wrapped around his.
"How long has she been in these?" I finally managed.
Ms. Dunlap flipped through the folder. "The earliest one I can find is from October. So... about four months."
Four months. Four months of me pulling up late because of the new schedule, the new everything. Four months of my son waiting somewhere I wasn't.
"Has he seemed scared? Upset? Anything?" I asked.
May you like
"That's the thing," she said carefully. "He seems calm about her. Happy, even. That's part of why I didn't push earlier — I genuinely thought she was someone you knew."
"Thank you for telling me," I said, gathering the drawings into a shaky stack. "I'm going to figure this out."
