Bentley sat at the kitchen table with the blue jar in front of him.
He had placed it beside the telephone, just as he had asked to do.
Every so often, he moved it a little closer to himself.
He never opened it.
Maddie sat on the floor with her toys spread around her knees.
She had forgotten about the jar almost as soon as we returned.
That was one of the things about being three years old.
A child could ask a question that frightened everyone in the room, then become interested in a toy a minute later.
Bentley couldn't do that.
He kept watching the telephone.
I busied myself in the kitchen because I didn't want him to feel that I was studying him.
I rinsed the glasses.
I wiped a spot of syrup from the table.
I put the remaining pancakes away, though there were only a few left.
When I turned around, Bentley was still sitting exactly where he had been.
“Would you like to do something for a while?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“Anything you enjoy.”
He looked at the jar.
“I don't know.”
“Would you like to draw with Maddie?”
He glanced toward his sister.
“She doesn't like sharing the crayons.”
“I can find another set.”
He considered that, then shook his head.
“Maybe later.”
I didn't press him.
I took a book from the shelf and sat in the chair across from him.
I tried to read, but I found myself looking up whenever he moved.
The telephone remained silent.
After a while, Bentley leaned forward.
“Do you think the hospital knows we're waiting?”
I closed the book.
“I told them what I knew.”
“But do they know we're here?”
“I explained that you're staying with me.”
He rubbed the edge of the jar's lid with one finger.
“Did you tell them Mom has two kids?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell them Maddie is only three?”
“Yes, Bentley. I told them.”
He nodded.
I could see that he wanted to ask more, but he was trying to make his questions sound small.
“Do you think they forgot?”
“I don't know what has happened on their end,” I said. “But I haven't forgotten, and I won't stop asking.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he leaned back in his chair.
“All right.”
I wanted to tell him that adults sometimes failed to communicate, that offices could be busy, and that getting information could take time.
But none of those explanations would have helped him.
He didn't need a lesson about how systems worked.
He needed someone to keep working through them while he was allowed to be a child.
I returned to my book.
A few minutes later, Maddie came to the table carrying a toy with one wheel missing.
“Arlene, fix it?”
I took the toy from her and examined it.
The wheel had come loose, but it wasn't broken.
I pressed it back into place.
Maddie smiled and ran away with it.
Bentley watched her go.
“She thinks everything can be fixed,” he said.
“That's a good thing to think when you're little.”
He looked down at the jar.
“What if it can't?”
I set the book aside again.
“Then we find out what we can do next.”
He frowned slightly.
“That doesn't fix it.”
“No,” I said. “Sometimes it doesn't.”
He seemed surprised that I would admit that.
I had spent the morning trying to offer reassurance without pretending I knew more than I did.
It wasn't easy.
I was used to giving people practical answers.
I was used to believing that a problem could be made smaller by finding the right words or taking the right step.
But there was no sentence I could give Bentley that would make six silent days disappear.
There was no simple explanation for a mother who had gone to the hospital and hadn't come home.
So I sat with him.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Maddie began singing to herself on the floor.
She repeated the same little tune, changing the words whenever she forgot them.
Bentley listened.
A faint smile appeared on his face, then vanished.
“She sings when she's happy,” he said.
“She's happy right now.”
“Yeah.”
He watched her push the toy across the rug.
“Mom sings, too.”
“What does she sing?”
“Anything. Sometimes she makes up songs.”
He looked toward the window.
“She sings when she can't find her keys.”
I remembered him telling me that before.
I pictured Amber moving around her kitchen, searching through her bag while her children laughed at her.
I tried not to turn that picture into a promise.
“Do you remember one of her songs?” I asked.
Bentley shook his head.
“Not really. She changes them.”
“That sounds like something a mother would do.”
He almost smiled again.
Then he looked at the telephone.
I let him.
The afternoon moved slowly.
I offered him lunch, and he ate more than he had the day before.
He still glanced at Maddie's plate, but he didn't try to move food from his own to hers.
When she asked for another piece of bread, he started to get up.
I touched his arm gently.
“I'll get it.”
He stopped.
For a second, he looked as if he might argue.
Then he sat down again.
It was a small thing.
I knew better than to expect it to change everything.
But it was one small thing he no longer had to do.
After lunch, I washed the dishes while Bentley sat at the table with Maddie.
She had decided the blue jar was a house for one of her toys.
Bentley quickly moved the toy away.
“Don't put that there.”
Maddie looked offended.
“It's a house.”
“That's not a house.”
“Why?”
“Because it's Mom's money.”
She stared at the jar.
Then she looked at me.
“Is it money?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Can I have some?”
“No, sweetheart. We keep it safe for now.”
She accepted that answer more easily than I expected.
She carried her toy back to the rug and began making a house out of two cushions instead.
Bentley watched her.
“Sorry,” he said quietly.
“For what?”
“For being mean.”
“You weren't trying to be mean. You were worried about the jar.”
He touched the lid again.
“I don't want anything to happen to it.”
“I understand.”
I dried my hands and stood beside him.
“We'll keep it safe.”
He nodded.
Then he asked whether we could leave the telephone where it was.
I told him we could.
The blue jar stayed beside it for the rest of the afternoon.
Whenever I walked past the table, I saw them together.
One was something Amber had left behind.
The other was something we were still waiting to hear.
Neither gave us an answer.
PART 13 END
Click here to continue reading: PART 14: I Had Promised Bentley I Would Keep Asking Questions, but I Could Not Tell Him How Much of the Truth Was Still Missing
I Thought My Neighbor’s Boy Just Needed a Bathroom, Until One Quiet Morning Revealed What He Had Been Hiding
Part 13 of 20
