Lessons From a Younger Lover by Zuri Day Page B

the little Miss Bossy child that was Isis Blake, but the truth of the matter was Gwen simply adored her. It had been love at first sight when on the first day of school, Isis had shushed the class and commanded they give the new teacher their attention. Even more intriguing than seeing a six-year-old with all the confidence and poise of someone much older was the fact that everyone not only listened but also obeyed.
    Isis was a very intelligent child. This fact was also readily apparent within the first hour Gwen had arrived in the classroom at Sienna. She finished her lessons quickly and possessed a highly developed vocabulary for someone her age. Gwen thought she should probably be in an advanced class or at least be tutored at a level where she didn’t become bored with school. She intended to discuss this with Isis’s parents next week, at the Back to School Blast.
    Gwen continued to organize papers for the next day’s assignment while waiting for Kari’s mother, Carol, to pick up the girls. Carol was one of several mothers who showed real interest in their children’s education. She’d wanted to ask her about Isis’s mother, but Adam, who seemed to know every female in town, had come up and interrupted them. That was at the ice cream social held the day before school started, when neither Isis nor her mother had shown up.
    Gwen felt calm for the first time in weeks. Her brother’s visit had helped a lot. Robert stayed a week, and during that time helped with the Herculean undertaking of making their mother’s new home a place where she’d feel comfortable. They transferred as much of her old home as they could to the new, roomy, two-bedroom apartment at Sunrise Place, the assisted-living complex in Lancaster, less than thirty minutes away from Sienna.
    Once her mother was settled, Gwen had immersed herself in teaching preparation: lesson prep, orientations, and supply and clothes shopping. She was blissfully busy. On the first day of class, she’d instructed her students to take the desks from their orderly rows and place them wherever they wanted to sit. Not used to such freedom, the children had hesitated. But when she explained that their desks could go anywhere and be positioned in any direction, really, they’d virtually screeched with happiness. Now kids scampered to desks turned forward and backward, in rows and circles, and one in the lone formerly empty corner. To others it may have appeared as chaos. For her, it was sheer ecstasy and her first of many steps toward teaching her students to think outside the box and color outside the lines.
    Gwen stood, stretched, and walked over to erase the day’s lesson from the whiteboard. This simple act, one she’d done a thousand times, made her smile. Because of their district’s stair-step calendar, Sienna Elementary classes had started mid-August, and not a moment too soon. Finally, she was in a place where she felt she truly belonged. She was beginning to experience and like this “new normal.”
    â€œIs that smile for me?”
    The tranquility Gwen basked in flew out the open window welcoming in a slight September breeze. She knew that voice, had heard it in her head almost nonstop since the last words it had uttered: I’ll be hugging you all night long . But she’d heard other voices since that fateful day, namely that of her brother with the sobering news that Ransom was a father and perhaps, in her opinion, a player too.
    She’d succeeded in avoiding him for the past two weeks, and after leaving two voice mails on her cell phone, he’d stopped calling. Now she was thinking that maybe it would have been better to take the call and deliver her sayonara speech over the phone.
    â€œShe ignores my calls and now thinks she will ignore me in person.” Ransom swaggered up to the desk and leaned a hip on it. “I know you’ve been busy, Butterfly, getting ready for school and