Kelsey closed her eyes, her brows drawn tight. And then she opened them. “I can’t feel what you’re feeling. Or Daddy, either.”
“I know, honey. It’s hard for most people, because we aren’t aware we have that ability and as we grow up we lose it.”
“But you didn’t lose it.” It was half question, half statement.
“No.”
“Why not? Did your mom teach you?”
“No.” Meredith sat up straight, waiting for words to come, praying that they would. “I don’t know why,” she said, afraid the answer was too lame. “Some of us just are more emotional than others, I guess, so we’re more aware of the emotions that other people feel.”
“What am I feeling?”
You didn’t test the gift. Ever. But you used it for the good of others.
Meredith took a deep breath, closed her eyes briefly, waited for the calm and then looking Kelsey in the eye said, “You’re a little mad at me. You want to believe what I’m saying, but you aren’t sure you do. And you feel like I’ve let you down. I embarrassed you in front of your friends. You aren’t sure you can trust me. You’re worried that Josie’s going to think you’re weird, too. You feel uneasy. And you’re hungry.”
The room was completely silent. She couldn’t even hear Mark breathing beside her.
“How’d I do?” she asked.
Kelsey didn’t say a word.
“And now you’re scared,” Meredith added.
Still watching her, Kelsey nodded. A child she adored was afraid of her. How had she done?
“THAT WENT WELL,” Meredith said to Mark as soon as Kelsey was settled at Macy’s desk with her homework and he’d closed the door between the two offices.
Taking the chair his daughter had vacated, Mark pulled a folder from the end of his desk.
The one with the names of all of those students who wouldn’t be in her class the next day? Or were there so many she wouldn’t have a class?
“You made a good argument just now,” he finally said. Which was something, coming from him.
“You did this morning, as well.”
“Thank you.” Platitudes were nice. Even if they weren’t going to keep her job for her. “I lost my audience when Mr. Larson asked me if I really believed I could feel other people’s emotions, like I was nuts or something—although those folders you passed out with my reviews and letters from grateful parents were great. So was your idea to have Susan there. To listen to her, you’d think I was a saint. And still I lost them.” She hadn’t felt so low in a long time.
If ever. Losing Frank at the altar hadn’t been as bad as the prospect of losing her life’s work. She tried not to hate Mark Shepherd for calling the question like this, without warning. Without giving her the time to play this one out, to see if Barnett would hang himself, figuratively speaking—or give up. The day before, she’d thought Mark had agreed to give her a chance.
“Actually, you didn’t,” he said, his brow raised. “Lose them, that is.” His eyes were bloodshot, his hair a bit more disorderly than normal. Mark hadn’t had an easy day, either. “Just as with the television interview, you conducted yourself with such confidence that you instilled it in others.”
She tried not to get excited, couldn’t afford to feel too much at the moment in case she fell apart in her boss’s office. “How many others?”
“Twenty-nine.”
She couldn’t believe it. “No one chose to move his child?”
“Not one parent.”
Meredith burst out laughing. Not a quiet, amused chuckle, not an appreciative, humorous expression, but a loud, boisterous eruption she couldn’t seem to prevent.
Mark was polite, serious, but kind, as he escorted her to the door.
And Kelsey said a mumbled goodbye as she left.
Feeling like a beggar who’d just been given a gift, Meredith took what she could get—from both of them.