A Child's Wish

She’d practically held her breath all the way to school that morning and had taught with half an ear on the loudspeaker in her room, expecting a summons—trouble resulting from the previous night’s news show. But though the day had prompted plenty of remarks from her colleagues who’d seen her on the news and needed to tell her about it, she hadn’t seen or heard from Mark all day.

And most of the feedback had been positive—or at least teasing in a friendly manner.

“What’s up?” she prompted, as Bonnie appeared to be content to sit quietly until it was time for her to pick up her son.

“Well, it’s just that… I don’t quite know how to say this.”

The woman’s gaze lowered and Meredith’s stomach sank. If Eric’s dad was going to insist on pulling him out of her class, others would follow. She’d already lost one student this week. Many more and she’d be done, without Mark having to fire her.

“I’ve found that it’s best just to get it out,” she said, preparing herself to be kind, supportive. To focus on what was best for Eric.

Bonnie glanced up, her blue eyes wide and filled with fear, but also with anticipation. “I need your help.”

That didn’t sound bad—unless she had to help convince Roy Hamilton to keep his son in her class. “What can I do?”

“I need to know whether or not to have another baby.”

Meredith sat back. “Excuse me?”

“I need you to go wherever you go to find out stuff about people and tell me if I should have another baby,” Bonnie said, her eyes begging Meredith even more than her words had done. “I wouldn’t ask but I’m at my wit’s end, Ms. Foster. I want a baby so badly it’s on my mind practically all the time. I see other women with babies and I feel cheated. I think about never being pregnant again, never feeling those little feet and hands sliding around inside me, never breast-feeding…”

“What does your doctor say?” Meredith asked, even though what she wanted to do was grab her bag and go home.

Bonnie blinked. “Nothing. Why?”

“I assumed, since there’s some question about this, that you’d been in consultation with your doctor.”

“Oh!” Bonnie shook her head. “No. I’m sure I’m fine there,” she said. “It’s Roy. He says he’s too old to go through all of that again. But he’s only forty-five, Ms. Foster, and I just know that once he held our baby in his arms he’d be just as thrilled as I would be.”

“Bonnie,” Meredith said, feeling older than both Hamiltons at the moment. “I’m your son’s third-grade teacher, not a counselor. I can’t possibly give you advice in this situation.”

And then Meredith stopped herself—before she did just that. Not because she could feel anything. She wasn’t tuned in to Bonnie, didn’t intend to tune in, couldn’t tune in right now. But because the answer just appeared to be so obvious.

“But you have to!” The young woman leaned closer, touching Meredith’s leg. “I saw you on the news last night and I knew, right then, that you were on TV for a reason. It was a message to me to come to you for my answer. See, I’m all out of pills, so if I’m going to do this, now would be the time.”

Moving her leg out of the other woman’s reach, Meredith focused on staying in her chair and getting through this calmly, rather than giving in to the sense of profound discomfort that was pushing at her.

“What does your husband say?”

“I’m not telling him.” Bonnie flopped back against the seat, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. “He’d say no for sure. That’s the point, Ms. Foster. I need to know whether or not I should just quit taking the pills and let him think it was an accident. Because I can tell you, I’m not going to be happy with him for the rest of my life if he robs me of this chance.”

The young woman needed counseling. Or at least she needed to grow up a bit.

“I know you can do this for me, Ms. Foster. Just take a quick peek and tell me what you see.”

And if I don’t? Do I have another angry person out to get me?

“It’s not that I don’t want to help you,” Meredith said slowly, breathing deeply, pulling her ponytail over one shoulder. “It’s just that I can’t. I’m not a psychic and I have no way of knowing what your future holds.”

“But you said last night…”

“That sometimes—only sometimes—I can feel what other people are currently feeling.”

For the most part. But she didn’t need to go into that.

“Then ‘feel’ Roy,” the woman said quickly. “Tell me if he’ll divorce me if he ever finds out I tricked him.”

Meredith paused, tired, unsure how to extricate herself without damaging future relations with the mother of her student. And then she realized that she simply had to live as she always did, true to what she knew, regardless of the consequence. “I can’t, Bonnie. I’m sorry, but I can’t trespass on your husband’s privacy that way.”