The phone kept ringing, forcing me to recover. Finally, I looked at the screen: Mrs. Dilmore.
Owen adored her. Math was his favorite subject because of her, and more than half his friends talked about it at dinner.
“Hello?” My voice sounded weak.
“Meryl, I’m so sorry to call you that,” he said, his voice shaking. “I found something on my desk today. I think you should come to school right away.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s an envelope…” with your name on it. It’s Owen’s.
Pull your shirt tight.
“Owen’s?”
“Yes. I don’t know how it got there. But it’s in his own handwriting.
I don’t remember ending the call. I just remember getting up too quickly, my heart pounding in my throat.
I found my mother in the kitchen. She had been with us since the funeral because she hadn’t eaten and would wake up at night calling for my son.
“Your teacher found something,” I said. Owen left me something.
Her face changed in a way only another mother could understand.
Charlie was at work. Since the funeral, work had become his escape. He left early, returned late, and barely spoke. He wouldn’t even let me hug him anymore. The distance between us no longer felt like pain, but like a closed door I couldn’t open.
At a stoplight, I looked at the little wooden bird hanging from the rearview mirror: Owen’s Mother’s Day gift. Its wings were uneven, its beak crooked.
I called it beautiful.
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