Free Carry the Light by Delia Parr

boys?”
    He pulled out his cell phone, flipped it open and pulled up the picture gallery. “Amy’s always great, but you know that,” he said as he turned the cell phone so Ellie could see his wife’s picture.
    â€œI sure do,” she murmured. Amy had graduated as valedictorian, earned her teaching degree in just three years, and now taught at a charter school in Philadelphia. She still wore her hair long and straight and looked nearly the same as she had in high school.
    â€œThe boys are catching up to me faster than I thought they would,” Bob told her proudly, and clicked the viewer to enlarge the picture of them.
    Ellie’s eyes widened. “Those boys look like you put yourself through a copy machine three times!”
    He laughed. “They’re all in middle school now. The twins are in seventh grade. John’s in sixth. They’ll be heading up to the high school in a couple of years, so get ready. Unless you’re planning to retire soon,” he said as he stored the cell phone away.
    â€œNot that soon,” Ellie replied. In fact, she hoped she might spend the rest of her career as an administrator. It was a good possibility, as long as her current supervisor, Nate Pepperidge, finally retired this year, as rumors suggested he would. If she landed the job she had been dreaming about for most of her career, she would miss all three of Bob’s sons in the classroom, but she wasn’t ready to mention that possibility now.
    Instead, she wrinkled her nose. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance the false alarm didn’t go over the police scanner, is there?”
    â€œNot even. My guess is that the students who don’t find out about it over the weekend will know by the end of homeroom on Monday.”
    â€œYou’re right. They will.”
    â€œAnd they’ll have a good time teasing you about it, too, unless what I’ve heard about you lately is wrong.”
    It was her turn to grin. “If you heard that I’m still a tough, no-nonsense teacher, you heard correctly. Unfortunately, I had to relinquish my title as the Cranky Queen of Corridor Duty to Mrs. Josephs and Mrs. Snyder when I became head of the department.”
    His eyes twinkled. “I heard those two are so tough you might have put yourself through a copy machine twice when you trained them, too.”
    She laughed. “The Welleswood pipeline is alive and well, I see. Thanks again, Bob. I’ll make sure there won’t be another false alarm here.”
    Back in the house, she locked the front door but didn’t rearm the security system. She hung her mother’s coat up in the closet and carried the two shopping bags into the kitchen. Almost immediately, her tension melted away. She had repainted the kitchen last year, and the warm yellow walls made her feel as though she had her very own piece of the sun inside her home.
    Her mother looked up for a moment from her seat at the round oak table, and used the palm of her hand to smooth the yellow-and-blue striped place mat under her mug of tea. “I never did understand the reason some people prefer these place mats. A properly ironed tablecloth looks so much nicer.”
    â€œMaybe it’s because washing and ironing tablecloths takes too much work. Besides, a tablecloth would cover the top of the table, and the grain is really pretty,” she pointed out, admiring the round table she had bought shortly after Joe died because she could not bear to eat a meal, especially breakfast, longing for him to be sitting at the head of the table.
    â€œThat may be true,” her mother countered, “but you’ll never be able to convince me that a home is ever as well cared for when a woman spends more time working outside of it than inside.” She paused to take a sip of her tea. “Women seem to justify taking all sorts of shortcuts these days, and that’s only one reason the divorce rate