Five days later, on Thursday the fifteenth, I stood in the lobby of Eli's elementary school at ten minutes to three with a paper cup of coffee in my hand, waiting for the bell.
I remember it precisely. The smell of floor wax. The hum of the vending machine. The bulletin board with construction-paper pumpkins.
The bell rang. Kids poured out. I scanned the faces.
Eli wasn't there.
"Mrs. Bennett?" It was Mrs. Dolan, the front office secretary, a kind woman with reading glasses on a chain. She came around the counter with her hands folded. "Sweetheart, Mr. Bennett picked Eli up at a quarter past two."
"He... what?"
"He said you weren't feeling well today." Her voice went soft and careful, the voice you use with the recently bereaved. "He said it would be best if he took over for a while. I hope that's all right. He seemed very concerned about you."
I stood there with my coffee. There were three parents behind me. I could feel their eyes.
"Of course," I heard myself say. "I'm sorry. I must have forgotten."
I hadn't forgotten. Derek had never said a word to me about picking up Eli. But when I got home, my husband was in the living room with Eli on his lap, and Lorraine was in the armchair with her cane across her knees.
"Oh, honey," Lorraine said. "Derek told you at breakfast. You nodded."
"I don't remember that."
"That's what worries me," said my mother-in-law, and she reached across and patted my hand.
I looked at my son, and Eli looked back at me with big, worried eyes, and he said the thing that broke my heart.
"Mommy, are you sick?"
That Sunday, October 18th, was the church luncheon.
We'd been members of Christ Community Church for eleven years. It was one of those long fellowship-hall tables with paper tablecloths and casseroles in Pyrex, where everybody knows everyone's business and pretends they don't.
I was standing with a paper plate, listening to Marge Halloran describe her gallbladder surgery, when I heard my mother-in-law's voice rise above the clatter.
"Oh, it's been such a worry," Lorraine was saying, to a circle of women. "She put the kettle on last week, and then she just walked out of the house. Derek came home to a house full of smoke."
I turned. She was looking right at me, with her hand pressed to her heart.
"That's not..." I started.
"Poor thing doesn't even remember," Lorraine told them, in a stage whisper. "It's the grief, I think. Her father, you know. Derek's been an angel."