But that Tuesday, he came through the front door quietly.
I was in the kitchen cutting apples, and I looked up right away.
“What happened?”
He dropped his backpack by the table and shrugged, but his eyes looked glossy.
“Nothing.”
That is how children tell you something definitely happened.
I crouched down a little. “Ben.”
He picked at the strap on his lunchbox. “Mr. Walter looked really sad today.”
Mr. Walter was our school bus driver. The kind of man people describe as “nice” and then move on, which in hindsight feels like a terrible failure on our part.
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