Molly - Sarah Monzon Page 0,42

for her to follow me into my bedroom. I mean, the guest bedroom. My luggage had been pushed into a corner, and I unzipped the top and made a dramatic show of rearranging all the clothes inside. “Now where could it be? There it is.” The top of my luggage fell closed. “This is a present for you and Blaire. Do you know where she is?”

Chloe ran to her room and came back with her American Girl doll a few seconds later. She held Blaire to her chest and stared at me with expectation. I reached into my suitcase and pulled out the matching dresses with cats on them that I’d been working on.

“Kitties!” She squealed and lunged for the dresses.

A tingling sensation raced around my stomach. Giving really was better than receiving. What would Christmas morning be like with Chloe? Would I still be around then to find out? “Do you and Blaire want to wear them today?”

She turned into a bobble-head with how fast she nodded. “Yes, please.” She peeled off her pajamas and pulled the dress on over her mess of hair. Blaire was a little more difficult to de-robe, so I helped. A second later we were in the bathroom getting all the knots out of Chloe’s hair. She pulled open a drawer and withdrew a headband. With kitty ears. I slipped the band behind her ears. She made the cutest kitten around.

“Meow.” Chloe got down on her hands and knees. “My name’s Whiskers. Meow.”

I patted her head like I would a cat. “Hello, Whiskers. You’re a pretty kitty.”

“Meow.”

Purrs and meows followed me around the house as I finished getting things ready to take Chloe to school. She’d really embraced the cat persona and only answered to Whiskers, in addition to licking her hand and walking on all fours.

“All right, Chloe, time to get in the car for school.”

She tilted her head. “Meow.”

I cocked a hip. “That means you need to walk.”

Hiss.

I rolled my eyes and picked her up. She licked my cheek when I buckled her in her car seat.

Oh, Mrs. Bardowski was going to have fun with this.

The drive to school took about ten minutes. Ten meowful minutes. I pulled into the drop-off queue and turned up the radio to drown out some of the feline noises coming from the backseat. As I eased forward to where Mrs. Bardowski helped kids out of the car, I turned the dial back down and hit the button to lower the window.

“Good morning,” I chirped.

Mrs. Bardowski appeared as wilted as the poppy pinned to her blouse. “Molly, good. Listen, I know this is short notice, but could you sub today? Just the morning class. I have someone who can fill in for the afternoon.”

Being fired still stung, but I also missed my kids something fierce. To go from seeing them every day to trying to wheedle information out of Chloe about how they were doing had been hard. So while some people may have relished keeping the employer that had sacked them stewing in a hot pot of discomfort, I jumped at the chance to be back in the classroom. “I’d love to, Mrs. Bardowski.”

She let out a breath of relief. “Thank you.”

I pulled my car into my old parking spot and helped Chloe out of the back myself. Kids swarmed me like bees to honey the second I stepped through the door of the classroom, so many little bodies around my legs that I was afraid I’d trip and fall on one of them. Everyone talked on top of their neighbor, no one being heard.

“Good morning to you. Good morning to you. How are you today? Good morning to you. Good morning to you. How are you today?” My voice broke as I sang the rally song for circle time. A few kids put their hands to their ears as they scurried to the rainbow-colored oval rug on the floor near the far wall. I didn’t blame them. My singing could make alley cats run for cover.

Speaking of cats, Chloe crawled to her place on the rug. A smirk tugged at my lips. Thespians could learn a little something about method acting from her. She never broke character.

The routines I’d gone through with the kids when I’d worked at Bay Street Montessori came back to me. We sang the days of the week song, What’s The Weather Like Today?, and then used base ten blocks to count how many days of school there’d been. After circle