“Yuck.” He scrunches his face and turns up his nose.
“It doesn’t taste bad, and it’s good for you.” I glance at my Apple watch to see if we’re on schedule. The name Joseph S. Allen in the subject line of an email captures my attention.
I click the message open and lean against the counter to read from my wrist.
Reminder! The Joseph S. Allen Community Service Award for your outstanding leadership in education is coming up soon. Details below.
I was surprised when I received the email. Does Mrs. Allen know? Our parents were adamant about putting distance between the two families. Seeing Mr. Allen a few years ago when I first moved back to Atlanta was by chance, and I wasn’t sure he’d recognize me, much less c
ross the street to shake my hand. He invited me to coffee and spent an hour listening to my plans to start a private school, Young Leaders Academy of Atlanta, serving low-income and at-risk middle school students. He was an important man. I’m sure he’d had better things to do than spend time with me, the kid of a family he had fallen out with.
He’d asked about my family, and I’d found creative ways to ask about Kimba without being too obvious or pathetic. When he died, I’d risked the censure of Mrs. Allen by going to the funeral, but I had to pay my respects.
And I’d hoped to see Kimba.
“I’m ready,” Aiko says, rushing into the kitchen and grabbing a banana from the bowl on the counter.
Things have been weird between us. Not hostile, just uncertain in this limbo where we know our relationship is over, but Noah doesn’t yet. I’ve been sleeping in the guest bedroom. After we decided to end it, it felt wrong to sleep in the same bed. Actually, it felt right not to, further confirmation that we’re doing the right thing. Noah goes to sleep before we do and I’m up before he is, so he hasn’t noticed the change.
“Mona promised to make sure you boys don’t eat junk the whole time I’m gone,” Aiko says, kissing Noah’s forehead.
Mona and I reconnected by chance at a teacher’s job fair. I was recruiting for YLA’s first year. Once we got past the shock of seeing each other again, I realized she was exactly the kind of educator I wanted to build with.
Fast forward three years, and her backyard adjoins ours, separated only by a fence. She’s not only the school director, but has become like a part of our family.
“Aunt Mona can cook vegetables from our garden,” Noah says, oatmeal flying past his lips.
“Son,” I chide. “That’s disgusting. Don’t talk with food in your mouth.”
He rolls his eyes. I lift one brow. Shamefacedly, he mutters an apology. We have a system in this house, Noah and I, and there is never any doubt who is the boss of it.
“Vitamins.” I point to the little dish of gels and gummies I laid out.
He eyes the pile of pills, mouth twisted up.
“Remember Pop?” Aiko asks. “How big he was? And see how big Daddy is? Take your vitamins, and you’ll be big like them. Your dad used to be little, too.”
“You were?” he asks.
“I was one of the smallest kids in my class.” I raise my right hand. “Promise. Then around tenth grade, everything changed.”
“And you got big like Pop?”
“Not quite,” I say dryly. “Pop was six feet, six inches. Two inches taller than me, but I made up a lot of ground in a couple of years.”
“And that was from taking vitamins?” he asks hopefully.
Honestly, no. That was just genetics. “Absolutely it was the vitamins.”
In ten minutes, we’re out the door and headed for the airport. When we arrive, I unload Aiko’s small battalion of color-coordinated luggage.
“I’ll miss you so much,” Aiko says, holding Noah’s face between her hands. “You’ll be good for Daddy, right?”
“Yeah.” He bites his lip, and I recognize his “I’m supposed to be a big boy and big boys don’t cry” face. “A month is a long time, though.”
“It’ll fly by,” she tells him, her voice falsely bright. They’ve never been apart this long before. None of us have. “And we’ll FaceTime, okay?”
“Aiko!” a tall, sandy-haired man calls from the curb. “Perfect timing.”