"You'll never guess what happened yesterday," Ethan, one of Felicity's students, said excitedly at recess the day after Oliver's visit to her classroom, standing inside the dome of the jungle gym, craning his neck to see Sara, who was busy climbing up the outside of it with single-minded focus.
"What?" she asked, hooking her knees around the bar she'd just been standing on and swinging down into the open space beneath the outside of the dome with no apparent fear, dangling upside in empty space as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Mr. Queen came by our classroom," Ethan replied. "While you guys were in music class."
"Really?" Sara asked. She climbed back on top of the jungle gym for a moment, then dropped down to the ground beneath it, directly in front of Ethan, who looked delighted to have piqued her interest. Perhaps as a consequence of having two Army veterans for parents, Sara had a bold, nearly fearless personality that drew other kids to her like a magnet, and consequently everyone in her grade wanted to be her friend. "What for?" Ethan shrugged.
"I didn't really pay attention," he said. "Something about math?"
"Hmmm," Sara mumbled thoughtfully. In the back of her mind, she started plotting, the loose outlines of a plan beginning to take shape. She knew that Mr. Queen and her parents were friends by virtue of how often he was over at their house, and she also knew, from snatches she'd caught of adult conversations that she hadn't been meant to hear, that he'd expressed feelings of loneliness on more than one occasion. She wondered what she parents would think if she found some way to help with that. What they would say. She bet they'd be really pleased with her. Probably pretty impressed too.
With all of the goings on, however, the fun and excitement of all the things a little girl with a fearless attitude and an active imagination could find to do during the recess period, Sara soon got distracted. The pieces of her plan fell apart before they'd had a chance to coalesce into something solid, slipping out of her awareness in the process. By the time recess was over, she had forgotten all about it.
By the end of the school day, the only thing that remained in Sara's thoughts that had anything to do with her fledgling of a plan was the vague notion that all was not right with her parents' friend.
"Is Mr. Queen okay?" that notion prompted her to ask her parents during dinner that night. They exchanged a meaningful look before either one of them spoke.
"Why do you ask, sweetie?" Sara's mother wanted to know. "Did something happen at school?" Sara shook her head.
"Nope," she said. "But sometimes, when he's here, he seems sad. I know people aren't okay when they're sad." At this, her parents exchanged another look, but whatever meaning or understanding passed between them with it was lost on Sara. This time, it was her father who spoke up first.
"He's fine," he said, his tone calm, measured, reassuring. "It's just that being an adult is hard sometimes, and it can get you down, that's all. You'll understand that one day." Sara nodded in understanding, smiling brightly at each of her parents in turn to let them know that they had succeeded in dispelling her concerns. There were a lot of things in this world, she was starting to learn, that she was too young to understand. She was more than will accept this as one of them.
