"I'm done." Eva climbed down from the stool as she reached for her plate. She had said nothing else about what was eating at her, but I hoped she would come to me when she was ready.
"You must have been hungry. Why don't you go wash up." Handing me her plate, she scurried down the hall. "And show me any homework you have."
"Okay." Hearing her do what I asked, I went back to eating and then put the noodles and sauce back into the fridge. The water turned off a couple of minutes later and I heard her pad back into her room. When I turned around, she had a packet of papers in hand. "Here."
"Let's see what we've got here. Eva, we are so happy to have you with us in class. Here are all the worksheets we have done this past week. Please return them by next Monday-Ms. Holliday."
"I also have a spelling sheet that I think I have to take back tomorrow." Showing me the last paper in her hand, she set it on the counter next to the packet.
"Tell you what? Why don't we save the packet until tomorrow since we still need to go to the store tonight." I was confident we could at least get one or two pages done each day. "Looks like we have uppercase and lowercase letters, short vowels, addition, and subtraction, match the baby animals and color the American flag."
"I like matching." She flipped through a few pages of the packet as she took it off the counter. "Everything else is okay, I guess."
"You like coloring."
"Oh, yeah. Can we do spelling now?"
"Sure. Why don't you get a pencil." Sitting down at the counter, I read over the instructions and all the words as she disappeared into her room again.
"Got it." She stifled a yawn as she scrambled up to her usual seat. "What do I do?"
"Write each of these words three times."
"Okay."
"Thu ." Sounding out the word, she focused on writing each letter. Her biggest trouble seemed to be writing the e, which she erased several times with a sigh. It took several encouraging nods on my part before she tried again and succeeded.
"Ca at. Cat." This time she wrote the word a little bit faster. This group of letters seemed easier for her and she moved onto the next word in no time.
"Bah u. Bus."
"Which way does the b go?"
"Oh." She erased it, studying the printed letter before trying again as she rocked back and forth on her knees. As she finished, she looked at the next word and frowned. "Dad." She didn't even need to sound that one out as her eyes filled with tears.
"Hey, come here. You're okay." Pulling her into my lap, she didn't resist like I thought she would. Instead, she curled into me. Instinct told me she needed that human touch that only a mother could provide, even though I was still scared that I would do the wrong thing. "What's going on in here?" I tapped on the side of her head gently after several minutes of silence.
"I don't know." She shrugged, bringing her cheek to rest against my arm. "I miss him. But I don't want to be sad." Her words sounded so innocent, yet they were mixed with sadness and confusion. "I can't sleep when I'm sad."
"Have you been sad that you can't sleep?"
"Kind of." Wiggling back and forth with a bit of anxiety wavering, she finally drew her legs into my lap. "The night light helps a little."
"I'm glad to hear that. Look, I know that right now doesn't feel like what you're used to, but I want you to know that you can always wake me up or call me if I'm not here, especially when something doesn't make sense to how you're feeling."
"Feeling where?"
"In here." I tapped the side of her head gently with my index finger. "When you go through so much change, sometimes it can mess with the way you feel in your head. Does that make sense?"
"A little." Sitting up, she stretched her hand towards grabbing the paper and pencil just out of reach on the counter and pulled them towards her, but she made no move to do any more spelling. Instead, she looked confused as she turned to play with the top button of my shirt."What if the words won't come out?"
"Then you keep trying until it does." I tried my best to display how important it was for her to know. The way you're feeling right now is something most people have experienced, so you are not alone in this."
"Even you?"
"Even me," I confirmed, as her legs fell against mine. "And you know what? As hard it is to go through, I feel like in the end, we come out stronger."
"Stronger how?"
"What we're going through now, we use to deal with the next hard thing that comes up. Whether that means making new friends again, getting used to a new job or losing the people we love, or something else, we just have to remember that we're not alone in what we're going through.
"I'm scared I'll never make a friend." She admitted, turning her head away so I couldn't see the expression on her face, but I knew by her body language that she was still sad about talking about old memories. "I miss my friends at my old home."
"I bet you had a lot of good memories with your friends."
"Ellie and Hannah were my best friends. We played with dolls and made them ride on stuffed animals."
"What kind of stuffed animals?"
"Mostly horses, bears and ponies" Her eyes lit up as she talked about her adventures. "Sometimes they would bring stuffed animals over so we could have something new to play with. Do you ever miss your friends?"
"All the time. I had a friend named Melanie that I would always hang out with in elementary school. Actually, we met around the same age you are now."
"Was she nice?"
"Extremely nice. Her dad was in the military though, so she moved away about a year later."
"Did you ever find her?"
"No, I never did." A part of me wondered what had happened to her. She never knew my secrets which I had always felt guilty for. If and when we got the chance to hang out, we would always go to her house. Although she had questioned many times why we never hung out at my house, I had always made an excuse why we couldn't because of my dad. I had repeated that same pattern over the years, as the last thing we needed was for someone to find out our sad story and share it with the rest of the world.