A Million Little Things (Mischief Bay, #3)

She held in a smile. “I have.”

A long time ago, but she was pretty sure she remembered enough to be able to fake her way through a conversation.

“So there’s this part.” He began to read.

“Sir, the year growing ancient, Not yet on summer’s death, nor on the birth

Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o’ the season—

Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors, Which some call nature’s bastards: of that kind

Our rustic garden’s barren; and I care not to get slips of them.”

He looked up. “It got me to thinking. There are a lot of flower references in Shakespeare.”

Several students groaned. A dark-haired girl in the front row shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said cheerfully. “Jefferson loves spreadsheets. It’s like an addiction for him. He’s probably made up a spreadsheet for every flower reference in every Shakespeare play.” Her mouth twitched. “Consider yourself warned.”

Jefferson ignored her. “I did a search online and then put the flower related quotes into a grid.”

There was a second group groaning.

“What?” he demanded. “It’s interesting. He even mentions flowers in the Henrys. They’re everywhere.”

“Dude, like flowers?” another guy asked. “It was the olden times. They didn’t have a lot to talk about. Nobody texted.”

“It’s more than that,” Jefferson insisted, brushing his dark hair off his forehead. “Flowers meant something back then. They had significance. Different flowers represented emotions. Or hardships. Like this part from A Winter’s Tale.” He cleared his throat, then read again.

“And with him rises weeping: these are flowers of middle summer, and I think they are given to men of middle age.”

Jefferson looked up. “The flowers are women, right? Girls. Young girls given to old guys. The flowers of middle summer references a time in life, not the real summer.”

He pointed to the girl at the front of the room. “There are flowers in your play.”

“What are you reading?” Zoe asked.

Jefferson rolled his eyes. “Romeo and Juliet. It’s crap. But the part about the flowers.”

“‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’?” Zoe asked.

“Right. More flower references. See, I think the flowers are everything. They survive the winter, they’re seen as God’s blessing. ‘They neither toil nor do they spin.’”

“I think Jefferson hit his head,” one of the guys joked.

“Go ahead and think that,” Jefferson told him. “And when I get accepted at Harvard, we’ll see who’s laughing.”

“Anyone else have flower theories?” Zoe asked.

Conversation flowed easily among the students. Zoe enjoyed the exchange of ideas. The time flew by quickly. When class ended, Zoe stopped Jefferson by the door.

“You know, now I’m going to have to go back and reread A Winter’s Tale.”

He grinned. “It’s not my favorite play, but it’s interesting.”

At lunch, Zoe went into the teacher’s lounge. She’d brought her lunch and found a place at one of the tables. The other teachers were friendly and welcoming. She had to admit today was more interesting than teaching at the elementary school had been.

While her afternoon block took their test, she reviewed the book of short stories and thought about what it had been like when she’d been teaching middle school. Some of her students had been interested in the subject, but most had not. She’d struggled to make the material interesting to them so they would be engaged.

At the time she’d thought she wasn’t cut out for teaching and there had always been the draw of the elusive Chad. That one day he would come to his senses and realize they were meant to be.

Events had conspired. She’d had the opportunity to expand her “help pay the bills” second job into a full-time opportunity with shorter hours and better pay. Her mom had been sick and Zoe had wanted to be there for her. She’d been frustrated with her teaching. Or maybe her life. Regardless, she’d quit teaching and had started translating manuals full-time.

Her path had been so clear, she thought as she turned pages in the book. She’d been so sure. Her mom’s illness had distracted her from the going nowhere-ness of her relationship with Chad. Her mother’s death had devastated her. It wasn’t until she’d been trapped alone in her attic that she’d realized how empty and boring her life had become.

She didn’t know exactly what she wanted for her future, but she knew that translating manuals wasn’t it. She wanted more. Engagement with other people. An exchange of ideas. She missed teaching. And while she could accept that, what bothered her the most was that, as her father had pointed out some weeks ago, she’d totally changed her life for a man.

Like many people, she’d been distracted by the beauty of the flower, rather than the substance of it. Or lack of substance.

She held in a smile. Okay, things were bad if she was mixing metaphors with flowers and Chad and Shakespeare. She supposed the point was, she wanted more days like today. Days where she could hope that an unexpected discussion about how words have meanings and meanings change over time would stay with a student for years. She wanted to get back into the occupation she had once loved.

The question was how and in what capacity. Being pregnant would make scheduling a new job difficult. Plus, she wanted to be home with her baby for the first few months. And to be honest, she wasn’t excited about returning to middle school.

She thought about her meeting with the counselor at Cal State Dominguez Hills. Graduate school would give her more options. She could look at teaching high school or even community college.