It started as one of those gray mornings when everything feels just a little heavier. I had been teaching for twelve years, long enough to recognize when something was wrong with a student—not just wrong in the sense of grades slipping or attitude changing, but in that quiet, unsettling way that signals a deeper pain. Stella had once been one of my brightest lights.
She wasn’t the loudest in class or the one who always raised her hand first, but she had a quiet brilliance that showed in her essays, her sketches in the margins of her notebook, and the way her eyes used to light up when we discussed anything about literature or art. Then, sometime around November, the light started to fade. At first, I thought it was just the change of seasons—students often grow tired or distracted when the days shorten—but soon, her absences became frequent.
She missed two days, then three, then an entire week. When she did show up, she was pale, her uniform slightly wrinkled, and her attention was miles away. “Stella’s been sick,” the office told me each time I inquired.
“Her guardian called in again.”
Her legal guardian, I learned at the beginning of the year, was her aunt, Lorraine. The rumor around town was that Lorraine was a difficult woman—cold, sharp-tongued, and perpetually angry at something or someone. People said she’d had a hard life, that she’d lost her husband in an accident years ago, and that she’d never quite recovered.
But rumor and truth are rarely the same, and I tried to keep my assumptions in check. Still, every time Stella returned to school, she seemed thinner, quieter, and more withdrawn. One Thursday afternoon, after another unexplained week-long absence, I decided I couldn’t just sit behind my desk and wait for her to show up again.
I had a parent-teacher conference scheduled with another student’s family that morning, but once it was over, I told the secretary I needed to make a home visit. She gave me a look that said, *Are you sure you want to do that?* but I nodded. The drive to Stella’s house took about twenty minutes.
She lived in an old part of town, where the roads narrowed and the houses leaned close together like they were conspiring to keep secrets. The house was small, two stories, with peeling paint and a sagging porch. The yard was overgrown, and an old mailbox leaned sideways, its post splitting at the base.
I parked at the curb and took a deep breath. The wind carried a faint smell of damp leaves and wood smoke. It was one of those quiet neighborhoods where every sound felt amplified—my footsteps on the cracked path, the creak of the porch steps, even the soft knock on the front door.
It took nearly a minute before I heard movement inside. The door opened just a few inches, and there she was—Stella. Her hair was unbrushed, her skin pale, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes.
She looked startled to see me but not frightened. “Hi, Stella,” I said gently. “It’s Ms.
Grant. I was worried about you.”
She hesitated, glancing over her shoulder before pushing the door open wider. “I’m sorry, Ms.
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