“Mr. Welt kissed the sub!” exclaimed the young 8th grade girl, seconds after I entered her homeroom class. And, indeed, I did kiss the sub, a young woman I had known since she was in kindergarten.

Growing up, one of my youngest daughter’s closest friends was Carolyn. Faith and Carolyn were practically inseparable. They went to the same school, attended the same church, and spent alternate weekends at each other’s houses. When they were little I cut their meat (and when we had chicken we always cooked extra. For a slim little girl, Carolyn could really pack it away!), read them bedtime stories, tucked them in, and kissed them both goodnight.

As they got older they both sang in the St. Mark’s junior choir. The kids sang at the 9:30 a.m. service and then went to Sunday School until the 11 a.m. service began, at which point they dispersed to Bee Bee Dairy or Mystic Pizza for lunch, stopping to see me long enough to get money. As I recall, I could feed both of them for $5.

After graduating from Fitch they both went to UConn and for a couple of years lived in a house together on Coventry Lake. After graduation, Faith went to work in Boston for MIT.

I wasn’t aware that Carolyn, who had studied education, was on the Groton substitute list until one morning when I heard a different voice in the classroom next to mine at Fitch Middle School. It wasn’t Deb, a Language Arts teacher with whom I had worked for several years, but a voice that sounded very familiar.

When I went next door to check, I was right — it was Carolyn, and the child who had proclaimed what she had just seen was correct — Mr. Welt kissed the sub. Carolyn’s reaction to the girl’s comment mystified them all.

“That’s all right,” she said, “he’s my other daddy!”

Near mid-day Carolyn came into my room and gave me a look that I had seen many times before, generally on Sundays.

“Do you need lunch money?” I asked her. She just nodded yes and grinned.

I guess she did a good job as a sub because the assistant principal called on her frequently.

Robert Welt of Mystic was a longtime teacher in the Groton Public Schools.