by Vicki Hinze
“You are right, of course,” he said. “Yet you carry it so well.”
Now he’d lost her. “Carry what well?”
“The burden of being worried sick about more problems and crises coming up but appearing on the outside as if everything is firmly under control. You inspire me on that. I struggle with it.”
“It doesn’t show.”
“Really?” His eyes widened.
She nodded. “Thomas, you’re the most together person I’ve ever known. Perfection personified.”
“Too much of it, eh?”
“Well,” she scrunched her nose, “maybe just a little.”
“My perfectionism is over the top. I know it.” The skin between his eye brows wrinkled. “But the council… Their expectations are so high and precise.”
The founders’ council designed and built and remained the ultimate decision-makers on all things Shutter Lake. Thomas was right about them. Their expectations were high, precise and explicit. And not optional. The council could be amazingly generous or viciously brutal. This community was their sandbox, and if you wanted to play in it, you played by their rules. “Regardless,” Dana said. “You are the mayor they’ve chosen but you’re also a human being. You’re entitled to a life. The life you want to have.”
He sent her a sidelong look. “You know as well as I do what happens to those who oppose the council.”
“Yes, I do.” She’d seen it repeatedly. “But sometimes they do bend.”
“When?” Thomas grunted. “I haven’t seen it.”
Dana met and held his gaze. “You haven’t tested it.”
“And you have?”
“Actually, yes. I have.” She turned to face him. “Do you remember the house on Shutter Lake?”
“The one they offered you as a signing bonus when you came here to run the school. Sure, I do.”
“Why do you think I refused to live there and moved into my cottage instead?”
“I have no idea.” He clearly thought that had been a puzzling decision on her part.
“Because I like my cottage.”
“The location of the lake house was the best in the community, and that house itself was totally awesome,” he reminded her. “At least three times the size of your cottage.”
“More. It sprawled forever. But this is where I wanted to live.” She hiked a shoulder. She had felt fragile and small, and surrounded by all that space in the lake house made her feel more fragile and vulnerable, even smaller. The cottage had been perfect. “I saw this place, and it felt like home.”
“And you insisted on this place—a deal-breaker, you said—and they didn’t go ballistic on you for disagreeing with them.”
“Exactly. Where I live is my choice.”
He paused to think that through, and then finally responded. “So what you’re saying is I should do more of what makes me feel like home, and like I’m living my life my way, than I am doing what they want or expect me to do?”
“Yes, I am.”
He grunted. “You know, I know these things, but you get sucked into going along to get along and before you know it, it’s all their way and you can’t find more than specks of your own way anymore.”
“So change that. I’m not saying to go crazy with changes, but to assess what they want and what you want. If something matters greatly to you, say so.”
“Reclaim myself.”
She nodded. “It’s time, Thomas.”
“You’re not going to leave us, are you?” He whirled his finger. “I mean, because of this…event.”
Sylvia’s murder. “Never crossed my mind.”
Relief washed across his face. “I know we have to find Sylvia’s killer to ever be peaceful again. But McCabe and Holt will do that. I’m glad you’ll be here.”
“Me, too.”
“And at the risk of upsetting you—which I do not want to do, especially after such a fantastic dinner—you do realize…”
“What?”
He started to answer and then changed his mind and said something else. “It’s just, I’m worried about you. I’d feel better if I knew you accepted that Vinn killed Sylvia, and you’re just proving it to yourself beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
“Except Vinn didn’t kill her.”
The hope in Thomas’s eyes died. “Why would he confess, then?”
“I might be able to answer that question if you’d let me talk to him.”
“Dana, we discussed this earlier. You know I can’t step on McCabe and Holt’s toes.”
But he wanted to step in, and she sensed that clearly. “I do understand.” She said and meant it. After Laney’s warning not to interfere today, how could Dana deny understanding? So much as a mention from Thomas would do nothing more than create tension between him and McCabe and Laney.
Whatever Thomas’s beta moment was about, clearly he wasn’t ready to talk it over. Julia’s words at the press conference came back to Dana. Hiding in plain sight. “I hated seeing Connie Bradshaw breakdown like that. It was horrible.”
“It was.” A tremble haunted his tone. “Vernon got her home and settled in. Dr. Perez expects she’ll sleep through the night.”
Maybe, but she was going to wake up, and her nightmare would still be there. “And what happens tomorrow?”
“I don’t know.”
Oh, that look of his spoke volumes. Resentment and regret, and guilt. This was the beta-moment topic. Now, to get him to talk about it. “You were one of Connie’s students back when she taught at Grass Valley High, weren’t you?”
“Senior year.” He quickly masked what were clearly fond memories. “She was a good teacher.”
Dana recognized that adoring look. “You had a crush on her.”
“Me and half the guys in school. It’s a common thing for kids to crush on their favorite teacher.”
“It is.” Dana smiled. “Back in my classroom days, I was brought flowers, apples, and even a pet frog.”
“A pet frog?” Thomas looked surprised.
“Not just any frog. This frog was that boy’s prized possession. He loved that frog, and he wouldn’t give it to just anyone.” She turned tender. “It was Valentine’s Day.”
“Ah, true love.” Thomas smiled and then sobered. “Isn’t it a shame we lose that wonder?”
“Yes, it is. But isn’t everything a wonder when you’re six years old?”
“I didn’t mean love. I meant ideal love.” Thomas loosened his tie. “After the big first crush, you never again feel it in quite the same way.”
“Some people do.”
“I haven’t. Have you?”
“No. Honestly, I haven’t…yet.”
“Hope springs eternal?”
She lifted a hand. “Why not?”
“I’ve never even come close to feeling that magic again.” His expression clouded. “It sounds kind of strange to say, but I hope Sylvia did.”
“Not strange at all. I hope she did, too,” Dana said, a little wistful. “It’d be awful to be as full of life as she was and to die never having been loved.”
“Her parents loved her.”
“That’s different. That’s unconditional love, not ideal love.”
“True.” Thomas chewed on that a second, then said, “You know, I can’t see that not knowing ideal love would bother Sylvia Cole.”
“How could it not bother her?”
“She was different, Dana. Sylvia was determined to never need anyone for anything.”
“Sounds like maybe she was once loved and things went badly. Someone break her heart?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Were you two close at some time?” Something was there. Dana felt it as if it were a tangible thing between them.
“No. She did my house,” he said. “We’d talk now and then. That’s as far as it went.”
His tone said he hadn’t wanted their relationship to go as far as it did, which brought Laney’s question to Nolan Ikard at Stacked to mind. Dana le
t out a little, “Hmm.”
“What?” he asked.
“In your talks, did Sylvia mention she’d planned a trip to Venezuela?”
“She mentioned it a couple of weeks ago.” He paused, as if replaying the memory of their conversation. “I can’t say she seemed excited about it. She called it an extended vacation, but she didn’t act like it was a getaway. She seemed more resolved to go.”
“I thought the same thing.”
That confused him, so Dana explained. “She dropped by a few weeks ago after Yoga class at the Community Gathering Center to see my South American mask collection.”
“You have masks from Venezuela?”
“A few. Actually, they’re from all over South America. Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, and Argentina. I have a couple from Africa also.” It was hard to believe a decade had passed since she’d been to Africa. “I used to love to travel.”
“Really?” He hadn’t expected that. “You haven’t left Shutter Lake since you moved here.”
“No, I haven’t. But there was a time in my life when school would end one day and the next I’d take off for somewhere exotic and stay gone all summer.” She smiled. “I’ve traveled all over the world.”
“You must have loved it.”
“I did. Every day was an adventure.”
“Then why did you stop?”
Small and vulnerable. Afraid. Maybe if she’d travelled that first summer after Phoenix…but she hadn’t. Just the idea of it had put her into cold chills. After that first year, it had been easier to avoid traveling than to summon the courage to do it. So she hadn’t. She licked at her lips. “For the same reason I moved here.”
“Phoenix?” He guessed.
She nodded. “I need to feel safe.”
“Twenty-two kids, right?”
The school shooting. A lump rose in her throat. She fought to swallow it. “Thirteen injured. Nine dead. Four from my Kindergarten class.” The horrors in that day stained her mind, tormented her soul. It bled fresh terror and tears. “We were all lined up single-file, walking to the lunchroom when it started...” Blasts of gunfire replayed in her mind. The screaming. Kids falling to the floor, lying in pools of their own blood. “We were in this stretch of the hallway with nowhere to go to get out of the line of fire.” She blew out a sharp breath. “The shooter kept firing and turned away to fire behind him. He had his back to us, and the janitor’s closet wasn’t far. I grabbed two of the kids and motioned to the others to come. But by then three were dead.”
“I thought you said four of your students died.”
“I did.” Dana swallowed hard. “One was down, injured but still breathing. I scooped her up and carried her with me to the closet. She died there.” In Dana’s arms, worried about leaking blood on Dana’s skirt.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too.” Memories of that day still haunted her. Finally, last summer, she’d put away the photo collage she’d made of herself with those four children. It’d taken all this time to put the horrors of that day in her past. Now, they were back. Disturbing and rearing all the demons she’d thought had finally been laid to rest.
“Dana, I can’t imagine losing four students,” Thomas said, then placed his hand over hers. The heat felt good, warming the icy chill that had set into her bones. “But you saved fourteen of your students that day because you thought fast and got those kids to safety.”
“Logically, I know that.” Her smile trembled. “But it’s the ones you lose that keep you awake at night.”
“And destroy your thirst for adventure.”
“Changes it,” she corrected him. “The greatest adventure for me now is making sure my students are protected and safe—and that includes Vinn Bradshaw. It might make you feel better to think he’s guilty, Thomas, but I know that boy, and I’m telling you, he’s innocent.”
“Is he? Or do you need to believe he is because you can’t bear the thought of losing another student?”
It was a fair question. One she couldn’t honestly answer.
His phone rang, sparing her from having to try. “It’s Zion,” he said. “I have to take it.”
“Of course.” All that could be said about the mass shooting in Phoenix had been said. And all that could be felt had been felt by her ever since it occurred. Zion Cole, the extremely successful global investment analyst who never stinted when asked for community money, was a respected founder in Shutter Lake. When he called, everyone answered. Especially since he was grieving the loss of his only daughter, Sylvia.
Thomas stepped away. “I see,” he said. “Well, if it’s the only time everyone can get together, it’s the only time everyone can get together. No problem. Where? All right. Give me fifteen minutes.”
Thomas pocketed his phone and then turned to Dana. “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to go. Zion and the council want to discuss the renovations to City Hall.”
“And this is the only time they can all make it. Sorry, I heard. I suspect Zion is trying to do anything normal or ordinary to take his mind off Sylvia.”
“I guess that’s normal. He looks awful, but who wouldn’t?”
“Very normal. When our emotions are out of control, we seek comfort in the mundane minutiae. Doing everyday things occupies our minds and gives us a break from the debilitating grief.” Dana stood up. “I’ll walk you out then.”
“Let me help you with these things.” Thomas placed the cups and carafe on the tray with the remnants of the cheesecake cups.
“I can get that.”
“It’s done.” Carrying the tray, Thomas breezed past her into the cottage, then slid the loaded tray onto the bar. “Thanks for dinner. The Mongolian was awesome.”
“Oh, what about our discussion? You wanted to talk to me about something…your beta moment.” Connie Bradshaw was the topic, but what exactly had he wanted to share?
“It’ll have to wait. How about I make up for the eat-and-run by taking you to dinner?”
“Sure. That’d be great.”
“This was easy, Dana.”
“Easy?”
“Relaxing. Fun. You know what I mean.”
Unfortunately, she did. “I do. And I’m glad. For me, too, Thomas.”
He stepped outside. “Good night, then.”
“Good night.” She smiled. “Beta moment top of the agenda next dinner.”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
Dana watched him go. No way would that discussion be had at or after their next dinner. She folded her arms across her chest, hearing his vehicle roar to life. They would probably never have that discussion. In the office, he had been ready to open up and talk about it. But by tonight, he’d had second thoughts.
And, if Thomas remained true to Thomas, that beta moment had come and gone and would not be revisited again.
So he’d had a thing for Connie. Maybe that’s why he was so turned off to loving anyone. Not that any woman could ever compete with a high school boy’s vision of his ideal love.
Grateful she wasn’t in love with the man, Dana closed the door and locked up.
Chapter Five
Dana knew.
Thomas put the car in Drive, and pulled away from her cottage. She had to know or she wouldn’t have asked him about Connie. He swallowed hard. His first love. . .and probably his last.
Forbidden.
His stomach clenched. Yes, she had been his teacher. Yes, it had been wrong, but neither of them had intended to fall in love. It had just happened…
An unexpected whirlwind romance that had been exciting and adventurous, and definitely forbidden. When they could both sneak away, they would meet at the old mine and talk and make love.
It had been the best and, in retrospect, the worst, thing that had happened to him in his whole life. He had fallen for her so hard, and no other woman had ever made him feel all she had made him feel. No one claimed every beat of his heart or scorched his soul and made him yearn for more. Even now, he would give anything, everything he w
ould ever have, for just five more minutes of what they had shared then. Just five more minutes….
Long before he was ready for things to end, he showed up at school one day and—boom—she was gone. He’d been afraid to ask too many questions. Three of the longest days ever, wondering what had happened to her, why she had left, passed. Then, he heard she had married Vernon Bradshaw and she wouldn’t be coming back to teach at Grass Valley High anymore.
Connie. Married. To another man. Thomas’s stomach clenched and hollowed now as it had the first time he had heard the news. He had been totally devastated in the way only a boy crazy in love with an older woman who just had lost her to a rich, older man could be devastated.
Braking at the stoplight, Thomas felt again his determination rise. Never again would he come second to any man. Never again.
He had graduated high school then college, made his fortune and inherited another one, and then he had returned to Grass Valley to decide which mountain to tackle next to further prove his personal worth. If he happened to see regret she’d chosen the wrong man on Connie Bradshaw’s face, so much the better.
He’d seen her surprise, but not her regret…yet. Shutter Lake was in development then, so when Zion Cole approached Thomas on behalf of the council and asked him to run for mayor, he had accepted.
Turning off Old Mine Road toward Zion’s mansion on the lake, Thomas let himself remember the day he first had seen Connie again. It had been about three months after her marriage to Vernon Bradshaw.
Actually, it’d been two months, twelve days and four hours.
She’d been sitting on a sidewalk bench outside the drug store in Grass Valley. Thomas had hesitated, unsure if he should speak to her, but the town was small and avoiding anyone indefinitely wasn’t going to happen, so he walked up and stopped to say hello. They talked for a couple of minutes about innocuous, trivial things, then she stood up and he saw the reason for her rushed marriage. Connie was pregnant.
His knees had nearly buckled and his stomach seized. He buried his shock, keeping it all inside, but he wondered. His or mine? She said nothing about it. Not a single word.
After the most awkward silence of his life, they exchanged bane pleasant farewells, and she walked away. A thousand questions racing through his mind, he watched her go. Dropped down onto the bench she had vacated, and battled with himself. Why hadn’t he asked her? Why?
