One More Last Chance

by Cathleen Armstrong

  There was something in the air the next morning that Sarah couldn’t quite put her finger on, but she felt a little uneasy. The class was a little harder to settle, but that could be attributed to the excitement that rippled through the room when she told them they would be going on a field trip to a pumpkin patch later on in the month. But there was more. More whispering, more giggling, more shoving in line. For the first time, she found herself exasperated with the entire class and not just a rowdy one or two.

  It all came to a head during recess. Sarah didn’t have yard duty, so she was using the time to prepare for the next segment of the day when she heard the eruption of noise on the playground. She raised her head and listened briefly before returning to her task. The playground was well monitored, and all would be taken care of.

  Suddenly Anthony Montoya and Ethan Casey charged through her doorway. “Teacher! Teacher!”

  “Miss Cooley,” Sarah corrected automatically as she got to her feet. Now what?

  “Miss Cooley! Olivia is beating up Emma A.!”

  By the time Sarah got to the playground, the girls had been separated and the playground monitor was trying to establish what had happened. Both girls were crying and neither would answer any questions, but the group of students who had gathered around all vied with each other to be heard. Sarah raised her hands to quiet everyone.

  “What is going on here? Emma? Olivia? What in the world happened?”

  Olivia, still sniveling, shot a murderous glare toward Emma but said nothing. When Sarah pressed her, she looked at the ground and refused to talk. She wiped her eyes with her fist and her nose with the back of her hand.

  Emma, however, was sobbing and ready to tell all. “She pushed me down, and I’m bleeding.” She showed Sarah a skinned knee and elbow that were indeed bleeding before she noticed further outrage. “And my dress is torn! It was new too.” She could not continue her narrative, so great was her grief.

  Sarah took a deep breath. This was going nowhere. She looked at the crowd gathered around. “Did anyone see exactly what happened?”

  Again they all erupted in explanation, and Sarah could gather nothing. “Okay, you and you.” She designated two of her second graders who she knew to be fairly serious. “You come with Emma and Olivia and me. We’re going to the principal’s office.”

  Stopping long enough to ask an aide to stay with her class until she got back, Sarah marched a sullen Olivia, a loudly sobbing Emma, and two witnesses, grave with the importance of their task, off to the principal’s office to see if she could figure out what had actually happened.

  Late that night, when Sarah took her mug of tea and her book and crawled into bed, she could only be thankful that at least the day was behind her. It had been a disaster. Mrs. Martinez, the principal, was much more adept at getting to the bottom of things and had it all sorted out in about two minutes. Sadly, it appeared that the physical attack, anyway, had been entirely one-sided. And Emma had gone down like a roped calf.

  It still wasn’t entirely clear what had provoked the attack. Emma had said she had just asked Olivia where her mother was. Olivia hadn’t refuted Emma’s account. She had not, in fact, said a word in her own defense the entire time she had been in the principal’s office. Sarah knew there had to be more to it than that, but rules were rules. Violence definitely violated those rules; asking questions did not.

  Sue Anderson and Chris Reed had been summoned to the school. Sue, quite understandably, was outraged. After all, it was her child with the bloodied knee and the torn dress. She pointed out that it was the school’s responsibility to protect children from bullies, that Olivia was twice the size of Emma even if they were the same age, and that she herself had warned Miss Cooley that Olivia bore watching.

  In the end, Olivia had been suspended for three days. Sue thought the punishment far too lax, but Mrs. Martinez told her—and warned Olivia—that three days’ suspension was the penalty for a first infraction. It went up from there.

  Chris apologized to Sue Anderson and Mrs. Martinez, offered to pay for the ruined dress, and took Olivia away. He looked so defeated and Olivia looked so hostile that Sarah’s heart broke. Just yesterday she had assured him that she had everything under control and that she would let him know if any problems developed. Today he was taking Olivia out of school in disgrace. She followed him outside and caught up with him in the parking lot.

  “Chris.” He turned to wait for her to catch up. She only hoped that the anger in his eyes was not directed toward her. “Take her to Gran.”

  He put his hands on Olivia’s shoulders and started to shake his head, but Sarah interrupted before he could say a word.

  “Seriously. You both need some space. Gran’s is absolutely the best place for Olivia right now. I’ll call and tell her you’re coming. You can explain why when you get there.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment, and his face, usually so warm and open, was closed and grim. Finally, he nodded and walked away with Olivia. As his friend, and as someone who had come to truly care for Olivia, there was so much she wanted to say. She wanted to apologize for allowing the situation to escalate like it did; she wanted to say that she knew this wasn’t all Olivia’s fault and that Emma had played more of a part than she was getting credit for. She wanted to call out that Chris was doing an amazing job and that Olivia was a terrific little girl. But as Miss Cooley, second grade teacher, she could only watch him go, then turn and walk back to her classroom.

  Sarah snuggled back against her pillows and tugged her covers up under her chin. She took a deep breath, held it as long as she could, and then released it in a long, gentle hiss. Time to let the day go. There were plenty more coming up she’d have to deal with.

  She smiled to herself as she let her thoughts go to the upcoming weekend. Brandon was landing in El Paso Friday morning and would be in Last Chance by the time she got out of school Friday afternoon. She had to admit that while she originally hadn’t been wild about his idea of flying in for the weekend, she had come to really look forward to it. They were going out for dinner somewhere Friday night. He wouldn’t say where, but she knew it would involve a drive. Saturday they were going for a long ride at the ranch. Brandon wasn’t crazy about horses, but he was a good enough rider. And Saturday night there was “Hot Chile and Cool Jazz.” She was really excited about that, even if Brandon did keep teasing her about having a low threshold for excitement.

  When the phone on her bedside table rang, she didn’t even have to look to see who it was. He was putting in long hours at work, and it was always after midnight in Chicago when he called.

  “Hey there. I was just thinking about you.” Sarah smiled into the room.

  “Really? That sounds promising. What were you thinking?”

  “Oh, just about the stuff we’re going to do this weekend.”

  “Oh?” His voice was low and almost purred. “And what kind of stuff is that?”

  Sarah sat up and made her voice matter-of-fact. It was time to bring Brandon back to reality. “Dinner, horseback riding, the chile and jazz thing at the Dip ’n’ Dine. You know, the things we talked about.”

  “Ah. And that brings me to the reason I called.”

  “What?” Sarah did not like the sound of this. At all.

  “Well, babe, I’m afraid I’m going to have to beg off this weekend.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Things have just gotten crazy. I’m going to have to work all weekend. I hate it that I’m not going to get to see you, but hey, you’re coming Thanksgiving, right? It’ll be here before we know it.”

  “Then what was all that stuff about wanting to know what we were going to do this weekend?”

  There was a pause on the line, and Sarah could almost see him shrug. “I don’t know. Just hoping I’d hear something I liked, I guess.”

  It was Sarah’s turn to let the line go silent a moment. “Well, that really stinks.”

  “Yeah, well, I hate it too, babe, but it c
an’t be helped.” He waited for a moment and then continued. “Listen, I still have a boatload of work tonight, so I’d better get to it.”

  “All right. Bye.”

  “Bye-bye. Call you soon.”

  Sarah let her phone drop on the bed beside her. The chief drawback of cell phones, other than their occasional bent for self-drowning, was that you could not slam down the receiver. And if ever there were a time to slam a receiver, it was now.

  She got out of bed and padded to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Her tea was cold and she was way too mad to sleep.

  18

  Saturday morning Chris was at the Dip ’n’ Dine even earlier than usual. Saturday was always busy, and he couldn’t afford to close it up for the day just to get ready for his big night. He felt bad about hauling Olivia out of bed hours before sunup, but with his Jeep parked right out front where he could keep an eye on it, she was curled up in the back with her pillow and blanket, still asleep.

  He flipped on the kitchen light and took a clipboard off a hook by his desk. Rita had presented it to him with a checklist attached, and he had to admit it was a system that worked. He leaned against the desk as he went over it. They were closing off the parking lot at noon, and shortly after that, the canopy that would cover it and the stage for the band would go up. They were bringing the tables over from the church fellowship hall sometime this afternoon. Rita had a crew coming in to set tables and decorate, and Carlos had a crew of nieces and nephews coming in to serve. Now all Chris and Carlos had to do was keep the food coming.

  Chris looked up and smiled as the back door opened and Carlos came in. At least the kitchen would have a team of pros, even if they did spend the whole evening jostling for elbow space.

  “Hey, boss. You’re here early.” Carlos hung his hat by the door and reached for an apron.

  “Big day.” Chris tossed the clipboard on his desk and headed for the dining room.

  “I don’t see Olivia.”

  Chris stopped at the door. “She’s still sleeping out in the Jeep. I’ll get her up just before we open. And Elizabeth Cooley invited her to spend the day, so I’ll run her over there after breakfast.”

  “How’s she doing with all this school stuff?”

  Chris shrugged. “Olivia? Well, we’ve got two days gone and Monday to go. She’s not looking forward to going back, I can tell you that.”

  “No, I can’t imagine she is.” Carlos shook his head. “I think it’s pretty rough, kicking a little kid like that out of school, especially just for pushing somebody down. I used to get in fights every other day when I was a kid. They’d just pull us apart and make us sit on a bench till recess was over.”

  “Yeah, well, times have changed, Carlos. They have a thing they call ‘zero tolerance’ when it comes to any kind of physical violence. No second chances.” Chris pushed on into the dining room. Behind him, he could hear Carlos muttering something about “zero sense.” It didn’t change anything, but it felt good to have an ally, anyway.

  The breakfast crowd swelled to capacity around midmorning, then ebbed until lunchtime, and the diner stayed pretty full for the rest of the afternoon. Juanita usually didn’t work Saturdays, but she had come in so Chris could spend more time in the kitchen. Things had been pretty cool between Chris and Juanita since the incident at the school Wednesday. Chris didn’t blame Juanita for what happened. That was all on Olivia. But he sure wished Juanita had just minded her own business for once and let Olivia and Emma meet at school on their own terms.

  “Chris, I need to say something. And I need for you to listen to me.” Juanita had come into the kitchen behind him and stood with her arms crossed. He automatically checked behind her to see who in the dining room might be able to hear her thunderous whisper, but for once it was full enough and loud enough that he did not think she would be overheard.

  “All right. Here I am, listening.”

  “Well, the first thing is, I couldn’t be sorrier about Olivia getting suspended and all. She’s got a lot of rough edges, I think anyone can see that, but she did not deserve to be suspended and Emma Anderson not even get a slap on the wrist.”

  Chris didn’t know what he had expected Juanita to say, but it wasn’t this. He shrugged. “Well, those are the rules. Any student who lays a hand on another student is automatically suspended.”

  “I still don’t think it’s right. And I intend to tell Sarah Cooley that the next time I see her.”

  “No. Don’t.” Chris held up his hand. “It’s not her rule. It’s not even Mrs. Martinez’s rule. This came from the school board.”

  Juanita shook her head at the injustice of it all, and just when Chris thought she had nothing more to say and was about to turn away, she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “One more thing. I haven’t seen Olivia since Wednesday, but would you give her a great big hug and tell her it’s from Miss Juanita? And tell her from me that she’s not the first child to be suspended from that school, and she won’t be the last, but she needs to march back in there on Tuesday with her head held high, determined to get with the program and not let anyone throw her off track. Would you tell her that for me?”

  “I’ll do that.” He was going to have to figure out exactly what she meant, but he would do his best to pass on Juanita’s message.

  “Good.” She patted his arm. “Now, I’m going to go out there and start putting checks on tables. These folks need to get on with their day so you can get on with yours.”

  The last part of the plan fell into place about four in the afternoon when the door opened and Rita led a group of five men into the Dip ’n’ Dine.

  “Lookie who I found.” Rita seemed as pleased as if she alone were responsible for the band turning up.

  “Tom!” Chris crossed the room and clasped the hand of the leader. “Hey guys, I can’t thank you enough for coming all the way down for this.” He shook the hands of the rest of the band in turn.

  “Wouldn’t miss it.” Tom grinned through his Yosemite Sam mustache. “‘Hot Chile and Cool Jazz,’ huh? Nice.”

  “You guys hungry?”

  “Nah. Thanks anyway. We found a Blake’s on the way down and had a burger. We just thought we’d stop by and look things over before we checked in at the motel.”

  “I’m going to run them over and check them in right now.” Rita was clearly ready to get the schedule back on track. “I’ll be back in ten minutes, tops.”

  “Be sure to be back in time to eat before you go on. I’ve got something really special I’m introducing tonight. Chicken breast in a green mole sauce.” Chris walked the band to the door.

  “Or you can have the best enchiladas and rellenos you’ve ever put in your mouth.” Carlos had appeared in the window to the kitchen and jerked his chin in greeting. “Hi. I’m Carlos. Glad you made it.”

  Tom paused in the doorway to look from Chris to Carlos and back. Finally he grinned. “Chris, I’m sure your mole is truly outstanding. But Carlos has me where I live. See you in a couple hours.”

  He raised his hand in a wave and followed Rita and the rest of the band outside. Chris glared at Carlos, who gave a “don’t blame me” shrug and turned back to his stove.

  The last half hour before the dinner was to begin was the hardest. Everything was done. The kitchen was organized with the precision of a military operation. Tiny lights twinkled up in the canopy that covered the parking lot, while underneath it long, family style tables decorated with chile ristras and votive candles stretched in rows from one end to the other. The band had finished eating and gone out to set up. Chris’s stomach was tied up in such knots that he thought he might be sick. This was it. This was what could turn the Dip ’n’ Dine from Fayette’s diner to his own restaurant. And Carlos was even on board.

  He went out the back door of the kitchen and sat on the step. The day had been unseasonably warm for early October, and as the sun went down, a light breeze had sprung up. The night was going to be perfect. He closed his eyes and held his face up to
the cooling breeze. Deep breath. It’s all going to be good.

  The back door opened and Carlos stuck his head out. “Showtime, boss.”

  Once guests started arriving, Chris had no more time to worry. He and Carlos were spinning like windmills just to keep up with the orders, which ran about three to one in favor of Carlos’s enchiladas. When he did have a minute to catch his breath, he took that time to go out and walk between the tables visiting with the diners.

  Olivia had come with Elizabeth Cooley and her family and was sandwiched between Elizabeth and Lainie Braden, who sat next to her husband, Ray, who sat next to Sarah. Chris was delighted to see Lainie again. As hard as it had been to get his feet on the ground at the Dip ’n’ Dine, he didn’t know if he’d have been able to do it at all without Lainie. She had run the place for Fayette when Fayette was in Albuquerque with her son in the hospital. Then, after Chris bought the diner, Lainie had stayed on for the transition.

  “Chris, this is amazing!” Lainie gestured with her fork at the mole chicken. “Have you added it to the menu?”

  “Not yet.” Chris noted with satisfaction that everyone in the Cooley-Braden party had ordered his mole chicken, even if someone had scraped all the sauce off Olivia’s portion and put the chicken on a clean plate. “Maybe if there’s enough popular demand.”

  “Well, where do I sign the petition? This is terrific.”

  “Thanks.” Chris got Lainie’s promise that she’d come into the diner for a meal before she and Ray headed back to Santa Fe, dropped his hand on Olivia’s head, and moved on down the table. It didn’t escape him that Olivia hadn’t looked up the entire time he had been standing next to her.

  Finally, a party of diners left and there wasn’t another waiting to take their spot. The tables gradually began to empty. With just a few diners left lingering over their flan and coffee, Tom and the band played their last number and started to pack up.

  “Chris, we did it!” Rita came inside and held up her hand for a high five.