She skimmed the texts again, noting the last two. The Old Rachel would definitely have seen the shift in punctuation as moving from a question to a promise—maybe even a threat. But the New Rachel had no time for that. She deleted the whole string of messages and hauled herself out of bed, applauding her progress in not freaking out over something as small as random texts from a wrong number. She’d have to boast to Lynn and Ann when she saw them at church. She took a moment to bask in the image of them falling over themselves to praise her.
As it was, Rachel’s morning did not lend itself to boasting. The problems started with her hair. After nearly twenty minutes of battling her curls, which insisted on clumping together mostly on one side of her head with one lone curl twisting like a broken spring in the opposite direction, she swept them all into a gloppy bun at the top of her head. Ignoring the twists dropping like tentacles down the back of her neck, she contented herself with the knowledge that at least the people sitting behind her in church would be able to see the pastor.
With all the time her hair took, she didn’t have time to pray and meditate on Scripture to prepare her heart for the worship service (Lynn’s idea of an ideal Sunday morning) or to relax over a second cup of coffee (hers). She’d have to do both in the car. But brewing a cup for the road took more time than she’d planned, and traffic distracted her from prayer. She arrived at church almost-but-not-quite late, trotting down the center aisle during the opening song and shuffling sideways into her row, stepping on toes and feeling her face catch fire.
Her row seemed packed a bit tighter than usual today. Rachel maneuvered crablike toward Lynn’s family in the center, nearly stepping on the toes of a visitor on her way to her seat.
When she turned to hiss “I’m sorry,” she nearly swallowed her gum. This wasn’t a visitor at all. Well, he was a visitor but not a stranger.
“Good morning!” She shook his hand as she scrolled through her mental filing cabinet in search of his last name. Crocker. Craig Crocker. That had to be it. “You’re Myla’s dad, aren’t you?” She shifted past him and worked her way into the empty seat next to Alex.
Although Rachel generally had no trouble remembering school parents’ names in context, such as on Back-to-School nights or in car line, she was often thrown for a loop when she bumped into them off campus. Fortunately, Craig Crocker was easy to remember. First, his name alliterated. Second, she’d loved teaching his daughter Myla and always had pleasant interactions with both parents. Third, there was that quick smile.
She wished all school parents smiled when they saw her.
The worship leader ended the song and seated the congregation. Rather than take time to marvel over the coincidence of arriving late and sitting directly next to a school parent, Rachel closed her eyes and tried to collect her scattered thoughts. While she flipped open her notebook in anticipation of jotting down the day’s text, she felt Craig Crocker’s sturdy form shift in the seat next to her.
He leaned close, and his breath disturbed the delicate hairs near her ear. “I’m glad you’re here,” he whispered. His voice rumbled low.
She must have given him an odd look, because he raised his eyebrows and cocked his head to the side. “You didn’t forget about me, did you, Miss Cooper?”
Rachel’s heart thumped, and her head snapped around. She studied him from the top of his sandy head to the tips of his polished wing-tips. He was built like a construction worker, but dressed for the occasion. Wait, wing-tips? Rachel peered down at his feet, feeling the edges of her lips turn up. Against her better judgement, she relaxed. No man who wore wing-tips could be guilty of the sort of crime Rachel’s subconscious seemed intent to pin on him.
He was just a friendly parent of a former student, who had coincidentally arrived as a visitor at her church the day after she’d received a series of unsettling texts in the middle of the night. That was all.
Then again, he’d just asked if she’d forgotten him. Wasn’t that exactly what last night’s texts had said?
No. She couldn’t do this. This was a coincidence. Not irony, not foreshadowing, and not a clue. There was no need to collect clues because there was no mystery. Someone had programmed the wrong number into his phone and sent a string of texts. She’d always had good rapport with this parent, and now he was a guest at her church. These events were not connected. There was nothing to worry about.
Rachel bestowed on Craig Crocker the cool, detached smile she generally reserved for parent-teacher conferences and other unpleasant situations. “What was the passage?” she whispered.
“The—what?” He seemed momentarily confused.
She shouldn’t have asked. He didn’t seem to have brought a Bible.
“The sermon text,” she repeated, turning toward Alex. Alex tilted his Bible sideways and pointed out the text for Rachel, who scribbled it down. Romans 8:26-28.
So this was what competence and maturity felt like. Rachel pictured herself as an Olympic hurdler completing trials in record time, leaping to clear obstacles with room to spare.
Remembering to take notes on the sermon despite extenuating circumstances? Check.
Not obsessing over Lee’s potential marriage? Check.
Not creating a potential-stalker drama out of thin air? Check.
Well, perhaps not completely out of thin air. Even New Rachel could recognize some merit in exercising caution. After all, the potentially-creepy texts had come through the same day Myla’s dad had shown up in church—and in her row, too.
As proud of herself as she was for not obsessing over possibilities and expending mental and emotional energies on mere conjecture, now that she'd changed, Rachel had no real idea what she would do about her problems—potential problems, anyway—without giving each situation serious consideration. So far, she had no way of knowing if her Resolutions were doing her any good in the long run, because in the short run, all they had done was keep her from doing anything.
But perhaps for her, non-progress counted as actual progress.
It was all very confusing.
The service moved on. Rachel gave herself a mental shake. She was supposed to be listening and taking notes. In priding herself on keeping the first resolution, she'd almost blown another one.
Rachel glanced down at the open Bible in her lap. Craig Crocker leaned toward her slightly as the pastor referenced the day’s passage of Scripture, peering toward her Bible. Instead of wondering if he had forgotten his own on purpose just so he could lean in, or worrying over whether or not the touch of his arm had been unintentional or calculated, or shifting herself away in case he did it again, Rachel just ignored him.
She straightened her spine, clicked her pen twice, and started writing.
~*~
It wasn’t until they arrived at Stu’s that Rachel noticed Ethan’s absence. With only four of them on hand for lunch instead of five, they weren’t seated at their usual round table by the window. It felt oddly cozy to be stuffed back in a corner.
“Where’s Ethan?” Rachel asked Lynn.
“He’s staying at a friend’s house this weekend.” Lynn waved her hand in the air in a frantic signal for coffee.
After the waiter had taken up their orders and deposited their own personal carafe on the table, Alex turned to Rachel and cracked his knuckles.
“So.” He wiggled his eyebrows.
“So?” Rachel asked archly. She watched the steam drift serenely from her mug. It was time to be the steam. Rise above.
Alex scoffed. “Don’t give us that. We know you’re dying to talk about it.”
Rachel blew into the steam, disturbing its delicate curl. It was as if they didn’t want her to keep her resolutions. “Talk about what?”
Alex peered across the booth at her. “Are you all right?”
Lynn patted her husband’s hand. “I know you’re trying to be nice—”
“Nice?” Alex balked. “This isn’t niceness. It’s self-preservation. I’m just trying to get ahead of this.” W
ith a wave of his hand, he gestured toward Rachel.
She sipped from her brimming mug and winced. “Still too hot.”
“Wait a minute.” Alex glanced back and forth between Ann and Lynn. “Are we doing that thing where we pretend we don’t understand what’s bothering Rachel so we can move on and talk about something else for once?” He hissed this last bit in a pseudo whisper, as if by reason of volume, he could keep Rachel from understanding him.
Rachel set her mug down. “There’s nothing bothering me.” Although this wasn’t exactly the truth, at least not in the strictest sense, it was in line with her resolutions. She curled up her lips in a prim smile, folded her hands around her mug, and tilted her head ever so slightly to the side. “And what’s new with you, Alex?”
Alex scratched the back of his head. “What’s happening right now?” He whispered to his wife. “Is this a trap?”
Lynn chuckled.
He held his hands out in a what-do-you-want-from-me gesture. “A handsome stranger shows up in church, sits right next to her, whispers to her throughout most of the service, hangs around flirting with her afterwards, and we’re actually not spending the bulk of our lunchtime talking about it?” He leaned toward his wife. “Is she broken?”
Ann laughed outright.
Lynn briefly explained to Alex about Rachel’s resolutions, ending her summary by saying, “—and we’re all very proud of the progress she’s making.”
“And anyway, he wasn’t flirting,” Rachel said. “He’s a school parent. His daughter transferred schools last semester because she went to live with her mom.” She waved this away. The Crockers’ marital arrangements were murky. She’d rather not spread rumors.
An impressive array of expressions passed across Alex’s face. With superb timing, the wait staff arrived with their lunches, forestalling any unwise remarks.
As they tucked into their meals, Ann told of splitting her pants that week while riding what she termed a “very naughty horse.” Lynn defended a thirty-minute conversation she’d had with a telemarketer who had a soothing voice, and Alex recounted how he’d attempted to scare Ethan over the weekend by hiding in the hall closet and jumping out to grab his son. The joke was on him, however, as Ethan—superbly trained—immediately gripped Alex’s forearms. Before Alex had even realized what hit him, he was on the floor among the shoes, struggling against a triangle choke. “I guess the good news is that all that money I’m dropping on jiu jitsu is paying off,” Alex said wryly.
Rachel sat back and surveyed the table, glancing from one laughing face to the other. Another reward to keeping her resolutions. Not only had she kept herself from making any damaging relationship choices and saved herself a good night’s sleep, but she’d also given her friends one of the most relaxing and enjoyable lunches they’d shared in recent memory, with none of her drama throwing a wrench in the works.
This was the way it should always be. If she could keep the resolutions up, it always would be this way. Just her and her friends enjoying each other’s company with no drama to mar the proceedings.
Sipping her coffee, she smiled goofily at the faces around the table. You’re welcome, she told them internally.
Then, to herself, You’re welcome.
~*~
“The fun thing about Act I of The Taming of the Shrew,” Rachel enlightened her first-period English students the next morning, “is that it sets up the conflict for the entire play, hinting at areas in which our characters need to grow and change. In your opinion, who needs to change the most?”
Todd raised a hand. “Obviously, Katherine.”
“Why obviously?” Shayla tugged at her braids with one hand while the other clutched her script.
“Um, because she’s terrible?” Todd scanned the room for confirmation.
Rachel raised her eyebrows at Chris, who would generally put his oar in at this point. He just yawned, jaw popping. Some Mondays were hard on everyone, apparently.
“I don’t know that I’d call Kate terrible,” Rachel said diplomatically, “but she is described as a ‘shrew’ and a ‘wild-cat,’ and apparently, she’s so difficult that her father Baptista thinks he’ll never be able to marry her off—and by extension, he’ll never be able to marry Bianca off either, since in those days, elder daughters needed to wed before the younger ones could marry.”
“Why does that mean she has to change, though?” Shayla demanded. “Shouldn’t she just wait for a man who loves her as she is?”
Chris groaned and slid a hand over his eyes. “Here we go.”
Shayla whipped her head around, her braids nearly whapping Todd Perkins in the face. “Here we go what?”
Guessing where this argument was going and attempting to head it off at the pass, Rachel shot a gaze toward the back. “Alice?” she queried, lifting her chin in question toward the quiet girl. “Any thoughts?”
Alice Claythorne leaned her elbows against the desktop. She rested her chin on laced fingers. “It’s clear that Shakespeare’s setting Kate up for a growth arc,” she said, “seeing that he’s highlighting her rough tongue and impulsive nature and then having Petruchio vow to woo her successfully. But it doesn’t seem likely that he’ll woo her successfully if one or the other of them doesn’t change somehow.”
Rachel snapped her fingers. “Exactly! Arguing about who needs to change is moot. Suffice to say that the story goal requires someone to change. Either Petruchio will change his efforts to woo Kate by sheer force of will—which in this case will include a healthy dose of male dominance—or Kate will change somehow as a result of his wooing.”
“Why can’t they both change?” asked Shayla.
A just question. Rachel smiled. “You’re right, Shayla. Relationships always change people—often without their even realizing it. Sometimes the changes are so subtle they don’t realize how much they’ve been affected.”
“Petruchio doesn’t seem the type to be subtle about anything,” said Todd, which was perhaps the most astute point he’d ever made.
“Kate either,” said Carl.
“Then watching this relationship unfold should be fun for all of us.” She snaked a hand behind a stack of books to access the sneaky cup of coffee she’d taken to squirreling away out of sight on rough mornings. “Which is, perhaps, why Shakespeare chose to write the characters this way.”
Never mind the fact that the men and women in Shakespeare’s plays often found their archetypes in real life, and that this was part of the enduring appeal of his work. Bringing that up today would only derail Rachel’s plans to lead the class into Act II before the end of the period.
But it did get her thinking.
What archetype was she? Certainly not Bianca—lovable and sweet and universally adored. Nor was she wild or belligerent like Kate. Nor could she identify with any of the men. Maybe she couldn’t find herself in Shakespeare because she was looking in the wrong play.
At the bell to dismiss class, she tossed The Taming of the Shrew aside and turned in her swivel chair to pluck a copy of Macbeth from the shelf behind her desk. She ran her finger down the Dramatis Personae until it rested next to the leading lady.
Sure, Lady Macbeth wasn’t perfect. She’d wrecked her marriage, committed a few incidental murders, suffered an emotional breakdown, and come to a bad end. But Rachel could identify—at least in a small way—with Lady Macbeth’s desire to control her own destiny, to chart her own course, never doubt her own mind, and follow a plan successfully to the end. If only there were a way to do it without selling her soul to evil, wrecking all her relationships, and ending up dead.
~*~
“I can’t stop by for coffee,” Rachel told Lynn over the phone as she slid behind the wheel. “I have errands to run.” Switching the phone to her other ear, she inserted the keys into the ignition and cranked the engine. What a relief to have the January temperatures riding in the high seventies all afternoon. Only during these balmy winter days did she get to skip running her air conditioner for
twenty minutes before feeling her car might not actually cook her alive.
“Errands?” Lynn asked. “On a Monday? Monday’s our coffee day.”
Rachel sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. I planned to go to the store Saturday, but I didn’t get it done before lunch, and you know me and Saturdays. Once afternoon hits, I lose the will to live. I wouldn’t have gotten up off the couch at all, except I got hungry at dinner time and someone had to order the pizza.”
Lynn tutted. “I worry about you.”
“I know.”
“What will you do when you get married? Do you expect your husband to starve on weekends?”
“He has two hands. He can cook.”
“You’d better hope he can. Speaking of which, why don’t you just come by for coffee, stay for dinner, and then go to the store tomorrow? Alex is grilling those pork chops you like.”
“Ann’s coming over to borrow some books tonight, and I said I’d feed her dinner. I can’t keep putting this off. I’m out of some important items.”
“What could be so important to buy that you’d pass up on having afternoon coffee?” Lynn asked.
“Well…coffee.” Rachel cleared her throat. “Also toilet paper.”
“Well, if you’re out of coffee…”
“Exactly.”
~*~
Rachel was a terrible shopper. She invariably forgot to make lists. Even when she did remember to make a list, she’d either leave it at home or be so unspecific that she rendered the whole concept unhelpful. The best she could hope for was to thread her way through the entire store, wandering the aisles in hopes she’d stumble across any necessary items.
That afternoon, in aisle four, she stumbled across something else.
Unbreakable Page 4
