The door to Lisa’s classroom was open and Clare stuck her head in. “Hi!”
Lisa looked up from a paper she was grading. “Hey there! What a nice surprise. Come and pull up a chair.”
Clare dragged a chair closer to the desk. “Sorry to disturb you,” she began. “But I needed to see you as soon as possible.”
“What is it? It sounded urgent on the phone.”
“When I was speaking to your class on Monday, I passed around a copy of my novel and—”
“God, don’t tell me one of my students wrote in it.”
Clare shook her head. “Something worse, I’m afraid. I found this in it.” She opened her purse and handed Lisa the note.
Lisa frowned as she studied it and when she raised her face to Clare, she was angry and upset. “This is horrible. I don’t understand. Are you sure someone from my class wrote this?”
“I haven’t opened the book at all since that day. And it’s only been in my possession, both before the class and after.”
“I don’t know what to say, except I’m so sorry.” She stared at the paper a moment longer. “I don’t understand why anyone would write this. What does it mean?”
Clare shrugged. “I’ve no idea. I was hoping you might recognize something about it—the writing or the paper.”
“Unfortunately, even the bad spelling isn’t a clue. It could have been written by any one of half a dozen kids in my class.”
“Don’t worry about it. Maybe someone thought he—or she—was being cool. Who knows? As for the message, I probably shouldn’t read too much into it.”
“Are you worried about it? Do you think you should go to the police?”
“Maybe I will.” She stood up. “I won’t take any more of your time Lisa.”
The teacher handed the paper back to Clare. “If I get any brainwaves about this, I’ll let you know. Are you still at the hotel?”
“No, actually I’m staying with my friend—Laura Kingsway.”
“Oh, yes. You mentioned her the other day. Then if I need to get in touch, I’ll look up her number.”
Clare nodded and, turning to leave, noticed a boy standing in the doorway. The same boy she’d seen earlier in the hall. The scowler. He didn’t look any happier now, she thought.
“Can I help you, Jason?” Lisa asked looking beyond Clare to the door.
“Just wanted to tell you I’d be bringing in my paper tomorrow.”
Lisa frowned. “That’s a day late, Jason. We’ve talked about this before. You promised you’d make a better effort.”
“Yeah well, things came up.”
There was a tense silence until Lisa replied, “Very well. Tomorrow at the latest. And this is the last time!” she called after he’d swung round and disappeared. “Sorry about that,” she said, turning back to Clare. “He’s having a bad year and I think, judging by his lack of cooperation, it’s just going to get worse.”
“Hmm.” Clare was thinking it might be her imagination, but the look he’d shot her had been uglier than the one he’d given Lisa.
“Anyway, thanks again for coming in on Monday. I know the kids enjoyed your talk—at least, all but the anonymous note writer.” She sighed. “I feel bad about that, Clare. It was so generous of you to give us some of your time. I think you’re right about the intention. Probably someone goofing around, trying to be a hotshot.”
“Yes. Probably. Oh, by the way, I bumped into another one of my teachers at the signing in Hartford.”
“Oh?’
“Mr. Wolochuk. I don’t know if you remember him. He taught chemistry and physics.”
“Of course I remember him. As a matter of fact—and this is a weird coincidence—that was his son who was just here.”
“What? The boy about the late term paper? The one in the doorway?”
Lisa nodded. “The same. He’s in my senior English class—the one you spoke to.”
“I can’t believe it. Mr. Wolochuk and that boy. Isn’t he too old to have a son that young?”
“Stan is older than his wife. And from what I’ve heard, he’s aged even more in the last couple of years. A heart condition or something.”
“Mr. Wolochuk said he was living in Hartford now.” Clare was having difficulty connecting the surly teenager to her chemistry teacher.
“He is. Unfortunately, Stan and his wife divorced when Jason was just a toddler.” Lisa pursed her lips and fell silent for a moment. “Stan’s wife assumed custody and Stan moved to Hartford. Did he say if he was still teaching or not?”
“No. He said he was on disability.”
“Well, the whole thing was a shame. Stan was such a good teacher and they’d wanted a child for years. I don’t know why they divorced, but these things happen, I suppose.”
Thinking of Laura and Dave, Clare could only nod. “I’ll go, then. It was nice to see you again, Lisa.”
“Good luck with the writing. I hope you won’t be too successful to come back to Twin Falls for another visit.”
Clare smiled and waved goodbye. When she reached the ground floor landing, she was aware of someone descending the staircase behind her. She opened the door and held on to it a second longer in case the person behind was also leaving the school. But no one followed through so she let the door swing shut.
She used the remote to open the Jetta and climbed in. The impromptu visit hadn’t revealed anything significant and Clare was beginning to accept that the note had simply been the work of a mischief-maker and not some psycho fan. She turned on the engine and was shifting into Drive when she noticed someone leaning against the side of the school, watching her.
Jason Wolochuk. They stared at one another until Clare took her foot off the brake and drove out of the lot. As she stopped to yield to oncoming traffic, Clare checked her rearview mirror. Jason had moved away from the exterior school wall and was now in the middle of the drive into the lot. His arms were casually folded across the front of his nylon windbreaker as he watched her drive out onto the street.
“BUT I LOVE being home with Emma,” Laura said, her voice pitching. “And I’m dreading the day I have to go back to work.”
“I guess it must be hard,” Clare began, “to give your first baby over to someone else’s care. Though plenty of women do it.”
“Of course they do. But I’m not other women and I don’t want to do it.’
“Have you thought about going freelance? Consulting from here, rather than commuting to Hartford?”
“I could. A lot of tax specialists do. There’d be a drop in pay, but I’d save on transportation, clothes and business lunches.” Laura straightened in her chair. Her eyes shone with excitement.
“You could even write off your mortgage payments,” said Clare.
“Who’s the tax specialist here? I thought you spent economics class penning love notes to Gil.”
Clare laughed. “I did, but some of Mr. Oliver’s droning lectures must have filtered into my subconscious mind.”
“Do you ever think about what might have happened if—you know—you and Gil hadn’t split up?”
Clare averted her eyes from Laura’s intent gaze across the kitchen table. When the silence in the room began to feel uncomfortable, she finally admitted, “I used to, but not anymore.” After a moment, she shrugged and defiantly turned her face back to Laura. “What would be the point?”
“What about kids? Ever thought of having any yourself?”
“Some day.” Clare laughed uneasily. “If I can find that certain someone…”
“Gil seems to be pretty good with babies.”
“Gil?” She cleared her throat and tried to change the subject. “Anyway, I still can’t understand why you studied business.”
“I wanted to follow in Dave’s footsteps. Go to the same college he did and be in the same faculty.”
“At least you didn’t become an actuary, too. That I could never have comprehended.”
“Me, neither.” Laura hesitated, then added, “Sorry for bringing all tha
t up with Gil, Clare, but you two seem to be getting along better and I just thought—”
Clare refused to end the sentence for her. Better to let the matter drop than playing the “what-if” game about Gil. “Anyway,” she said, “you’ve still got four months of maternity left, haven’t you? Plenty of time to get something organized.”
Laura nodded. “True. You know, I’m going to follow up your idea. If I can get someone to come to the house, even three days a week, I might be able to bring in enough money to offset the expenses I have had going into the office.”
“And you’d be here, too, so you could pop in to see Emma whenever you wanted.”
“That might be a problem. I’d want to see her all the time.”
“Maybe by then you won’t be so obsessed with her,” Clare teased.
“I’m not obsessed with her! It’s normal to want to be with your child all the time. I admit I’ll have to work at not being an overprotective mother because I had parents who wouldn’t let me go anywhere by myself for ages. But then, after your parents were divorced, it was just you and your mother. That must have been hard.”
“Only at first. I think high school was the hardest, with the emphasis on fitting in.”
“Do you think that’s why you and Gil linked up?”
Clare frowned. It seemed the subject of Gil wasn’t about to go away. “How so?”
“You felt that you didn’t fit in at times and he seemed to be an outsider in some ways.”
“Gil fit in. He was the captain of the football team. The big star!”
“But if Gil hadn’t gotten that scholarship, he’d never have been able to go to Yale. His family couldn’t have afforded it.”
“Gil said his father got a job at City Hall after the lumber mills closed.”
“Yes, the summer you moved to New Jersey. But that was strange, don’t you think? His father getting a job at City Hall?”
“Why?”
“Jobs at City Hall were hard to get. People who got them usually had some kind of pull. You know how it works.”
Clare did. She also knew there’d been enough talk about Gil Harper. “Speaking of high school, remember I told you I saw Mr. Wolochuk at the book signing in Hartford?”
“Yeah?”
“He has a son—in Lisa Stuart’s English class.”
“No kidding. I knew he and his wife had a child after we left for college. So the kid would be about, what? Seventeen?”
“Yes. He’s the same age we were when all that stuff happened.” Clare fell silent. “Lisa said Mr. Wolochuk and his wife divorced when their son was just little.”
“I heard about that a few years ago. Mom told me. Apparently the wife went a bit strange.”
Clare recalled what Lisa had said about Jason having problems. “I saw the son today. He came to see Lisa about something while I was there.”
“What did he look like?”
“Nothing like his father. I’d never have guessed. Bleached blond hair all gelled up, you know the way some kids wear it. Skinny. Bad complexion.”
“Guess he lives with his mother.”
“That’s what Lisa said.”
“Poor kid,” Laura said. “That would be tough, on top of the rest of it.” She pushed away from the table. “Dave may be able to come home tomorrow.” She was partway to the door when she stopped. “Oh, one more thing. Gil may come around sometime in the morning. He called while you were seeing Miss Stuart to ask if he could help out with anything so I did ask a favor of him.”
“What?”
“That ladder Dave was using on Monday morning when he fell is still propped against the house. Gil said he’d put it away for us, back into the garage. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Why should I mind?”
“You had a tight look on your face when you told me during dinner about meeting him in the park this afternoon. I wanted to ask more about it but I could tell right away the subject was taboo.”
Clare swallowed her irritation. “That’s not how I felt at all, Laura. There was simply nothing more to tell. We met in the park and I told him about the posters and the note I found. Period.”
“Okay, okay. You don’t have to get so bugged about it.”
Clare took a deep breath. No point in causing a rift between her and Laura over Gil Harper. “I’m not. Don’t worry about how I’m feeling about Gil. You have enough on your plate.” She patted Laura on the arm, wanting to show her she wasn’t upset.
“All right. I’ll pick up a video for tonight, okay? A chick flick.”
Clare smiled. “Great. And get some junk food, too.”
Laura paused in the doorway. “Sort of like old times,” she said, her face brightening.
“Sort of.”
But as soon as Laura left the room, Clare sagged back into her chair, folded her arms on the table and lowered her head onto them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HE HESITATED only a second, his hand poised inches from the front door. He figured Laura had gone to the hospital because the only vehicles in the drive were Clare’s rental and Dave’s SUV. Laura had told him she’d leave her car out of the garage so he could get the extension ladder inside. All of which meant that Clare was alone with the baby and instinct told Gil that being alone with Clare so soon after yesterday was probably not a good thing.
Of course, he could head for the back of the house, get the ladder straightened away and leave without Clare knowing he’d come at all. The idea was tempting. But doing so might look as if he were trying to avoid her. And he couldn’t deny that he did want to see her. He gave the door a firm, loud rap.
The door flew open. He’d barely pulled his hand away before he was staring down into a pale face.
“Oh,” Clare said, holding onto a wriggling Emma. “I thought you might be Laura. Come in.” She turned away before he could ask why Laura would knock on her own front door. He followed her and Emma inside.
“I don’t know what to do with her,” Clare was saying as he walked into the living room behind her. “I’ve changed her and given her some of the bottle Laura left but she doesn’t seem to want to go back to sleep.”
“Is she supposed to?”
Her eyes narrowed as if she thought he was being sarcastic. “I don’t know!”
Gil stifled a smile. The plaintive tone in her voice defied any kind of flippant remark. “I came to put the ladder in the garage for Dave,” he said, wanting to establish right away that he wasn’t there for a follow-up to yesterday.
“Yes, Laura told me you were coming.”
He watched her juggling the baby from one arm to the next. “She looks happy enough,” he said.
“Who? Laura?”
“Laura? I meant Emma. She doesn’t seem upset or anything.”
Clare peered down at Emma. “I guess not. I suppose I could put her in that chair thing she has.”
He nodded, knowing he didn’t have any advice to offer.
“Here, you take her while I go get it from the kitchen.” She thrust Emma at him.
“What? Hey, I didn’t mean—” Gil watched Clare dash from the room, then lowered his gaze to Emma. She gave him a big smile that he found himself automatically returning. He felt his arms relaxing, adjusting to the sensation of the baby’s weight.
Solid, but not heavy. Nice and warm. She had Laura’s coloring and he wondered which parent she’d most resemble when she grew up. If she was lucky, she’d have a combination of the best of both of them. The prospect of being a godfather didn’t seem quite so daunting at that moment. Maybe when she was old enough—whatever age that might be—she and her parents could visit him in New York. He could take her to a Yankees game.
A small bubble popped out of Emma’s rosebud mouth. “You like that idea, Emma? A baseball game with your godfather?” He raised one eyebrow up and down and winked at her. A soft coo and gurgle was her response. He laughed aloud. He would have tried another of his limited repertoire of parlor tricks but a slight movement in
the room alerted him. Gil jerked his head up and to the right. Clare was watching him from the doorway, a peculiar expression on her face. Heat rose up into his own.
“Got the chair?” he asked, though he could see it hanging from her left hand.
She extended the arm holding the chair. Gil had a feeling she wanted to say something about what she’d just witnessed—him gaga over a baby—but was restraining herself. Clare set the chair on the floor next to the couch and Gil carried Emma over to it, bending down on one knee to slip her into it.
“I think you have to do up those straps, in case she falls out.”
“Oh, right.” His fingers fumbled with the plastic snap locks. He wished Clare would move away so he could concentrate on the task, rather than on the heady scent wafting from her. When he stood up, she was standing so close he brushed against her and lost his balance. His hand shot out to steady himself, landing on her upper arm perilously close to her breast. He held it there a second longer than he needed to, as if the sweater she was wearing had some kind of magnetic pull.
But when his eyes connected with hers, he removed his hand and mumbled a halfhearted apology. “I should get at that ladder,” he added, backing toward the front hall.
She smiled. Enjoying his plunge into stammering adolescence, he wondered? Then she completely took him by surprise.
“When you’re finished, come back inside for coffee. If you like.”
“Sure. That’d be great.”
Outside he found himself rushing to lower the extension ladder and lug it into the garage. He propped it along the interior wall rather than trying to hang it back onto the wall hooks that Laura had mentioned. No doubt he’d be visiting again when Dave was back from the hospital. He could finish the job properly then.
When Clare opened the kitchen door at the side of the house for him, he could smell freshly brewed coffee and baked goods. Emma was perched in her chair in the center of the table, playing happily with the plastic rings and toys hanging from the chair’s handle.
Gil stepped inside. “Smells good in here.” He cocked his head at Clare. “Did you bake?”
She flushed at the surprise in his voice. Or maybe the color was merely from the heat emanating from the opened oven door. “I made brownies—from a mix. Laura and I are having a video night tonight. When I saw the package in the cupboard, I thought it would be like old times.”
Past, Present and a Future (Going Back) Page 9
