by Mia Ross
The two older women traded guilty looks, and Dina frowned. “I apologize for being so tough on you. I’m just terrified of what’s going to happen to Jerry and me if we lose my income. He’s not as strong as he used to be when he was younger, and they just cut his hours at the factory again.”
“It takes two jobs to keep a family afloat these days,” Christine added somberly. “My music position was made part-time last year, and we’re barely making ends meet as it is. We own our house, but if we have to move to find better jobs, who’s going to want to buy a place in a town that’s headed downhill?”
Emma’s memory flashed to Rick’s comment about visiting small towns that had all but disappeared from the map. Liberty Creek had been around for so long, she couldn’t imagine it declining to the point of vanishing altogether. But she had to concede that economic theory wasn’t her strong point. Calling up the optimism that had gotten her through endless rounds of chemo, she forced conviction into her tone.
“We’re not going to let that happen here,” she announced sternly as if being stubborn about it could somehow make it true. “We have to draw the line somewhere, and the school is an excellent place to start. Music and art aren’t luxuries that can be cut when money gets tight. Creativity is an important part of every child’s education, because it teaches them how to use their minds to do something other than parrot back facts to pass a test. There’s nothing wrong with memorizing dates and formulas, but there’s more involved in building productive adults.”
“Like heart,” Christine said, hope sparking in her eyes as she continued Emma’s line of thought. “If kids don’t learn to be compassionate and caring, we’ll end up with a generation of robots.”
“You’re absolutely right.” At the sound of Rick’s voice, the three women whipped around to find him walking up behind them. Setting down his ever-present briefcase, he smiled as he took a seat beside Emma. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Gardiner, I’d like to use that line of yours about robots in our presentation to the school board next month.”
Clearly flattered, she abandoned her wary expression and beamed at him. “Of course. If you think it will help.”
“Everything will help,” he assured her, including Dina with a practiced smile before sending a confident look around the anxious gathering. “But we all have to agree on our approach, or it won’t work. I promise not to force any tactics on you that you don’t approve of, if you’ll promise to be open-minded about my suggestions. Deal?”
“Deal,” Emma replied immediately. The other two exchanged a dubious look, but after a few hold-your-breath moments, they nodded their agreement.
“Excellent. Emma, I have a couple questions for you. Could I have a minute?”
She had a pretty good idea about what he’d be opening with, but she motioned him into the kitchen, hoping the gesture looked casual and unconcerned. When he reached the corner farthest from the buzzing crowd, he spread his hands with a baffled look. “What happened to this being just you and the two other teachers you mentioned?”
“Well, it started out that way,” she confessed in a hushed voice, “but it kind of snowballed from there.”
“I can see that. What I don’t understand is why.”
“Seriously?” she blurted before realizing that one of her favorite comebacks might come across as rude to him.
Fortunately, he grinned and nodded. “Seriously. Most people I’ve met don’t pay much attention to what happens to anyone other than themselves.”
“I think you’ve been living in the wrong kinds of places,” Emma announced reflexively. “Around here, we care about what our neighbors are going through, and if we can lend a hand, we do. We don’t wait for someone to come along and bail us out. We take care of problems ourselves.”
“Is that a New England thing, or a Liberty Creek thing?”
“Both. And we’re very proud of that,” she clarified, just in case there was any question in his mind about what sort of people he was dealing with. Her hometown was peppered with quirky characters who didn’t always get along, but when the chips were down, they’d do everything they could to help each other. In her mind, that quality was one of the best things about the map-dot town she’d grown up in.
“You should be,” he said, running a hand through his hair as he stared at the arched opening between the living room and kitchen. “I don’t have nearly enough printouts for everyone here tonight, and a lot of what I’ve put together is visual. Any suggestions?”
She considered the problem for a few moments before a suggestion popped into her head. “When Sam and Holly are working on a furniture project, sometimes they find plans online. They hook up her computer to the TV to enlarge the pictures and make them easier to see.”
“You mean, with an HDMI cable?”
She had no clue what an HDMI cable was, but he seemed to think it would do the job, so she decided to go along. “Sure, do you have one of those in your fancy briefcase?”
“I have one of everything,” he assured her with a chuckle. “Great idea.”
Score one for the flaky dreamer, she thought with a flush of pride. “Thanks.”
The two of them headed back to the crowd just in time to see Ellie’s new bakery assistant framed in the screen door. Emma excused herself and went to greet the culinary cavalry. “Hi, Alyssa. Thanks so much for coming to my rescue.”
“Your grandmother said it was an emergency,” the slender young woman said as she followed Emma into the kitchen. She set an armload of white boxes imprinted in burgundy with Ellie’s Bakery and Bike Rentals on the table. Glancing back through the doorway, she added, “I have to admit, I thought she was kidding about how urgent the situation was. I mean, I’ve never heard of solving a problem with pastry, but now I get it.”
“I really appreciate you getting them here so fast. How are you enjoying your new job?”
“It’s the best one I’ve had since...” She made a show of thinking it over, and then laughed. “Ever. I’ve only been there a couple of weeks, but I’ve learned a lot from Ellie, and she keeps letting me try new things whenever I think I’m ready. She keeps saying she should stop, though, so I don’t learn enough from her to open my own place and put her out of business.”
“That sounds like Gran,” Emma said with a fond smile. “The truth is, you could learn everything she’s ever known, and she’d still do it all better.”
“I got that feeling, too. How does she manage that?”
“I have no idea. I’m hoping it’s hereditary, though, and it’ll make sense when I’m older.”
“I’ll have to do my best to soak it in on my own.” When Emma offered her a tip, Alyssa put up her hands and backed away. “Not a chance. I’ve had a few bumps along the way to Liberty Creek, and I wasn’t sure about coming here. People have been wonderful to me, so I’m happy to help out here and there. My aunt Frida lives here, and when she heard about my troubles, she insisted I come, at least for a visit.”
“Frida’s a sweetheart, that’s for sure. How are things going for you now?”
“Much better,” Alyssa confided on a sigh. “I was drowning on my own, and I had nowhere else to turn. Your grandmother wasn’t officially hiring anyone new, but when she heard about my circumstances, she offered me a job. Considering all she’s done for me, I’d take her desserts to the North Pole if she asked me to.”
Emma wasn’t sure what troubles Alyssa was referring to, but it didn’t surprise her to learn that Gran had been doing more than just employing the new girl in town. There was no more generous person on the planet than Ellie Calhoun, she mused as she walked Alyssa to the front door. As the youngest in her family—and the only girl—she’d always enjoyed a special relationship with her adoring grandmother. She was elated to know that Gran’s special touch was making a difference in the life of someone who so clearly needed a guardian angel.
In no t
ime, she and some volunteers had refreshments for everyone, and they chatted while Rick reorganized his presentation. Once he finished connecting his laptop to her TV, he gave her a questioning look, and she nodded.
Referring to the printed version in his hand, he began. “I was able to get these budgetary figures from the board, and as you can see, they don’t look very encouraging. The contingency fund is dangerously low, and half the school bus fleet is in serious need of either repair or replacement. Then there’s the thirty-year-old roof at the elementary school.”
“I need to bring in buckets for my classroom every time it rains,” Dina complained. “Not to mention the flood we had in there when the snow that had piled up on the roof over the winter melted this spring.”
“And the temperature variations are crazy,” Christine said, shivering. “In January, it’s freezing, and this time of year, we’re melting.”
“If you had computers in those rooms, it’d be different,” the main office receptionist groused. “The offices and computer lab at the high school are like a freezer all year round, to keep the equipment from overheating. But we’re just people, so we’re forced to put up with it.”
Rick was typing notes into his phone while they all stared at him, obviously waiting for a response. When the silence finally got through to him, he looked up. “Go ahead, folks. I’m just getting all this down.”
“Maybe you should sit and listen for a while,” Emma suggested as gently as she could. She was beginning to understand why some folks around town had formed the opinion that he was more interested in the bank’s profits than their problems. “Sometimes when someone is typing, it gives people the impression that they’re not paying attention.”
Thankfully, he took the hint and put his phone facedown on a side table. Smiling, he held out his hands as if to show there was nothing in them anymore. “My apologies. Please go ahead.”
“I’m thinking,” one man chimed in, “that we don’t need those new buses. What we need is to fix the ones we’ve got and use the money to keep our teachers.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” Rick told him in a sympathetic tone, “but school funds don’t work that way. Money comes in from the state, earmarked for specific expense items, like maintenance, transportation and educational equipment. You can’t shift the dollars around to suit yourself, no matter how good your intentions are.”
“Why not?”
“Because those are the rules,” Rick explained in a patient tone Emma assumed he’d perfected with his daughters. “Otherwise, the administration could build a golf course on the athletic fields and enjoy themselves.”
The veteran teacher glowered at him. “You think that’s funny, young man?”
To his credit, Rick didn’t backpedal or stammer about trying to lighten the mood, which he’d apparently been trying to do. Instead, he faced the man squarely and said, “I apologize, sir. I realize this is a very serious matter for the entire town, and I shouldn’t have made light of it that way. I meant no disrespect.”
The scowl eased a bit, and the other man gave a stiff nod. “Apology accepted. Now, let’s get back to work and figure out what we’re going to do to save these good people’s jobs.”
Rick flashed Emma a relieved glance, and she sent him a muted smile that she hoped wouldn’t arouse anyone’s suspicions. The last thing either of them needed was to give the very active Liberty Creek rumor mill any material that might get exaggerated and eventually spin out of control.
Causing minor scandals had always been Brian’s forte, not hers. And she had every intention of keeping it that way.
* * *
“Daddy, my new painting is over here,” Caitlin told him excitedly, tugging him forward by one hand while Aubrey clung to the other and pulled him backward.
Rick felt like the rope in a tug-of-war between his daughters, and he stopped with a laugh. “Hang on, Cait. Aubrey’s legs are shorter than ours.” He knew full well that wasn’t the reason she was dragging her feet, but he didn’t want her to know he realized that she was frightened of the large, noisy crowd that had come to school for the Liberty Creek art classes’ annual open house. Timid on a good day, his shy girl found this kind of event terrifying, and he wished—again—that there was something he could do to make her feel more comfortable in these situations. As she grew older, there would be more of them, and so far, nothing he’d tried had worked. All he could really do was hope that she outgrew her aversion to unfamiliar people and places.
And then from the sea of faces emerged one that both of his girls had come to adore. Now that he thought about it, he amended with a grin to himself, he’d grown pretty fond of it himself.
“Hello, Marshalls,” Emma greeted them, pulling the girls into a hug before dazzling him with one of her incredible smiles. “This is a big night for our talented artists. I’m so glad you could all make it to the show.”
“We wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Rick assured her, smiling back because he hadn’t yet discovered a way to refrain from returning Emma’s friendly gestures. He’d tried very hard to keep the enchanting teacher at a distance, but he was a guy, and it was beginning to dawn on him that it might be impossible for him to resist her. The fact that she was such a wonderful influence on his daughters didn’t escape him, and that only made it more difficult to maintain his characteristic reserve.
Part of him didn’t even want to, and he reluctantly acknowledged that the ratio was growing every day. Like one of his pie charts, he realized with a mental groan, where one section kept increasing its percentage of the whole no matter what strategy he employed to bring it back in line with the rest of his numbers. But his feelings weren’t like money management, and he could definitely do something about them. The trouble was, he didn’t know what was causing his emotions to run away with him, so he wasn’t sure what that “something” might be.
He came back to earth when he noticed that the three ladies he was standing with were all staring at him, apparently waiting for him to respond to whatever they were talking about. Feeling like a moron, he shook his head and chuckled. “Sorry about that. You lost me for a second. What were you saying?”
“That us girls like pink and purple,” Aubrey explained, pointing to the three in the group, “but boys like different colors. What colors do you like?”
“Blue’s my favorite, but I like green, too.”
“What kind of blue?” Caitlin prodded. “There are lots of different ones.”
“I don’t know,” he hedged, looking to Emma for some assistance. Her feminine smirk told him that he was on his own, but he drew inspiration from the pretty artist’s features. “The color of a clear sky is nice. Especially when you’re on a sailboat, relaxing and enjoying the day.”
“Interesting,” she commented, the smug look warming into a dreamy one. “I’ve never been sailing, but I’ve always wanted to try it.”
“It’s like flying,” Aubrey told her, holding her arms out and rocking in a very untimid motion. “We’ve been on a plane, but sailing is way more fun. You can feel the wind, and the sun is really warm.”
“And then you get a sunburn,” Caitlin added in a big-sister tone. “Remember?”
“It was still fun.”
“Where did you go sailing?” Emma asked, clearly fascinated by the experience. Somehow, she managed to address her question to the entire family, and once more Rick was amazed by her ability to include all of them in a conversation. Then it struck him: she didn’t talk down to his daughters. They were young enough that most adults spoke to them in much simpler terms than were necessary. Condescending, almost.
But not Emma. He supposed it was because she was so accustomed to dealing with children of all ages, and she assessed each one as an individual rather than assuming that they were all alike. She’d done that with him, too, he recognized, giving him a chance to prove what kind of man he was instea
d of jumping to conclusions about him the way so many people seemed to do.
“Myrtle Beach,” he replied, smiling at the memory. “Last summer the girls and I met up with my parents and some relatives I hadn’t seen in a while. Our kids are all around the same age, so they had a lot of fun playing on the beach. We rented a sailboat one day and took it out for a few hours. I hadn’t sailed in years, but my uncle and I managed to get everyone back in one piece.”
“Uncle Gene is the best!” Caitlin announced, eyes shining affectionately. “He let us kids steer the boat and everything.”
Gene had only turned the wheel over to the rug rats when there was absolutely nothing for them to run into, but Rick kept that detail to himself. It had been the first trip they’d taken since losing Sarah, and there was no way he’d spoil that wonderful memory with reality. His girls had gotten enough of that to last them a long, long time.
“Maybe sometime you can teach me how to do that,” Emma suggested. “But for now, I’m thinking that your dad came by tonight to see your artwork.”
She gave Aubrey a quick wink before leading them to the display, and Rick wondered what the two of them were keeping from him. It was a new experience for him to feel like the odd guy out, and he wasn’t too proud to admit that it bothered him. He’d often wished that his daughters had a woman close by that they could giggle and share secrets with, but he’d gladly stepped into that role because there was no one else for them. Mrs. Fields was a warm, affectionate presence in their lives, but she was a nanny to them, not a friend.
Now they had a more personal feminine influence, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about being replaced as their confidante.
Long tables arranged throughout the gym held everything from lopsided pottery to animal portraits to an Eiffel Tower made entirely of popsicle sticks. Rick paused in front of it, saying, “Now, I’ve seen the real thing, and I have to say I’m impressed. This is fantastic.”
