Collapsible

by Buchanan, Ruth;

  “Oh.” Rachel’s mind occupied itself with some quick mental math. He must be older than he looked. Or had he just gone into firefighting straight out of high school?

  A blast of noise from the TV turned Rachel’s attention back to the far wall. Her gaze drifted from the TV to the door where the nurse had disappeared. She wondered again what had startled the woman, and wished—not for the first time—that she could see through walls.

  Matt cleared his throat meaningfully. Rachel turned back to find him eyeing her appraisingly. He was going to ask her out. She knew it down in her bones.

  She had to stop it.

  She gestured toward the plain wooden cane resting against his knee. “What’s with the cane?”

  Matt didn’t seem put off. If anything, he seemed to take heart that she’d expressed some interest. He tapped his knee lightly. “I was hurt on duty and had to give up firefighting.” He shifted in his chair, angling toward her. "So…you’re married? You have a boyfriend?"

  “Well—no.” Rachel was surprised into answering by the abruptness of the question. She’d always thought men feared rejection. This one obviously didn’t.

  “You must keep yourself too busy to meet anyone.”

  “Well, I am busy,” Rachel admitted, “Especially just now.” She nodded toward her splinted leg and thought with a bit of despair about the ragged edge of the school year and her half-packed apartment. “But I don't think that's necessarily why I'm not dating.”

  The corners of Matt’s mouth lifted. He leaned forward. Any closer and he’d be climbing into her seat with her. “Do you know why you are here, of all places, on a weekday afternoon?”

  “Because my ankle’s broken and I need a cast?”

  “No. I think you are here because we were destined to meet.”

  She almost laughed, but his eyes were serious. This couldn’t be happening. “We—wait. What?”

  “Yes. We were destined to meet. Fate brought us together.”

  Another woman might have swooned. Instead, Rachel fought a sudden, overpowering urge to laugh. One of the delicate muscles under her right eye begin to twitch. “Fate.” She nearly choked on the word.

  “They always say you'll meet the right one when you're not looking, and here we both are, not looking, and we've met.” Matt smiled into her eyes.

  “Well. So what you’re saying is...”

  He nodded. “Fate.”

  This had gone on long enough. Rachel sat up straight and cleared her throat. “I don’t believe in fate. I believe that God controls our destinies.”

  “God.” Now he was the one leaning back in his seat, his face registering uncertainty for the first time.

  Good, Rachel thought. She had him on the run. She worked to keep the glee from her eyes. “Yes. I believe that God orders our days.”

  “Oh, me too,” Matt said, scrambling. “I’m a big-time God-believer.”

  Rachel smiled. A small one. “I see. Do you go to church anywhere?”

  “Of course.”

  “Which one?”

  Matt scratched his chin. “I think it’s on Hillside Avenue,” he said slowly. “It has a brown sign out front.”

  “What’s it called?” Now she was just being petty.

  He flicked a hand as if gesturing toward an invisible chalk board on which he had listed his spiritual qualifications. “Our family has always been Christian.”

  Rachel’s ankle gave an acute throb. She shifted in her seat, involuntarily bumping Matt’s arm with hers. He smiled. She scooted quickly to the right again, and his smile warmed. Ridiculous.

  The door to the side of the waiting room opened and Rachel’s name was called. She rose unsteadily to her feet, feeling Matt’s eyes follow her all the way across the waiting room.

  Although adept at interpreting the feelings of characters on the page, Rachel found that her own feelings weren’t so simple to decipher in real life. Rachel practically swooned every time male protagonists in books made confident revelations of their feelings, but she’d never considered how it might feel to be on the receiving end of such tactics. The butterflies in her stomach kicked into high gear, their wings beating a frantic pace. Did her stomach roil because Matt made her uncomfortable? Or was it because, despite his over-the-top tactics, she couldn’t keep herself from blushing? That second thought definitely made her feel uncomfortable. With any luck, when her appointment was over he would be gone, and she would never have to decide.

  ~*~

  Apart from the rather hideous moment when the tech pushed up on Rachel’s foot to ensure a right-angle with her leg, the process of getting a cast put on had been simpler than she had anticipated. The warm, wet fiberglass hardened into a comforting armor. Straight up from toes to knee, Rachel’s black cast may have felt as if it weighed more than her actual leg, but at least she no longer had to fear the slightest twitch. In this cast, her leg felt invincible.

  Crutching down the hall toward the front office, she came across a surprising tableau. The receptionist from earlier—Becky—crouched in the hall next to another sobbing woman in scrubs, who was slumped forward over a pile of balled-up tissues. Neither of them looked up as Rachel crutched around them, negotiated the door, and moved to the front desk to pay.

  Behind the computer now sat a harried woman whose nametag read Grace.

  “I’m sorry about this,” she said as she sorted through Rachel’s insurance information and calculated the bill. “We’re all a bit rattled.”

  “Is everything OK?”

  Grace’s hands shook as she handed back Rachel’s insurance card. Her eyes flicked toward the TV. Her voice wobbled. “We think that the murdered woman might have been someone we work with.”

  Rachel gasped.

  Grace’s eyes filled with tears. She reached for a tissue.

  Rachel turned to glance toward the TV and jumped, nearly dropping her crutches.

  Matt stood directly behind her.

  6

  Rachel temporarily forgot about her broken ankle. She lurched back in involuntary surprise. Her crutches lifted from the ground as her arms flailed for balance, her body swaying dangerously. Matt reached out a well-muscled arm, clutching her elbow with one strong hand, while his other grasped his cane to hold his own balance. For a moment, they both teetered on the brink of disaster.

  Then Rachel settled her crutch tips on the ground. Her heart beat in frantic staccato, as much from the almost-fall as from the scare that Matt had given her by standing right behind her like a giant creep. A giant creep with strong hands and a winning smile. Rachel inched backwards until the small of her back made contact with the counter.

  Matt gripped his cane and wiped sweat from his forehead. His embarrassment cracked his bravado. Rachel found this slightly-sheepish version a vast improvement.

  “You OK?” he asked, only half-smiling now. A thin film of sweat coated his upper lip. Rachel wondered if he’d strained his knee somehow.

  “I’m fine.” Rachel turned back to speak to Grace but saw that Grace had abandoned her post, no doubt to join the huddle in the hallway.

  “You don’t look fine,” Matt said.

  “Well”—Rachel lifted a hand to push back a waterfall of curls that had fallen over her forehead—“there seem to be some upsetting things going on.” She gestured toward the TV and then back toward the hallway from which came the sounds of low voices and muffled crying.

  Matt looked genuinely confused.

  Had he really been so caught up in flirting with her that he’d failed to notice the hyper-emotional vibe in the office? Rachel tried to crutch around him, but he reached out a hand to take her elbow as she headed for the door.

  “I’m fine.” Rachel tried to brush him off, but he followed her all the way out to her car and helped her into the driver’s seat, his hand warm and dry against the inside of her elbow. Up close, he smelled pleasantly of laundry detergent.

  But her brain only half-registered this fact. All she wanted to do was call Ann a
nd Lynn to fill them in on her afternoon. Someone from her own doctor’s office had actually been killed by the Memento Killer. This was the closest degree of separation she’d ever had from an actual killing, and she couldn’t wait to hear their shocked reactions.

  Before she could call either of them, she must somehow detach from Call-Me-Matt, who now stood just close enough to prevent her from shutting her car door.

  “When will I see you again?” He gazed down at her.

  “Let’s leave it to the fates,” Rachel said, reaching for the door handle, inwardly congratulating herself on the best closing line she’d possibly ever given. While she should rightly have said “Let’s leave it in the Lord’s hands,” she suspected she’d get more traction if she spoke his language.

  Matt, however, refused to let her have the last word. Not only did he fail to step out of the way, but he also put up a hand to stop the car door as it swung toward him, the frame making a soft thwacking sound against his palm. “Wait.”

  Rachel took in a deep breath and let it out sharply. Up to this point, she’d just been putting up with his Don Juan routine, but now she was starting to feel annoyed. There remained one final line that almost always worked as a deterrent when sleazy men hit on her, and now was the time to deploy it.

  “Look,” she said, “if you really want to see me again, you’re going to have to come to my church.”

  He said nothing.

  “I go every Sunday and sit right down front,” she warned.

  “OK.”

  Rachel gaped at him. Why wasn’t this working? Usually the mention of church sent men like him scurrying for the nearest escape route. Instead, here he was pulling out his phone and looking weirdly excited.

  “Hold on just a sec. I need to write this down.” He asked for details of location and service times, typing her responses into his phone one-handed.

  Anxiety bubbled quietly in the pit of Rachel’s stomach. Perhaps this tactic had been ill-advised.

  As she pulled out into traffic, Rachel looked in the rearview mirror to see Matt standing in the parking lot, watching her drive away, one hand lifted in farewell.

  ~*~

  “Do they think it was the Memento Killer?” Lynn asked, just as breathless as Rachel had imagined she’d be.

  “I don’t think they know anything yet.” Rachel pressed the phone against her ear with her shoulder as she put on her turn signal and peered into the side mirror in an attempt to merge. “They haven’t said anything about how she died, so I don’t know yet if she was strangled with a found object—whoops!” She jumped as a car behind her beeped. Blind spot.

  “Are you driving?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Rachel. I don’t even like to think about you driving one-legged right now, even without talking on the phone. I’m hanging up.”

  “Don’t hang up!” Rachel nearly dropped the phone. She caught it between her chin and her sternum and jiggled her shoulder to work it back up into place. “Calm down.”

  “Call me once you’re home.”

  “No, wait, hold on. I’ll park again.” Rachel pulled into a pharmacy parking lot. She wiped some sweat off her upper lip and turned the car’s air conditioning on full blast. “Now listen—”

  “Are you parked?”

  “Yes, I’m parked. Stop being such a mother hen.”

  Lynn sighed. “Go ahead.”

  Rachel recounted everything she had overheard. “They’re not saying anything definite on the news yet, but this woman Grace told me that the dead girl usually carpools with somebody else from the office, and she didn’t show up for work today. Then they saw her house on the news, all covered in caution tape, apparently now a crime scene, and a woman matching her description was found inside.”

  Lynn made clucking noises as Rachel continued.

  “This woman was the right age and the right demographic. She’s got to be victim number four.”

  “We don’t even know yet if she’s been receiving any mementos.” Lynn’s voice took on a worried tone. “I hate to even say things like this out loud, but maybe her boyfriend killed her or something. Maybe it was a home invasion or a robbery gone wrong. Maybe she killed herself. You just don’t know.”

  “True, but”—Rachel’s eyes fell on the clock—“I really do have to go. I have packing to get finished before bed tonight, and if I’m going to get anything done at all, I’ll have to start soon. But we’re not through talking about this.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I have some other things to tell you too.” Rachel’s voice dripped with laughter as she anticipated both Lynn’s and Ann’s reactions to the Call-Me-Matt episode. But that was a story best told in person, when she could act it out.

  “I’m sure you do. Drive safe.”

  Rachel hung up and quickly set a news alert on her phone to keep up with any press releases made regarding the Memento Killer. She then slipped the car into drive and headed for home, brain whirring.

  Just a week ago, her biggest concerns had revolved around getting enough sleep before the end-of-the-year push, dealing with the frizziness of her hair during the onset of Florida’s rainy season, and wondering how long she could possibly postpone packing. Now, she had a shattered ankle, a possible stalker, and a near brush with the Memento Killer.

  Who would have imagined?

  Rachel pushed sweaty curls from her forehead and leaned forward into the blast of the air-conditioning vent. At least she could count on one thing. At this point, there wasn’t much else in her life that could go wrong.

  7

  By fourth period the next day, all Rachel wanted to do was lie in the corner of her classroom with her leg propped against the wall until all the blood in her body was back in its proper place. But even if she locked herself in the room, the little square pane of glass in the door guaranteed that she would have no privacy. Besides, the school floors were gross. She would never willingly lie on them.

  She settled for sitting at her desk, pulling out one of the heavy bottom drawers, and plonking her casted leg across it, not moving as her students filed in and took their seats.

  When the bell rang, they all stared at her expectantly. Never before had a class started with Miss Cooper sitting behind her desk.

  “Your cast is black,” Chris observed from the front row. He glared up at Rachel from the shade of two bushy black eyebrows.

  “That’s very astute of you,” Rachel complimented him.

  “How am I supposed to sign it if it’s black?” He had come fully prepared, a black marker clutched in his hand like a tiny light sabre.

  Rachel sighed. “First of all, not now. I may be partially crippled, and my leg might feel as if it’s going to detonate at any moment, but I still have a Shakespeare lesson burning a hole in my brain, so don’t get any funny ideas about how you think today might go.”

  Groans sounded around the room as students pulled out their scripts.

  “Second,” Rachel said, making eye contact with Chris, “you’re not signing it.” Not breaking eye contact, Rachel swept her hand wide to indicate that the rest of the class was also included in this pronouncement.

  “Miss Cooper,” Shayla whined, tugging at her braids, “you know we all wanna sign it.”

  “We can’t sign it if it’s black.” Chris said, tilting his head toward Shayla but still trying not to break eye contact with Rachel. He seemed personally offended. He capped his marker and shoved it into his pocket, fuming. “It’s almost like she planned it.”

  Rachel smiled slowly at him. He blinked.

  Denise spoke up. “My little sister has a silver marker that would work. I can bring it tomorrow if you want.”

  Chris turned entirely around in his chair toward Denise. “Yes,” he said. “Definitely bring it.” He turned a malicious smile on Rachel. “A silver marker will work just fine.”

  “Don’t bother.” Rachel waved an airy hand. She then rapped her knuckles against he
r well-used copy of Romeo and Juliet, a signal to the class to open their scripts. “I have plans for this cast, and they don’t involve a bunch of teenage scribbles.”

  ~*~

  Helping to orchestrate the car line at the end of the day may not have been the most glamorous part of Rachel’s career, but she would have been lying if she said she didn’t love it. Since her school was a tiny Christian school running all grades kindergarten through twelfth, working the car line ensured that she got to know all the parents, regardless of whether she taught their children. Her particular responsibilities during car line guaranteed that the last few minutes of each work day were virtually kid-free, since no students were permitted to venture out to where she stood, megaphone in hand, ready to bellow the names of students as their cars arrived on the lot.

  “Santiago! La’Roque! Langolier!” Rachel called the names and readjusted her crutches, modified her grip to accommodate the megaphone, and worked her way a few crutch-lengths down the field. Although she had already carefully inspected that particular patch for fire ant hills, anybody who had lived in Florida as long as she had knew that the best way to avoid fire ants was to keep moving at all costs. Or just to stay indoors completely.

  After the first wave of cars passed, Miss Day delicately picked her way across the field toward Rachel, her high heels sinking into the dirt and gravel. How she kept her shoes looking so fresh was a complete mystery.

  “If I ever get fire ants in my cast,” Rachel told the approaching Miss Day, “do me a favor and just put me out of my misery.”

  Sharon Day blinked at Rachel before laughing uncertainly. “OK…?” She fluttered her Bambi eyes a few more times.

  As kindergarten teachers went, Miss Day could have been worse. She didn’t adopt a sing-song tone when addressing her tiny pupils or dance around wearing oversized sunglasses or silly hats. If anything, Miss Day dressed rather stylishly, in trendy button downs, pencil skirts, and high heels. Most days she looked more like a flight attendant than a kindergarten teacher. But Rachel still found conversations with her to be less than satisfactory. When talking to Miss Day, Rachel felt she finally understood Mr. Darcy’s initial criticism of Jane Bennet: “She smiles too much.”