On Common Ground (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Kelleher, Tracy

  “And as you all know, as part of the tradition the winning team gets to keep the Tail for the year. In honor of their 2002 classmate, the team has decided to give Lilah Evans the honor of being the Tail bearer.”

  President Forsgate raised his hands and displayed the tail for all to see. More cheers erupted, and they grew louder when Lilah gamely allowed him to place it on her head.

  Then it was her turn to speak. “I never thought I’d be given an award dressed like this. Thank you.” She glanced over at the president and straightened the cap. He acknowledged thanks with a tip of his head. Then she turned to the crowd and began speaking.

  “Thank you, all of you, for coming and giving me this honor. Of course, I’d like to thank my parents, who are here today.” She indicated with her hand. “And my good friend and fellow classmate Mimi Lodge. Without the TV coverage, Sisters for Sisters wouldn’t be enjoying the success that it has today.”

  Mimi waved, then crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair.

  Lilah gazed at Justin. “And I want to especially thank another classmate, Justin Bigelow, who spearheaded my nomination. Without his efforts, none of this would have been possible. We haven’t been in touch since graduation, yet seeing him again has reminded me that the ties formed in college withstand time and distance. That even though people change—which sometimes is a good thing, believe me—the bonds are still strong. I was reluctant to come back because it had been so long and I had been out of touch with the university, but I realize now that wherever I am, I will always have a home in Grantham and be part of the Grantham family.”

  This last statement particularly resonated among the audience members since, naturally, it was exactly the sentiment behind the Reunions weekend.

  “Finally—” and here, Lilah took off the Tail because she didn’t want to diminish what she was about to say “—I can’t go without mentioning the brave women of Congo—my sisters and, I hope, soon to be more of yours.” She scanned the crowd for Noreen. Conrad had booked a table with some classmates, and when Lilah caught her eye, Noreen smiled warmly.

  Lilah gripped the sides of the rostrum to steady herself. This next bit was not going to be easy. “And now in particular, I’d like to dedicate this award to my good friend, Esther. Let me tell you her story.

  “Esther lives in a small village in eastern Congo. She is my age—thirty-two. The rebels, seeking support for their own malicious gain, killed her husband when he refused to join them. They didn’t stop there though. They captured one of her sons and they forced him to be a child soldier. She has not seen him in over three years. On another occasion, a rebel group again came to her village, and this time raped her and her ten-year-old and eight-year-old daughters. Then they raped her remaining son. When that was not enough, they hacked off one of her legs and cooked it in a soup pot over the fire in her home. They even tried to make her son eat it. When he refused, they shot him in front of her.”

  There were gasps from the audience. She could see her mother cover her mouth. Even Vivian, so assured, looked taken aback.

  “Yes, it is terrible, but somehow Esther survived. And just three months ago, she danced on a new prosthetic leg that Sisters for Sisters’s traveling clinics helped her secure. And when I told her about this award—” Lilah lifted the award, then set it down “—she told me to return to my village of Grantham and accept the honor. And to tell everyone that she is rejoicing in her sister’s—my—good fortune.”

  Lilah had to stop and take a breath. She wet her lips and looked out over the crowd of loyal alums. There was silence in the entire hall. Even the waiters stood still, coffee urns in their hands, clearly stunned by Esther’s story.

  “You may know the adage that people give not so much to causes as to people. So, Esther—” Lilah held up the plaque “—when I see you next, I am bringing you this award. A Grantham University education may have given me the wherewithall to go out and fulfill a dream. But you give me the humility to appreciate what true courage is. Thank you all again.”

  She lowered the plaque. And the silence continued. Until she went to step down from the podium, at which point the whole place erupted. It could have been a basketball championship with everyone standing, clapping and cheering. President Forsgate insisted she take another bow. Overcome, Lilah bit her lip and tried to make her way back to the table through the phalanx of well-wishers and hand shakers.

  Finally, she saw her parents, both in tears. They reached out to embrace her.

  “My brave, wonderful dear,” her normally unflappable mother said, hauling Lilah close to her sturdy chest.

  Her father kissed her on the top of her head. He was too moved to speak.

  Vivian reached across the table to shake her hand. “I hope more Grantham graduates will touch the lives of others the way you have.”

  “Well, thank you for your generosity,” Lilah said.

  Mimi didn’t bother to stand on ceremony. When she saw that the crush of people was making it difficult to get around the table, she simply pulled out a chair, stood on it and used it as a stepping stone to walk across the table.

  Lilah looked up at her and laughed. “Only you, kiddo.”

  “Well, if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, the mountain will come to Mohammed.” She gave Lilah a fierce hug. “See, it was worth it, right?”

  Lilah pulled back and nodded.

  Then she frantically looked around for the one person who mattered most at the moment. Justin.

  As more people thrust their hands at her, she twisted her head back and forth, spotting him and his father with President Forsgate. It was Stanfield Bigelow’s day, too, she realized, recognition of the difference he had made in other’s lives.

  Smiling and nodding at people in the crowd, she fought her way against the tide and reached Justin’s side. She yanked at his arm. “Hey, you. How about letting me get to your father to congratulate him on his honor.”

  Justin spun around. “Never mind my father. He’s getting enough love from the president and all his former students. You’re the one who deserves the attention.” He pulled her up against his chest. “Answer me one thing. When you said that you found a home in Grantham, did you mean it?”

  She nodded eagerly. “I meant it because of you, and…all right…maybe all the silly hoopla of Reunions. But mostly you.” She paused, unsure whether or not to continue. “I do have one question.”

  He cocked his head.

  “The Tail? Was that your idea?” she asked.

  “Are you mad?”

  “Mad? Why would I be mad to have to receive the biggest award of my life while forced to wear an orange ninja costume and a ratty coonskin cap?” And then she couldn’t wait any longer. She went on tiptoes and tilted her head. She puckered her lips, but barely scraped his chin. “Ach! You’re too tall!”

  “Not for some things,” he answered. He picked her up, whirled her around and kissed her silly.

  And when he eventually put her down, the world was still spinning.

  “How long have I got you?” he asked, resting his forehead on hers.

  “I’m around for at least two weeks.”

  “Two weeks?”

  “I’ll probably have to go back to my place to pick up my mail and get some clean clothes, but basically I’ve got to stick around for that court hearing for the car accident, remember?”

  He looked to the heavens—or more like the upper stands, this being a basketball auditorium. “Thank God for our judicial system.”

  “More like overzealous Grantham cops.”

  “Whatever. I’ll take it.”

  She lifted her head. “And I’ll take you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  LILAH AND JUSTIN STOOD on the platform of the Grantham Junction station as the ex
press train pulled away bound for New York. It was Sunday evening around seven, and the parking lot was ghostly empty except for a few couples returning from Broadway matinees and a bevy of taxicab drivers lounging against their cars, hoping for fares.

  “It seems like I’m always saying goodbye.” Lilah waved, then let her hand drop. “Yesterday it was my parents going back to Washington. Today, Mimi for New York.”

  Justin put his arm over her shoulder. “Hey, Mimi is coming back in less than two weeks to help take care of Brigid while Noreen is with Matt in Congo. And until she arrived on Friday, you didn’t even know your mother would be visiting. So, even though she had to get back to her school, don’t you think it was an all-around good thing that she could come at all?”

  Lilah stared up at him. “I always wondered what it would be like to know a glass-half-full person, and now I do.”

  Justin seemed stricken. “Is it irritating?”

  Lilah shook her head. “No, immensely comforting.” She stood on tiptoe and brushed his lips with hers. Then hand in hand they descended the stairs and ambled to Justin’s car.

  Earlier in the day, rather than squeeze everyone into Justin’s car—despite her mother’s pleas that it would be fun—they had used Lilah’s rental car to drive to Newark Airport. Afterward, they’d coordinated dropping it off at the agency and driving back to the dorm, where she got her stuff.

  “Look at it this way. You have me all to yourself—at least for the rest of the evening and tonight. Tomorrow reality sets in, and I need to go back to work,” he said, unlocking her side of the car.

  “I’ll take whatever I can get.” She grabbed his hand and kept him close. “So do you plan to wine and dine me?”

  “On a teacher’s salary? More like I was going to retrieve a six-pack of beer from my fridge and take it along to the little Mexican restaurant in the shopping center. And then, unfortunately, I need to do my lesson plans for the week because someone who will go nameless has dominated my time all weekend, preventing me from doing any work whatsoever.”

  She gave him a mock pout. “Already we’re falling into a rut. Where did the first bloom of romance go?” Then she nuzzled his neck. “Don’t worry. I think it sounds fabulous. Besides, I’m totally backed up on my email, and now that I have the passport information from Noreen and Matt I need to book their tickets and put in for visas for Congo.” She ended with a kiss on his jaw. Then she looked up. “Hey, were you paying attention to anything I said?”

  Justin shook his head. “Sorry. I heard you mention Congo and I suddenly had this idea. You want to come visit my kindergarten class?”

  “Sure, I’d love to.”

  “How about tomorrow? I have this idea for doing a whole unit on Africa for the week. You can come in and tell them about the kids in the villages—what they wear and how they live. You’ve got some photos on your computer, right? Then we can have an activity table where they build a village.”

  She nodded, though he hardly looked at her.

  “And there’re all the animals. Fantastic. Perfect for art and a jungle animal science project—where we can also do some word recognition. Not to mention make pictures and write letters to your kids over there, describing their houses and stuff. And of course I’ll have to read them parts of Kipling’s The Jungle Book. And for math—” he seemed to focus on some indistinguishable point “—we can do something to figure out how far away it is.” Absentmindedly he reached down and opened her car door. “I have a giant floor map, and we can plot the airplane route or something.” He spoke quickly, moving his head up and down.

  Lilah stood there with her arms crossed and just looked at him.

  It took Justin a few moments to wind down before he noticed Lilah. “I did it again, didn’t I? Completely went off in my own little world.”

  Lilah grabbed his upper arm. He had on an old Grantham Lightweight Crew sweatshirt, and she couldn’t help remembering how he looked in college—the same trim and lanky body, but his curly hair had been longer and unruly, and he’d had a perpetual two-day-old beard. He was the same, but not the same. Whichever way, she felt very lucky.

  “It’s a wonderful little world, and I’d be happy to come to class tomorrow—honored, in fact. I just hope I know how to interact with five-year-olds.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s a lot easier than adults—just nonstop.”

  “Then I better get to bed early tonight, especially if we have to drive into Brooklyn after school tomorrow to get my stuff,” she said. She sank down into the passenger seat, by now used to the squeak it emitted. “You remember the plan, right?”

  Justin circled the car and folded his body into the driver’s seat. “Not to worry. I didn’t forget about going to Brooklyn. It’ll work out perfectly. That way we can see my mother.”

  Lilah coughed. “I thought she was in Italy.”

  “Not that mother—my academic mother—Roberta. She’s dying to meet you.”

  Lilah set her jaw. “Now I’m really beginning to feel the pressure. First your class, next Roberta.”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll be a piece of cake,” Justin insisted, starting up the engine and putting the car in gear. But before he backed out, he gave her a quick but glorious kiss.

  She was left levitating a few inches above her cracked seat.

  Then he looked over his shoulder, backed out and shifted to first. He slanted her a sly grin. “We can go to bed early tonight. But do you really think you’re going to get a lot of sleep?”

  THE NEXT DAY SHE WAS exhausted but exhilarated.

  Lilah sat on a pint-size chair, her visitor’s badge dangling in front of her, while she helped Noreen’s daughter, Brigid, and two other classmates make a hut out of Popsicle sticks, construction paper and library paste. The smell of the glue made her think back to when her mother still taught first grade. When she’d hug her at night before going to bed, she’d have that pleasing, sweet smell on her fingertips.

  So far, the kids had figured out how to make the cylinder base, but they were deep in discussion about how to make the roof.

  “We need a circle, not a square,” Brigid announced, rejecting a dark piece of paper.

  “Do you have a compass?” Lilah asked.

  “What’s that?” another girl with glasses asked.

  “It’s something you use to draw circles in math class,” Lilah explained, trying to remember just how they worked. “It’s got a pointy part that you stick in the middle of the paper and then you put a pencil in a holder that’s attached to the other end and it goes around in a circle.”

  “We’re not allowed to use pointy things in school,” a little boy said. He managed to get the words out despite chewing on the end of the string that went through the hood of his sweatshirt.

  “That’s a problem, then.” Lilah sat back and crossed her arms.

  “Did I hear someone say there’s a problem?” Justin came over and squatted among the children.

  “We need circles to make the roof, but we don’t have a campus,” Brigid said with a frown.

  “You don’t have a compass?” Justin repeated without making a big deal about correcting her. “Well, let’s think. How else can we make something round?” He put his chin on his hand. “Can you show me something else that’s round?”

  Immediately, his question generated all sorts of answers, and more students gathered around the table, naming different objects.

  “So if we have something round—” Justin picked up the coffee can of crayons “—how can we make something else round?”

  “I know, I know.” Brigid clapped. She grabbed the can and put it on a piece of paper, then traced around it with a crayon. It was a wobbly job, but then she held it up for everyone to see.

  “It’s a circle.” “Let me.” “I want to make one, too,�
�� they shouted.

  “The question is—is that the right size circle for the hut?” Justin asked. “Why don’t you draw circles of different sizes and see which works best?”

  The table became a beehive of tracing and cutting.

  But the little girl with glasses tugged on Justin’s sleeve. “I want to use a compass, but we can’t have pointy things.”

  “Hm-m-m. Maybe we can make a compass without a pointy thing?” He looked at Lilah. “Suggestions?”

  “What about a rubber band and a crayon. One person holds one end…” she ventured.

  Justin held up his hand. “Great idea, but not too much advice in advance. Let me just hunt down some rubber bands.” He stood. “I know I have some in my desk, but at the front office they have those big ones that would be perfect. Could you watch the kids while I hustle down to get them?”

  Lilah wasn’t sure of anything, and she raised her eyebrows dubiously.

  “C’mon, a Grantham University education ought to be good for something.” He clapped to get the class’s attention. “Listen up, everyone. I’m just going to get some rubber bands so we can all make compasses. I’ll be right back. In the meantime, Ms. Evans will be in charge, but treat her nicely. She’s new here.”

  He winked and headed out the door.

  Brigid hugged her arm and looked at Lilah soulfully. “Don’t worry. We were all new once. You get over it.”

  “JUSTIN, IS EVERYTHING all right?” Justin’s principal, Frank Gunderson asked, while stationed at the open doorway of his office.

  “Frank,” Justin said, coming to a halt. He was about to filch some rubber bands from the assistant, who basically would give him anything if he asked nicely. “Everything’s fine. Thanks.”

  Frank stepped toward him, a note of concern still crowding his expression. “You left the children alone?”

  “Of course not. They’re with our visitor—Lilah Evans, the founder of the international organization Sisters for Sisters and a recent award winner from the university. The class is getting a firsthand glimpse into life in Africa. It’s been very educational.” If he’d known Lilah’s grade point average, Justin would have given that information, as well. He was sure it was stratospheric, and that was just the kind of factoid that his principal found so meaningful.