Maid in Teaberry

by R A Wallace

  “Nothing,” Erica said.

  “We’d do the same thing,” Jerry said simply.

  “So how are you doing, Rhys? Are you settling into Teaberry okay?” Erica asked.

  Rhys shrugged again. “Okay, I guess. I wouldn’t mind finding another place to stay. I didn’t plan to stay where I am for long, but I haven’t really had time to look for anything either.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Erica asked as she stood. They’d completed their paperwork and were getting ready to call it quits for the day.

  “I’m not ready to buy anything, so it would have to be a rental. But I wouldn’t mind a house instead of an apartment,” Rhys said. A house would definitely be preferable to an apartment, he thought.

  “I might know about something,” Erica said as she walked toward the door. “Dan Parker is the owner of the feed store in town. Stop by and see him. He’s thinking of renting his place out now that he’s married.”

  Rhys yelled his thanks as Erica and Jerry left. A house sounded great. He’d try to catch up with Dan as soon as possible.

  Chapter Six

  Jessilyn finished cleaning up after their breakfast Monday morning. She’d been making it a point to sit with Evan during each meal. It was a recent resolution she had made that she would no longer eat while standing up at the sink. She knew that with her hectic schedule, she and her six year old son, Evan, wouldn’t be able to have a picture perfect family moment for every meal, but they were at least making the effort.

  “Evan, are you ready?” Jessilyn called from the kitchen as she took her lunch bag from the refrigerator. “Logan is waiting for us.”

  Jessilyn was fortunate that her closest neighbor, Cindy Freeman, had a son the same age as Evan. Since Cindy normally watched the boys during the day when Jessilyn worked, Jessilyn offered to take them both to Kids Camp each day for the rest of the summer to give Cindy a break. It wasn’t much of a detour from her route to work anyway.

  Evan appeared in the hallway. He had put on the clothes that Jessilyn had picked out for him. She could tell by the water splotches on his shirt that he’d just brushed his teeth. The two teeth in the front were finally growing in. “Is Seth going to be here for dinner?”

  Seth often showed up in the evenings after his work with Anderson’s Landscaping, but they hadn’t made specific plans for this evening. “I don’t know yet, sweetie. Why?”

  “I want to tell him all about school,” Evan said as he bolted for the front door. “Seth said going to camp is the best thing ever.”

  ***

  Justin was glad that he’d been practicing getting the kids ready for school. If he hadn’t already known the difficulty he’d have getting Noah ready in the mornings, he wouldn’t have been prepared for the chaos this morning. Perhaps because they knew that today was the real thing, every step of the morning had taken twice as long. Getting Noah awake was nearly impossible.

  Once he was awake, breakfast had been one argument after another between the kids. Mia and Noah couldn’t agree on what to eat for breakfast. Justin finally decided to make them two different meals just to move them along. Mia couldn’t find the clothes she picked out to wear for today. Noah wanted to wear the same thing he’d worn yesterday. Lucky for Justin, his mom stopped by and saved the day.

  Bev arrived at her son’s house early. She assumed that the first day with a new routine would be a little hectic for both children and parents.

  “Grandma, I can’t find my princess socks,” Mia whined when Bev entered the front door of the house.

  “They’re in your top drawer on the left side, sweetie,” Bev said as she headed for Lauren’s work kitchen. She passed Justin on the way. He was mopping up the mess from breakfast. It looked like most of breakfast had ended up on the floor.

  The calm atmosphere in Lauren’s kitchen was a relief. Bev knew that it emanated from Lauren because of her skill level. This was where Lauren belonged, doing what she knew best. “Good morning,” Bev said. Her daughter-in-law was pulling breakfast pastries from the oven. They smelled beyond amazing.

  “These are for you. I had an order for a meeting at the mayor’s office, so I made some extras. I thought the teachers would need some sugar to start their day,” Lauren said as she set the tray on the cooling rack.

  The ever-thoughtful Lauren, Bev thought with a smile. “My co-workers are going to love me, thank you. You’re really okay with me taking the kids to camp, aren’t you?”

  Lauren tried to give Bev a reassuring smile. “Of course. I’m sure they’ll be fine. There will be a lot of people around to watch them, including you.” Lauren tried to sound more convinced than she felt.

  Bev wasn’t fooled. “I promise I’ll take care of them.” She decided to change the subject. Lauren will see by the end of the camp that everything had been fine. “Can I borrow your hot air popcorn popper?”

  Lauren raised her eyebrows as she began assembling a box for the pastries. “Sure. Are the teachers planning on a party?”

  Bev chuckled. “Oh, that will be at the end of the day. Vince and I have plans for dinner at his place with Susan and Ross.” Bev grinned at Lauren. She and Vince had been dating each other for years. He was a very nice man and, luckily, both Lauren and Justin seemed fond of him. “No, I’ll use the popcorn to explain the concept of volume in a little activity I have planned. It also gives the kids a snack, so they like that.”

  After Lauren explained where the popper was and handed Bev the box of pastries, Bev gathered up the children. Looking at her exhausted son on her way out the door, she suggested he try getting a couple more hours of sleep. He yawned in response and headed down the hallway.

  Bev drove the short distance to the old elementary school with her grandchildren in the back seat. She glanced in her rearview mirror several times, trying to gauge the mood of her grandchildren. She knew they hadn’t been happy about going to school. She was hoping they’d change their minds once they had a chance to play with the other children. “Are you excited about going to camp?”

  Noah made a face in the mirror and shrugged. Mia watched out the side window as they drove into the parking lot. “Is it really haunted, Grandma?” Mia asked.

  Bev locked eyes with her granddaughter in the rearview mirror as she parked the car. “No, sweetie, of course not. Where did you hear that?”

  “I heard Mommy and Daddy talking about it,” Mia said as she unbuckled her seat belt.

  “No, they must have been talking about some TV show they were watching. You two will have a lot of fun here, I promise. C’mon, you guys, let’s go.” Bev went around to open Noah’s door while Mia got out the other side.

  As they walked toward the front entrance of the building, Bev felt her own apprehension grow. She’d been wondering how she was going to feel walking into the building she’d attended as a child. She’d been a student at the school when the accident had occurred, resulting in the death of the janitor. It had been during her last year at the elementary before transitioning to the high school. The building had been closed soon after.

  The gymnasium had been opened to allow the kids who arrived early a chance to gather and play before the classes actually began. Some of the teachers were acting as monitors to oversee them. Other teachers had already gone to their classrooms to check them out. Bev dropped the kids off at the gym and headed to the old teachers lounge. There she found some of the other camp teachers already gathering. She knew them all, having worked with most of them before retiring. Others were members of the community who had shared interests in education. A couple taught at a nearby community college but had been Bev’s students when they’d been children.

  She held the box of breakfast pastries in one hand and the hot air popper in the other as she entered the room. “A gift from Lauren,” Bev announced, raising the box of pastries in lieu of a greeting. She set them on the table and opened the box.

  “Those look awesome,” Carlos said as he reached for one. An engineering instructor at the c
ommunity college, Carlos was a thirty-something who also had young children attending the Kids Camp.

  Andrea looked at the box of tempting delectables and sighed in dismay. Close to Bev’s age, Andrea was a transplant to Teaberry. She’d met her husband in college and had moved here after their marriage then taken a job at the high school. She wore her salt and pepper hair short and kept her reading glasses around her neck on a long beaded chain. She was dressed for summer in comfortable capris. She knew she didn’t need the extra calories then watched Carlos bite into his pastry with childlike abandon.

  “Oh, bother. You only live once. I’ll split one with someone,” Andrea said hopefully.

  An attractive woman in her thirties with short blonde hair nodded with enthusiasm. “I’m with you,” Allison said. Like Carlos, she taught engineering at the local community college and had children attending the camp. Allison used napkins to pull a pastry in two. She handed one half to Andrea.

  “So, what grades were in this building?” Andrea asked as she accepted the half pastry.

  “This was kindergarten through sixth grade,” Bev explained. “Back then, high school handled seventh to twelfth grade.”

  Andrea nodded her understanding. “So you didn’t split things out with a junior high building the way we do now. Gotcha.”

  “How are you guys handling the whole haunted building thing?” Erin asked. She wore her brown hair in a tail and was dressed in a tee and khaki shorts.

  Bryan reached into the box for a pastry. A math teacher who spent hours each day on a bicycle, often at a competitive level, he burned through calories quickly. “Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. My parents went here but it wasn’t at the same time as the death.”

  Heather nodded in agreement. “Mine too.” Her blonde hair was pulled up in a stylish messy bun. “I’ve been listening to ghost stories about this place my whole life.”

  Andrea wiped the crumbs of the pastry from her mouth with a napkin. “I didn’t live here then. What exactly happened?”

  Everyone turned to Bev. Of the group, she was the only who had been there at the time. “Well, it was over forty years ago, so my memories are probably wrong.” Bev thought for a moment. She’d also been a kid, just like the children she’d be teaching today. How many details of this week would they remember forty years from now?

  “It was just an accident. The janitor died here in the building,” Bev said simply.

  “Are you sure it was an accident?” Heather asked.

  Bev shrugged. She’d wondered the same thing many times over the years. “Of course. What else could it have been?”

  “What about all the ghost stories and the voices people have heard over the years?” Bryan asked as he looked around the group and grinned. “I must admit, I’ve told one or two of my own.”

  Carlos chuckled in agreement, his eyes sparkling with memories of his own youth. “Get a bunch of young boys from Teaberry sitting around a campfire and you’re guaranteed there will be at least one great elementary school haunting story.”

  Erin snorted. “You guys are a bunch of wimps. I was camping with a bunch of my girlfriends when I was a teenager and we actually snuck over here one night.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Bryan admitted with a smile. “What happened?”

  Erin waited until she had everyone’s attention. “Nothing.” She shook her head in mock disgust.

  Everyone laughed.

  “We were scared to death, but we actually made it all the way from my friend’s backyard, where we had our tent, to here in the dark. It took us forever to get up the courage to walk all the way around the building, but we never saw or heard anything.” Erin glanced at the time and started moving toward the door.

  Bev followed her gaze then glanced at the time on her own phone. “Looks like we’re up. Good luck everyone.” Bev went down to the science room she’d been assigned to and began prepping for her first class of the day. She found a drawer to put her bag of popcorn kernels into for safe keeping. She looked around the room for a place to stow the hot air popper until she would need it during the course of the week. She had a couple of different activities planned for it but wanted to be sure it was out of harm’s way the rest of the time. She also didn’t want to tuck it away so well that she forgot it about it entirely.

  She found a shelf high enough that it should be too far up for the smaller kids to reach but still within view so she wouldn’t forget it. As she settled it into place, the first of her students began filing into the room. She felt that same sense of calm she’d felt when she’d entered Lauren’s domain this morning. This, Bev thought to herself, this classroom was her domain. Oh, she enjoyed her retirement now and her life with Vince and her family. But the thirty odd years that she’d been a teacher had been an absolute joy and she was thrilled that she had a chance to step back into it for a brief visit.

  Chapter Seven

  After taking one last look around the property, Jax drove the stand-on lawn mower back to the trailer and loaded it up. Trina walked over carrying the weed whacker she’d been using to trim around the bushes. This was their second job together for the day, but it was now lunchtime. Jax had been scheduling the jobs that required two people around Trina’s schedule. She was still working some mornings part-time at the feed store with Dan and taking online college classes. Her evenings were spent with her two year old daughter, Jasmine. Jax had no idea how she was doing it all, but each time he’d brought the subject up, she’d always given him a positive answer.

  Seth had worked on jobs he could handle alone this morning. After lunch, the three were scheduled to meet at the new community center. It was a fairly new contract for them that they’d just begun last month. Jax helped Trina secure the equipment on the trailer and then they both hopped into the truck. He turned the air on full blast and the two of them popped open a bottle of water.

  “Okay, as promised, lunch is my treat. Did you decide where you wanted to go?” Jax asked before swigging more water.

  Trina looked down at her clothes. She was covered in debris from the weed whacker again. Then she glanced over at Jax. He didn’t look much better. “Something with a drive through.”

  Jax thought for a moment then pulled out his phone. He sent Seth a text first to see if he wanted anything. “Seth had me download a new app the Station Pub & Grill is trying out. Maybe we can use that. I’ll run in and pick up the food.”

  Trina thought about the barbeque and smiled. “Make mine a pulled pork sandwich. Those things are awesome.”

  “What do you want for a drink?”

  “Iced tea, please,” Trina said. A little sugar and caffeine boost sounded like a good idea.

  Jax focused on his phone for a minute, working through the app. “Okay, that seemed easy enough. Let’s see if it really worked.”

  He drove to the restaurant and left Trina in the truck with the air running. He was back a few minutes later, carrying bags and a drink tray.

  Trina disconnected her seat belt and slid over to the driver’s side of the truck to open the door for Jax. He handed her the food and she moved back over. “It smells like it worked,” Trina said with a big smile as she dug into the bags, checking them out.

  “That was nice, we’ll have to do that again,” Jax said as he pulled out of the parking lot and headed to the school. “I got you some fries too.”

  Trina threw Jax a smile. “Thanks.”

  Jax pulled into the old elementary school parking lot. It seemed odd to see so many cars there. He couldn’t ever remember that being the case when he was growing up. The building hadn’t been used much over the years. There were now picnic tables under a shade tree on one side of the parking lot and Jax thought it looked like a great place for a picnic. Seth pulled in behind them and parked under the shade trees near them.

  Trina laughed at Seth when he dug into his bag of food. Seth had been a waiter at the Station Pub & Grill before working with Jax. “Didn’t you get your fill of the food when you
worked there?” Trina asked.

  “There’s no such thing as too much good barbeque,” Seth said around a bite of sandwich.

  Jax grinned at Seth in agreement. “So, how did the tree planting go at Jessilyn’s?”

  Seth thought about the tiny tree he had high hopes for. He’d planted it in Jessilyn’s backyard with Evan’s help. The hope was that it would provide some nice shade in the future, especially on the back of the house where Seth was planning to build a deck.

  “It’s doing well so far.” Seth balled the paper wrapper from his sandwich and threw it into the carryout bag. “Do either of you know of a good place to get a deal on deck materials?”

  “You’re building a deck?” Jax asked as he balled up his own wrapper.

  “Hoping to. Jessilyn needs one at her place.” Seth started munching on his fries and didn’t notice the look that Jax and Trina shared.

  “That sounds serious,” Jax said.

  Seth met Jax’s look as he munched on a fry. “Yes, it does.”

  “Would you consider a salvage job?” Trina asked as she set aside the rest of her fries. She couldn’t keep up with either Seth or Jax with food. Whoever grabbed her leftovers first got to eat them. This time, Jax swooped in before Seth could move.

  Seth made a face at Jax then turned back to Trina. “What do you mean? You know somebody?”

  Trina nodded. “One of our customers came in and mentioned it. They want to do a stone patio instead. I don’t know what condition the wood is in though. You’d have to check it out.”

  “Yeah, that sounds great. If you give me their contact info, I’ll get right on that, thanks,” Seth said as he glanced over at the school. “The students must be moving from one class to another. You can see them walking down the hall through the glass doors in the front.”

  Trina followed Seth’s gaze. “Is Evan taking classes?”

  Seth nodded and frowned as his eyes turned thoughtful. “What do you guys think about the ghost stories?”