Right Where We Started. Pamela Hearon

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СКАЧАТЬ Marta gave Tess a wink. “Are you ready to go meet your teacher and your classmates?”

      “Yes!” Tess did her signature tiptoe bounce.

      Audrey laughed. “I’ve already told her how much she’s going to enjoy Mrs. Lively. What a great lady.”

      Marta’s black eyebrows drew in with concern. “You have not heard then. Mrs. Lively retired two weeks ago.” She lowered her voice to a sympathetic tone. “Her husband has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and they have decided to travel while they still can.”

      “Oh.” Audrey’s heart sank at the news. “I hate to hear that. Randall’s been the mailman here for as long as I can remember.”

      “A substitute is filling in for him.” Marta paused as if the remark called for a reverent moment of silence. “But we have a new teacher who has already taken Mrs. Lively’s place,” she said finally. “He is from here, so you probably know him. Mark Dublin?”

      The name threw a punch to Audrey’s gut, knocking the wind from her lungs and depriving her brain of the oxygen needed to think straight.

      Mark Dublin was back in Taylor’s Grove? Was going to be Tess’s teacher? Not if she had any say-so in the matter!

      Marta’s eyes squinted in question and she threw a concerned glance toward Tess. “Do you know... Mr. Dublin?”

      Not wanting to make a scene in front of her daughter, Audrey held her tongue but managed a nod, continuing to try to catch her breath until she could croak out a few words at a time. “Could I...see Mr. Williams, please?”

      “Of course.”

      Marta went to the door of the principal’s office and knocked softly before going in and closing the door behind her. She was in there for less than a minute before she came back out. “Mr. Williams can see you now.” She turned her attention to Tess. “Tess, would you like to put these papers in the mailboxes for me? I need one of each color in each box.”

      Tess pointed to the door of the inner office. “Can you go in there without me, Mama? I have some work to do.”

      “Okay, punkin. I won’t be long.” Audrey threw an appreciative glance toward Marta. “Thanks,” she said before squaring her shoulders and entering the principal’s office.

      “Audrey.” Mr. Williams came around the desk to greet her with a warm two-handed shake. “So glad to have you back. How are you doing?”

      The tenderness in his voice softened her for a second. “I’m okay,” she answered automatically before the cramp in her stomach protested the lie. She closed the door behind her. “Actually, that’s not true. I was handling things pretty well until I heard that the person responsible for my sister’s death is my daughter’s new teacher. That’s unacceptable, I’m afraid.” Her voice wobbled through the last sentence. “Surely, there’s a way...”

      “I understand how you feel, Audrey.” His gentle manner allowed a breath of hope to fill her lungs. “But—”

      Oh. There’s a but. The breath solidified into a chunk of ice in her chest.

      “We were fortunate to get Mark on such short notice.” He indicated a chair for her, and she sat as he leaned against the front of his desk, hiking a leg up into a half-sitting position. “Most of you young folks aren’t looking to come to a small district like Taylor’s Grove. Our enrollment’s waning, and we can’t compete with the bigger schools salary-wise. But, timing’s everything, as they say, and Mark was just recently back in the States after all those years in the Peace Corps and looking for a way to give back to the community that nurtured him. The other kids’ parents are thrilled.”

      Audrey gritted her teeth. He made Mark sound like some kind of hero. “Surely, you can understand my hesitance to place Tess’s safety in Mark’s, um, Mr. Dublin’s hands for seven hours a day.” His responsive sigh sounded too much like “No, I don’t understand,” so any viable solution would have to come from her. “Maybe she could test out of the first grade. She’s very bright, so perhaps she could skip it and move on to the second.”

      The principal pushed his glasses higher on his nose in a gesture she remembered from her childhood. Then he clasped his hands loosely in his lap. “I wouldn’t advise that. Her lower maturity level might cause problems socially later on. And, besides, it wouldn’t solve anything. She’d still be in Mark’s class. With so few students, we decided to save a salary by combining the two grades when Betty retired. That still puts only fifteen children in the class. Tess will make it sixteen.”

      Audrey rubbed the throbbing area between her brows. Why couldn’t anything be easy anymore?

      As if he’d read her mind, Mr. Williams spoke again. “You’re making this too difficult, Audrey.” He turned his palms up and splayed his fingers. “It is what it is.”

      And what it was was a disaster. Here, she’d thought she’d done the right thing—moving back to Taylor’s Grove to keep her mom from having to go to a nursing home. She hadn’t expected to be rewarded, but she also hadn’t expected everything to turn to crap...especially on the very first day.

      “Maybe one of the districts nearby...” She hadn’t meant to speak her thoughts.

      “That would mean paying out-of-district tuition and providing your own transportation.”

      “Which would mean having to get Mom out in all kinds of conditions—hers and the weather.”

      “It would also make your daughter an outsider in her own community.” Mr. Williams’s voice took on its fatherly sound. “There is a way, though.” He paused long enough to give it meaning. “Forgiveness would be the way.”

      Forgive Mark Dublin? Audrey’s insides coiled like a snake intent on striking. She tried to suck in a breath, but the room seemed ten times smaller than it used to be and void of any usable air.

      “You and Mark were inseparable for a lot of years, Audrey. Give him—give us—a chance.”

      The throbbing inched toward Audrey’s temples, threatening a full-blown migraine. She didn’t need one of those on top of everything else.

      She sighed in resignation. Some things in life she had no control over. Her sister’s fall. Her dad’s heart attack. Her husband’s falling in love with someone else. Her mom’s early onset Alzheimer’s.

      But forgiving Mark Dublin? That she could control.

      “I may not be able to keep Tess from being in his class, but Mark Dublin lost any chance of friendship with me eleven years ago.”

      She heard the bitterness in her voice, and when she swallowed, the taste of it remained on her tongue.

      And in her heart.

      * * *

      “HUNTER?”

      A pair of large, blue eyes turned Mark’s way.

      “Didn’t you just have a turn?”

      The little boy nodded, eyes downcast now.

      “Then you have to СКАЧАТЬ