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  “I mean have you ever talked to her about something other than traffic procedure and work stuff?”

  “I don’t know,” Rachel lied. Of course she hadn’t. Her main focus during conversations with Sharon Day centered on how to get them over as quickly as possible.

  “You might want to try it and see what happens.” Lee’s tone was mild, but Rachel sensed unexpected weight behind the words.

  A thought struck. “When do you talk to her?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Let’s see.” He began ticking items off on his fingers. “We were hired the same year and went through new-teacher orientation together. We’ve worked at the same school for two years. She drops her class off at art every week and picks them up right on time, unlike some people. And sometimes she drops by D Wing after school to help clean up. Come on, Miss Cooper. What makes you think I wouldn’t have talked to her?”

  “You’ve worked with Mr. Adams for two years, and I’m betting you haven’t talked to him,” Rachel countered.

  “That’s different,” Lee sniffed. “Nobody talks to Mr. Adams.”

  “Fair enough. But I think you’re wrong about Sharon Day. And anyway, even if you were right, I don’t see why it matters.”

  “Think what you want.” Lee said as he pulled the classroom door wide. “You always do.”

  Rachel stood framed in the doorway. She seemed to have arrived just as the students passed in their exams. Her appearance was met by a pleasing intake of breath and burst of spontaneous applause. The substitute, who looked almost as happy to see her as the students did, completely lost control of the room.

  “Miss Cooper!”

  “You’re back!”

  “Your cast is gone.”

  “You can walk!”

  “Sort of.” Rachel lifted her cane and waved it.

  “Did Mr. Martin go with you to get your cast off?” Denise asked somewhat breathlessly.

  A chorus of oohs broke out.

  “He did not,” Rachel said. Lee opened his mouth to speak, but Rachel stepped forward through the door and closed it directly in Lee’s face. “He just helped me come in from the parking lot.”

  “Did he carry you?” Denise asked, even more breathy.

  Rachel again saw herself in Lee’s arms, swooning dramatically as he carried her through the parking lot, his face fiercely determined, her hand splayed across his chest while the wind blew her hair into oblivion. By the looks on their faces, a few of the girls in the class had caught a similar vision.

  ~*~

  That afternoon during dismissal, Rachel watched Sharon Day pick her way across the field toward where she stood.

  “I could have done car line by myself today you know, Miss Cooper.”

  Rachel’s right hand clutched the cane, her left the megaphone. She lifted her face toward the sun as her skin slowly began to defrost. “I like it out here.”

  Miss Day pointed to Rachel’s leg, indicating the new plastic brace. “It must feel really good to be back on both your feet.” Her voice pitched upward at the end, as if in question, implying that she had noticed Rachel’s stunted hobble.

  “Yes and no.”

  Humidity hung heavy in the air. Rachel wiped a film of moisture from her upper lip.

  Miss Day fanned her neck with one slim, manicured hand. “I want to ask you a question,” she said.

  Rachel tilted her head to the side. Although nothing in their history hinted that Miss Day might be about to shock or horrify her, Rachel still felt the need to prepare herself. It was more the tone of her voice—so carefully expressionless—that led Rachel to this conclusion.

  Miss Day squinted out toward the road. “It’s about Lee Martin.”

  Rachel nodded, sensing what might be coming. Lee’s troubled history held a fascination for some of the newer teachers who had not taught him when he had been a student here. From time to time, a staff member would draw Rachel aside and ask whether or not Lee needed a place to spend Thanksgiving dinner, or if his mom really slept in a bus shelter near the Walmart, or if an anonymous bit of cash dropped in his communication box might be a way to help him procure a new pair of pants or a new exhaust system for his wretched Volvo. Rachel hated to break it to them that he wore those ratty slacks out of affection for them rather than poverty.

  “Go ahead,” Rachel nodded to Miss Day.

  “It’s like this. What I want to know—” she broke off and cleared her throat.

  A car came around the bend of the rutted track. Miss Day seemed grateful to turn her attention to calling out the family name through her megaphone. This done, she drew a deep breath and turned back to face Rachel squarely. “I want to know if Lee’s fair game.”

  A little laugh bubbled out before Rachel could stop it. She saw a cloud pass over Miss Day’s face and instantly felt a pang of regret. “No,” she rushed on, contrite. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to laugh. It’s just that I’m used to people asking me what the deal with his beard is, or whether he even owns more than one pair of pants, or if it’s true that his mother tried to sell him to the landlord one year to pay the rent. I just wasn’t expecting that.”

  Miss Day’s expression eased, but one of her feet began to jiggle against the ground. Tap-tap-tap, keeping time to a soundtrack that only she could hear.

  “Well, I don’t think he has a girlfriend.” Rachel scratched her ear. “There was this girl at the coffee shop he had a crush on for a while, but it wasn’t anything serious. He just loved her bone structure. Especially her cheekbones. He was downright giddy over them. He used to sit there on Saturday and order coffees just for the chance to stare at her. He has a whole book of sketches of her profile, but I don’t think he ever—”

  “No,” said Miss Day. She fanned herself harder. Her foot went into double-time. Tap-tappity-tap-tap. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Well,” Rachel stammered, “I thought from what you said that you, well, that you might be interested in him, but—”

  “I am.” Miss Day breathed in deeply, flushed with more than the oppressive afternoon heat. “But I’m not asking about him and some random coffee girl.”

  “OK,” Rachel said slowly. She sensed that she had missed some essential point, but she was at a loss to know where the conversation had gone awry.

  “I’m asking about Lee and you.”

  Given her recent conversations with Lynn and Ann regarding this very topic, Rachel really shouldn’t have been too shocked; but if Miss Day had confided that she spent her evenings out in her garage assembling a robot army, Rachel would not have been more astonished. Meek, mild Sharon Day prying into her private life? Involuntarily, Rachel let out another laugh. “I thought it was just students who thought that.” And Lynn and Ann.

  If possible, Miss Day turned redder. “I’m sorry.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I’m sorry I said anything, Miss Cooper.” She started backing away.

  “Wait,” Rachel said, holding up a hand. “Hold on. Give me a second. I’m handling this badly.”

  Miss Day stopped. As another car pulled onto the lot, Rachel took the chance to collect herself.

  “Miss Day.” Rachel began. “Sharon. Listen. Sometimes I forget that not everybody understands the nature of the relationship between Lee and me.” Recently, she had struggled to understand it herself. She paused for a moment and appreciated the irony. She looked off toward a towering thunderhead building in the West. A sure sign summer was coming. “When Lee was a student here, his family situation was…well, it wasn’t great. I don’t want to go into detail, because it’s not my story to tell. Let’s just say the staff sort of rallied around him. Mr. Graham, who retired before you came, acted as a sort of surrogate father to him, and I—” Rachel readjusted her grip on the cane—“Now, I’m not saying that I look on Lee as a son—he was already too old for that when I met him, and I was too young. But he needed motherly influence in his life, and for a while, I provided it.”

  Sharon nodded. She stopped jiggling her foot a
nd unfolded her arms. “I’m sorry, Miss Cooper,” she said, her gaze flitting across Rachel’s face, “but you still look so young. Sometimes I forget how old you really are.” Her eyes rounded and she lifted a delicate hand to her lips. “That’s not—that’s—um—”

  Rachel laughed. “I was going to be offended, but I actually am holding a cane, so...”

  Sharon’s face relaxed. “You know what I mean. I don’t think you’re old. You certainly look young. It’s hard for me to imagine that when Lee was in high school, you were already here, doing this.” She waved her hand to encompass the parking lot, the sidewalks, and the school beyond. “I would have been in high school then, too, I guess.”

  “That is a bit shocking.” Rachel looked up to realize that the students had disappeared from the sidewalk, car line having apparently come to an end at some point during the course of their conversation. She and Sharon fell in step together on the way back to the building.

  “You know,” Rachel said slowly, “I will tell you this. For all Lee’s silly fashion sense and snarky talk, he’s still totally old-fashioned. He doesn’t go for girls who ask him out. You should have seen some of the e-mails he sent me the first time that happened to him after he’d gone off to college. He sounded so pious and horrified, like a fussy little old man.”

  Sharon’s lips curled upward. She reached over to take Rachel’s megaphone, carrying it back toward the building so that Rachel could concentrate on walking. “So what do you think I should do?” she asked.

  “Honestly? Nothing.”

  “Oh.” Sharon’s voice was small. “I see.”

  “I don’t mean it like that,” Rachel said quickly, reaching out a hand to clasp Sharon’s elbow. “Just be you. You’re smart and pretty.” And you sort of blink a lot, but never mind that. “Just find a way to be closer to him more often so that he can notice.”

  As soon as Rachel arrived back in her classroom, she pulled out her phone and texted Lee.

  I think Sharon Day’s looking for you.

  ~*~

  Lynn’s text came through just as Rachel was leaving school. The thunderhead, having swiftly rolled in from the West, began spitting fat raindrops. Call or stop by for coffee. Will be home all afternoon.

  Rachel stopped next to her car to text back. Be there in 15. Rachel slid her phone into her bag and unlocked the car, in a hurry to get in before the clouds really let loose.

  It was then that she noticed the small, pink gift bag on the hood of her car. The bottom of her stomach dropped away. She lurched forward and reached for the little bag. With trembling hands, she lifted out a keychain with a small, silver charm attached. A tiny human foot.

  The world tilted sideways. Rachel concentrated on the three points of contact where her two feet and the tip of her cane connected her to solid ground.

  The accompanying note, written in small block letters, sent a shaft of panic straight from the top of her head through the backs of her heels: The cast is off. The work is done. The race is on.

  Rachel’s heart stuttered. The race is on.

  She practically flung the charm, the note, and the bag onto the hood of the car.

  If you’re really worried, call the police.

  If you’re really worried, call the police.

  If you’re really worried, call the police.

  Rachel fumbled for her phone.

  21

  Lynn flung open her front door and regarded Rachel through wide eyes. Rachel drooped on the doorstep in the deepening twilight, feeling as if she had recently fought her way through a palmetto bush.

  “I expected you hours ago,” Lynn said, looking Rachel up and down as if checking for fresh injuries. “Why haven’t you been answering my texts? I thought the Memento Killer had gotten you!”

  Rachel leaned one hand against the door frame and laughed jerkily, shoving the other back through her wild hair. “I think maybe he almost did.”

  “What?” Lynn stepped forward, reaching out a hand to draw Rachel forward into the house. “Rachel. Talk sense.”

  “Lynn, I love you, and you’re wonderful, but I’m about to fall over. If you don’t let me sit down, I’m going to leave.”

  Five minutes later, sitting with her right foot upraised and iced, a cup of hot coffee in front of her, and a serving of leftover eggplant parmesan heating in the microwave, Rachel spilled her story.

  “So they just took your statement and that was it?” Lynn asked.

  “Well, Detective Smith said that someone from the FBI is going to follow up with me tomorrow, and he said that if they deem it necessary, they’ll come by my place to collect the rest of the evidence.” Rachel rubbed her eyes to clear her blurry contact lenses and cringed as she felt one of them slip out of place and lodge itself halfway up the fold of her eyelid. “You were right about Matt, though.” She reached a delicate finger to work the contact back into place over her eye. She blinked rapidly as both eyes watered. “They never seriously considered him as a suspect and cleared him just to be thorough. The fact that he hit on Elaine from Dr. Singh’s office right before she was killed and then hit on me right when I started receiving a series of anonymous gifts seems to be coincidence.” She swiped at her streaming eyes. “Not irony,” she muttered quietly, swallowing a little half-burble, half-groan bubbling up in her throat.

  “Rachel, don’t cry.” Lynn’s voice held such sincere sympathy that Rachel laughed outright.

  “I’m not crying. I just can’t see straight. I think my contact lenses are eating my eyeballs. If anything, I’m overjoyed to discover that the man who has most recently hit on me has turned out not to be a psychopathic killer.”

  “Well, eat your dinner and then Alex will drive you home so you can get a good night’s sleep.”

  “Alex can’t drive me home,” Rachel said. “I need my car to go to work tomorrow.”

  “Then you’re staying here.”

  “I can’t stay here. What about Ann?”

  “She can stay here too. I’m calling her right now.” Lynn placed the call immediately, but there was no answer.

  “She’s probably already asleep. Honestly, Lynn, don’t worry about it. Detective Smith said that even if these gifts were from the Memento Killer, he sticks to a very rigid structure, meaning that there will be one more gift before Helen Sopiro is announcing my death on WHQZ.” Rachel attempted a smile that wobbled sideways. “I can’t believe that’s something I’m actually saying out loud,” she marveled. “Again, I ask: why is my life like this?”

  Lynn took the leftovers out of the microwave and set them gently in front of Rachel. “Eat up.”

  Rachel reached for the fork.

  “Your hand’s shaking,” observed Lynn.

  “To be fair, that could just be because Detective Smith kept bringing me little paper cups of coffee,” Rachel said around a huge mouthful of eggplant parmesan. “I think I drank like twenty of them.”

  Lynn’s eyebrows went up. “I see.” She pulled the mug of coffee away from Rachel and replaced it with a tall glass of water.

  “He was really nice.” He really had been. His voice had been low, calm and steadying. Rachel turned her fork sideways to scrape a bit of cheese free from the plate.

  “I see.”

  “Don’t start.”

  “This Detective Smith. Is he cute?”

  Rachel choked on her food. “Lynn!”

  “I’m just trying to make a mental picture.”

  Rachel took a swallow of water and cleared her throat. “He’s all business. And no, he’s not that cute.”

  “Describe him.”

  “White guy, medium height, regular build, brown hair. Haven’t you seen him interviewed on the news? Helen Sopiro keeps having him on to talk about the case—”

  “Eyes?”

  “Two of them.”

  “I mean what color?”

  “I don’t know. Brown? I didn’t really notice. I was a little distracted, what with telling him how I’m possibly being stalked
by a serial killer.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t know how to describe him. He’s just ordinary, I guess.”

  “Hmm.”

  Rachel rubbed her tired eyes and watched as Lynn’s kitchen blurred.

  Lynn came over and sat down right next to Rachel. She reached an arm across her shoulders, leaning in. Rachel tilted her head sideways and rested it against Lynn’s. “I’m glad you’re my friend,” she said.

  Lynn patted her shoulder. “Let me pray with you before you go.”

  ~*~

  It was Alex who followed Rachel back to the carriage house in his town car. He trailed inside and waited while she checked on Ann, who slept the sleep of the just.

  “Aren’t you going to wake her up?” Alex asked.

  The thought of going through the story one more time made Rachel want to weep.

  “Morning’s soon enough,” she told Alex. “Detective Smith said that I shouldn’t worry. He’s going to send patrols by at regular intervals tonight. We’ll be fine.”

  Alex walked the perimeter of the carriage house and checked the outbuildings with a flashlight. He made Rachel promise to call 911 immediately if she felt nervous for any reason. After he left, Rachel pulled out her phone to discover a flurry of missed calls and texts from Lynn and Ann, and one lone text from Lee: You’re in trouble. It took a moment for the penny to drop, but she scrolled up on her phone to see the last thing she’d texted him and gave a watery chuckle.

  She was in trouble, and for more than just meddling between him and Sharon Day. She might actually be in real trouble this time.

  Her eyes fell on the copy of Jane Eyre on the nightstand. She shuddered. Before crawling under the covers, she moved it to the kitchen table.

  Much, much later, she fell asleep with the bedside light on and her phone clutched in her hands, 9-1-1 partially dialed.

  22

  “You actually contacted the police?” Ann’s mouth hung open over the spoonful of cereal poised for consumption. A drip of milk splashed from her spoon back into the bowl.

  “I thought you’d be pleased.” Rachel stood by the coffee maker, waiting for the pot to finish brewing. “Considering that’s what you kept telling me to do from the very beginning, I’d think you’d be high-fiving me right now.”