A Forever Thing (4 page)

Another woman was sitting in one of the two leather chairs on
the far side of the room, so Fancy sat on the sofa. Dust had settled around the lamps on the end tables, testifying to the fact that few
people were in and around the school in the summer. The plants
looked a little droopy, and the whole place smelled like fresh wax.
Fancy felt right at home.

She tried not to stare at the stern-looking woman, but she did
sneak peeks. The lady was about her mother’s age, late forties perhaps. A little gray showed at the roots of her dyed black hair. She
wore crisp khaki slacks, a yellow knit shirt, and white sandals, but
sweat had gotten most of her makeup.

Fancy introduced herself after a couple of minutes of heavy silence. “Hello, I’m Fancy Sawyer.”

“I know who you are. You’re Hattie Sawyer’s granddaughter. I
knew your mother.”

“And you are?”

“Wilma Cripton.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Wilma. Are you here for an interview
also?”

“Yes, I am-a last-minute plan. I’ve got twenty years experience
over in Breckenridge, but we’re building a house closer to Albany.
I could commute, but it would be nice to only be five miles away
from my job. Heard about this job last night when my husband and
I were out to dinner,” Wilma said.

“Well, good luck,” Fancy said.

“Luck won’t have anything to do with it. Experience and an excellent reputation usually win out over beauty and youth,” she said.

A woman opened the door of the principal’s office and poked
her head out. “Mrs. Cripton, would you please join us?”

Wilma smiled smugly at Fancy, who watched the two women
disappear into the inner sanctum. Fancy crossed one leg over the
other and waited. In her experience job interviews could take anywhere from five minutes to an hour. Her appointment was at ten
o’clock, so it should have been her name called first. That stupid
black cat was coming back to haunt her.

She thought about Mrs. Cripton. Was she applying to be a thirdgrade teacher? Sixth? Surely with that hatchet face and gruff demeanor, she didn’t teach younger children. Fancy hoped it was
sixth grade, because at that age boys were bullheaded and trying to break out of their babyishness, and girls cried about everything.
Wilma Cripton might be just the ticket for that age group.

Fancy turned in her chair to look out the main door of the school.
Around the corner to the south, the swings would be moving gently
in the hot wind, kicking up dust devils across the playground. With
very little imagination she could picture Chris Miller pushing her
on a moonless night in the same swings when she was fifteen and
he was nineteen, a high school dropout with about as much ambition as a lazy slug on a blistering summer day. But he was so goodlooking, and he told her she was beautiful when he wrapped his
big, strong arms around her and smothered her with breathless
kisses.

Fancy’s brow wrinkled as she remembered the rest of that particular night. Her mother had appeared from the end of the school
and told Chris to stay away from her daughter and then took Fancy
home.

She’d sat down on the porch and patted the step beside her.
“Fancy Lynn, I’ve got something to say.”

Fancy would never forget the sound of her mother’s drawl as
she’d told her the course of her life was about to be changed forever.

“I’m going to marry Les, and we’re moving to Florida. He’s stationed at a base close to Panama City Beach and has a house there
where we will live. I’m sorry to spring such a surprise on you, but I
didn’t want to say anything until the plans were final. You know how
your grandmother is, and she’s going to throw a fit. I didn’t want to
have to listen to her, so I decided to not tell her until the day we’re
going.”

Fancy could well remember the cold knot in the pit of her stomach that night. “I’m not going!” Fancy had cried. “I like Les, and
he’s good to you, but I won’t give up my friends. I can live right
here with Granny like I’ve always done and finish high school.”

Gwen had set her mouth in that way that said she wasn’t going to
have any of that idea. “You are going with me. End of argument. I
won’t have you wind up like I did, and Chris Miller is nothing but
trouble waiting to happen.”

“I love Chris! He is not like my father,” she’d said defiantly. “He’s going to join the army when I graduate, and we’re going to
travel and see the world.”

Gwen patted her hand. “He might join the army, but you’ll be
left right here in this town with a baby to bring up all alone or with
the help of your grandmother. I’m not even sure she’d help you.
Besides, I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, much less the
daughter I’ve loved since I first laid eyes on her. We’re moving to
Panama City Beach tomorrow morning.”

Fancy remembered the hot, stinging tears flowing across her
lips, the very ones that had just kissed Chris and promised him
that she’d be on the playground the next night. “I won’t go. You
can’t make me go. My friends are here.”

“Your two best friends are leaving town too. You’ve been moping around here all week over that fact. Sophie and Kate are both
moving away before the school year starts, and now so are you.
You’ll probably hate me for a while, but someday you’ll find out
just how right I am”

“But, Momma, I love Chris. I can’t leave him.”

“Fancy, if that boy loves you … if he truly loves you, then he’ll
be here when you graduate from high school. I’ll even give you a
wedding.”

“He loves me! He’ll be right here waiting for me, and you’ll be
wrong.” She’d stomped off in a snit to the room she’d shared with
her mother her whole life at the back of the white frame house.

“I hope so, if that’s what you really want, baby,” her mother had
whispered to the hot night air, and the words had carried through
the open window to Fancy’s ears.

Shaking her head now, Fancy returned from the past to the present and smiled, even though her heart wasn’t in it, when Wilma
Cripton came out of the interview with a big grin on her face.

“Contract all signed,” Wilma said.

“Congratulations,” Fancy said, and she meant it. Wilma would
probably make a wonderful sixth-grade teacher, and maybe when
they worked together, they’d even find common ground for friendship.

“Miss Sawyer?” The lady in the office called her name at the
same time Wilma pushed the front door open.

Fancy stood, straightening the legs of her pants and her back.
At least with the pumps she was over five feet and didn’t look so
much like a little girl playing dress up. A vision of the policeman
who’d attempted to arrest her flitted through her mind. He really
had looked like an undersized high school kid in a play.

“Miss Sawyer, I am Lisa Waller, the school secretary. We’ve
spoken on the phone” The woman led Fancy through an office and
into a larger room. Several men and a woman sat in a row at the far
side of a long table.

“This is Miss Sawyer,” Lisa announced, and she left the same
way she came in.

“Just Fancy, please. My students in Florida called me Miss
Fancy.”

“Then, Fancy, please have a seat,” one of the men said, rising to
greet her. “I am the superintendent, Mr. Gleason. Board members
Rick Whitten, Thomas Howard, and Lora Ford”

Fancy nodded at each of them.

“And this is our elementary-school principal, Theron Warren.”
The two of them glanced up at the same time. Her gaze looked
into the same jade eyes of the police officer who had treated her
like an errant kid and hauled her to jail; his nailed the bright blue
eyes of the woman who’d driven like she was drunk.

The look in his defiant, cold, green eyes told the tale without saying a word. She might as well gather her pride around her and go
home.

“It’s nice to meet you all,” she said without taking her eyes off
Theron Warren. He might hold her future in his hands, but she’d
be hanged from the nearest pecan tree with rusty baling wire before she’d grovel.

“We appreciate your coming all this way for an interview. I
understand you had plans to help your grandmother here in town?”
Mr. Gleason said.

Had? Fancy caught the past tense.

“Yes, sir, I do,” she answered.

“That’s very good of you, Miss Sawyer,” he said flatly. `And
while your background is impressive, and I’m sure you are a competent teacher, I’m afraid that the last candidate we met has the years of experience we’re looking for. We have decided to hire her.
I thank you for your time.”

In that instant Fancy wished she’d flattened that black cat on the
street without even checking in the rearview mirror to see if it was
dead. “Thank you for your consideration. I’m sure Wilma Cripton
will do a fine job for you. Could I fill out an application for substitute work?”

“I’m sorry. We have plenty of help in that area and aren’t taking
any more applications for this year,” Mr. Gleason said.

“Then good day,” Fancy said.

The two blocks home felt like six miles. She kicked off her
shoes at the front door and stripped out of the hot clothes as she
made her way down the hallway, cussing the whole time, figuring
she could take out a healthy black cat and an egotistical short man
with one bullet if she lined up the sight and her targets just right.

Now what was she going to do? It was too late to get a job in any
of the surrounding towns; school would be starting in a few days.
At least she didn’t need the money. Her savings would easily support her for a while, since she wouldn’t have to pay rent or utilities
or make car payments.

She had no doubt she’d been rejected because of a misunderstanding over a bottle of almond extract-and all because the
elementary-school principal had a part-time job as a policeman.
Talk about bad luck!

She slipped into a pair of khaki shorts and a white tank top. If
she wasn’t a teacher, then she didn’t have an image to maintain
around town anyway. She put on a pair of rubber flip-flops, picked
up her purse, and headed for the grocery store. When she was mad
or stressed, she would eat anything in sight, and there was very
little in the house and absolutely no potato chips or chocolate.

She drove to Brookshire’s, careful to keep an eye out for any
more suicidal cats. She mumbled as she loaded the cart with staples:
bread, milk, two kinds of chips, ham, cheese, eight candy bars of
various kinds, since she liked them all, a case of Dr. Pepper, and a
box of tea bags. She tossed a box of Fruity Pebbles into the cart
and argued with herself. She didn’t need a job anyway. She’d done
nothing but work since she was fifteen. School and a part-time job on the Florida strip mall at the gift store that her mother owned.
Then college, and when she wasn’t in class, she was at the gift
store. After that it was teaching nine months out of the year and
working with her mother the other three. A sabbatical would be
good for her.

A whisper of a moan escaped her lips. A whole year of Hattie
Sawyer’s demanding and belittling would drive her to drink. That
idea brought on a faint giggle. If it hadn’t been for the almond extract that Theron Warren had thought was liquor, she would have a
job. He would have hired her if she hadn’t ruffled his feathers. She
was sure of it.

Suddenly she felt someone staring at her and turned around
very slowly, expecting it to be the short principal; she needed time
to get a few snide words ready for him.

“Fancy Lynn Sawyer, is that really you?”

She jerked her head up to find the soft brown eyes that went
with the image chiseled on her heart for fifteen years, and she
waited for the flutters in her stomach to begin.

“What are you doing back in this part of the world?” he asked.

“Chris,” she said softly.

She was amazed that after years of vivid dreams about what
she’d say or do when she saw him again that her heart wasn’t beating so hard that it could be heard all over the store.

“Well, what are you doing here?” His smile showed a missing
eyetooth. He was thirty-four, and he looked sixty. Time had not
been good to him. What had happened? He was supposed to be
nineteen and the most gorgeous thing ever to set foot in Shackelford County, Texas.

“Just visiting Granny,” she lied. “She’s at the Bluebonnet Nursing Home for a few weeks, recovering from a broken hip.”

“Oh,” he said. “Thought maybe you’d moved back.”

“Chris?” A very pregnant woman carrying a box of cereal
tossed it gently into the basket in front of him.

“This is Fancy Lynn, an old friend of mine. And this is my wife,
Tina,” he introduced them.

Fancy noticed a tattoo of a heart with the name Debbie written
under it on his biceps.

Chris followed her gaze to his arm. “Debbie was my first wife.
Tina says it’s not fair to have to look at it every day, but once you
tattoo, you keep it forever. Only consolation is that Debbie has a
heart with my name on it on her left ankle, so her husband has the
same problem.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Tina nodded toward Fancy.

“Me too. Chris and I were friends before I left Texas more than
fifteen years ago,” Fancy explained.

“We need to get finished,” Tina said to Chris. “Need to be home
by three.”

“Sure do. Well, we’ll be seeing you around.” He winked broadly
at Fancy when his wife turned the cart around and disappeared
toward the checkout counter. “Call me,” he mouthed silently. “I’m
in the phone book.”

Fancy flopped down onto her bed in her old room, staring at the
ceiling, as if answers to a hundred questions would come floating
down from heaven and enter her brain by osmosis. Where were
the pulsating emotions that usually vibrated all the way to her
toenails every time she even thought of Chris’ name? Where were
the bells and whistles? Why didn’t her heart do all the flutters?
Even though he was missing a tooth and looked like he’d seen too
much life too fast, he was still Chris, so why hadn’t she reacted to
him the way she’d thought she would? She’d been so sure at one
time that he was the one man for her-the one who would wait for
her until eternity if she just asked him.