Out in the Country (6 page)

“I wouldn’t bother, if I were you. They won’t answer your questions.”

Molly turned around to see Luke Michaels, smiling at her with that faintly cynical air. She was too alarmed to be annoyed by it now. “What’s happened?”

“You left early Friday, didn’t
you?” Luke
shrugged. “Same old. A student attacked another student in the bathroom. Had a knife hidden in her backpack.”

“Her?” Molly repeated, and Luke smiled, seeming to enjoy her discomfort and disbelief.

“Yes. It was a fight between two girls. Ninth graders.”

“Ninth graders,” Molly echoed, feeling faint. Fourteen year olds. “With a knife?”

“Yup.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“One of the girls got the knife in her shoulder. A fair sized cut, I’d say, but she’ll live.”

Molly shook her head slowly. “Doesn’t it faze you at all?”

“No,” Luke replied bluntly, “not anymore. But it still annoys me that I won’t be able to assign homework for a week.”

“Why not?”

He shook his head in sorrowful disbelief. “Oh, newbie, you have a lot to learn, don’t you? No books or backpacks are allowed in the building. There’s a security clearance at the door.”

“For a week?”

“Or so.” For a moment his insouciance dropped and he took pity on her. “I never took you out for that drink I offered on your first day. How about tonight? My treat.”

Molly swallowed, her gaze sliding away towards the pair of police officers organising the line of students through the school doors. She felt as if the wind had been knocked from her, as if she’d fallen flat on her back. When she’s agreed to work at Cooper, she’d pictured indifferent students, challenging classrooms situations, but this? Knives? Danger?

No homework allowed?

She turned back to look at Luke, and saw with a start that the harsh lines of his face had softened with what looked suspiciously like compassion. “All right,” she said. “That would be nice.”

“Good.” He dropped a friendly arm around her shoulders. “Now let’s get past security.”

It was an endless day, and her students paid less attention than usual, distracted as they were by the rumours and speculation flying over Friday’s knife fight. By the time Luke came into her classroom at half past three, Molly felt completely drained.

“You look beat,” he said and she smiled ruefully.

“I feel beat. I had no idea this was going to be so hard.” She hadn’t meant to admit so much, and especially not to someone like Luke, cynical and just a bit condescending, but she couldn’t help it. She felt like she couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“No one does,” Luke replied. “You get injected with idealism from all your training, and then you’re met with this. No one prepares you. No one tells you.”

“You did,” Molly said wryly, and he gave her a quick grin.

“But you didn’t believe me, did you?”

“I’m starting too,” she said with a slightly sour laugh, and he shook his head.

“Don’t become jaded too quickly, newbie. I wouldn’t like you as much then.”

His words shouldn’t have affected her, Molly acknowledged guiltily as they walked a few blocks to a nearby wine bar. Yet she was uncomfortably aware that somehow their acquaintance had started to turn into a flirtation, or as good as, and she wasn’t sure how to stop it. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to.

Besides, perhaps she was overreacting. They were colleagues, friends, and a drink after work hardly counted as a date... did it?

She thought of Jason, her boyfriend of three years,
in graduate school in New Hampshire, and her guilt increased. He’d forgotten to ring on her first day, sending her an e-mail over the weekend instead. Molly had tried to be understanding, but she was honest enough to admit she was both hurt and cross. With her mother so busy with these new plans for an inn in Vermont, Molly hardly wanted to burden her with her own paltry problems.

And then of course there was the matter of the inn itself, and the expectations her mother seemed poised to settle on her.
Would you like to float this old boat?

Well, no, she wouldn’t. She was having enough trouble keeping her job and her spirits above sea level.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Luke said as he sat across from her under a table so small their knees touched. “You look a million miles away.”

Molly shrugged. “I’m so tired I’m not even sure I have a thought... or a coherent one, at least.”

“Don’t take it all so much to heart, Molly,” Luke said quietly, using her name--not newbie--for the first time. “You’ll burn out before Christmas if you do.”

“How do you make yourself not care?” Molly asked a bit desperately. She took a sip of wine.

“You care about the students, you want them to succeed, but you don’t let yourself be hurt when
they
don’t care. When they fail. When they knife each other in the hallway.” He smiled a bit crookedly, and Molly tried to smile back.

“How long did that take you?” she asked. “To stop caring?”

Luke was silent for a long moment. “Years,” he said finally, and he sounded a bit sad. “And it’s still going on.”

Molly looked at him in surprise. Was Luke admitting to a certain tenderness underneath his cynical apathy? The thought was like a squeeze to the heart, and she suddenly smiled, feeling oddly encouraged.

“That birch tree is completely bare,” Jess remarked as they turned off the highway onto the narrow road that led to Hardiwick. It was two weeks after their first visit there, and they were returning to begin preparations to turn Kathy and Graham’s house into a bed and breakfast.

Lynne glanced at the tree’s stark branches, her expression preoccupied and a little bit harassed. Jess knew her friend was buzzing with ideas; their plans for the weekend included a visit to the local bank to apply for a business loan, a
walkthrough
of the house with a local zoning commissioner, and of course helping Graham and Kathy move to a bungalow on the outside of town. Just the thought of all that activity crammed into a few days made Jess feel both tired and overwhelmed.

Yet Lynne didn’t look overwhelmed; she looked determined. Ever since they’d returned from Vermont, she’d been focused on the inn. Jess had found sketches and random notes scattered over the apartment, and in the middle of a completely separate conversation, Lynne would suddenly say something like,

‘Weekend specials, during peak foliage season. Do you think we can be open by next fall?”

Jess didn’t miss the ‘we’, and although it warmed her heart, it also made her nervous. She loved Lynne’s enthusiasm, but she didn’t share it... yet. She still felt too raw, too uncertain, knocked for six as she had been by Rob’s betrayal. He hadn’t been in touch in the month since he left, not a note, phone call, or e-mail message. Nothing. It trivialised their two years together, Jess thought sadly. Something that had been life-altering for her was obviously next to nothing for Rob.

Lynne had argued over the last few weeks that a new project would be just the thing to get Jess on the right track and over Rob, and while Jess saw the wisdom in this, she wasn’t sure her heart and head worked that way.

She wasn’t ready to leap in feet-first... and have everything fall apart as it did before.

“I don’t even know if I can get a visa, Lynne,” she’s said the night before, as they’d chatted before bed.

“Details,” Lynne had replied with an airy wave of her hand. “We’ll sort something out.”

Jess had suppressed a sigh. Yes, it was a detail, but an important one.

Why
, she wondered now, as they drove into Hardiwick, red maple leaves fluttering onto the sidewalk outside The Mountain Cafe,
am I such a stick in the mud? Why can’t I be as excited as Lynne?

A moving truck was parked outside the old yellow house as Lynne pulled up.

“Looks like they’ve got a start,” she said, smiling. Kathy waved from the front porch as they walked up the curving drive.

“Everything that we’re taking is nearly packed,” she said. “Just a few odds and ends left, really. Of course you’ll have to go through the house and decide how much of the old furniture you want to keep, Lynne.”

“As much as possible,” Lynne replied firmly. “I don’t want to change the house too much, Kathy.”

They walked into the cool, dim hallway, and Jess noticed the new bare patches on the walls, the empty spaces where there had once been a table or chair. Kathy and Graham weren’t taking much to their far smaller bungalow, but it was still enough to notice.

The house felt empty, Jess thought, even though it was still full of belongings. The spirit of it had left somehow.

She smiled to herself, shaking her head. Or perhaps she was just being fanciful. Melancholy. Considering her mood recently, it wouldn’t exactly be a surprise.

“It’s strange, now that we’re actually leaving,” Kathy said quietly. “We’ve been talking about it for ages, and we settled on the bungalow
months
ago, but now...”

“It’s real,” Jess finished softly. She knew how that felt; it was how she felt when she’d walked through the hotel in Perthshire, the keys jangling in her pocket. Except that wasn’t real, in the end. This was.

“Yes, I suppose that’s it,” Kathy said. She glanced around the living room with its big stone hearth and squashy chairs, everything looking empty and yet somehow expectant. For a moment Jess could imagine what Kathy was thinking, remembering all the days and years they’d spent in this room, memories of happy Christmas mornings and drowsy summer evenings. A lifetime, contained in a room.

Then Kathy gave herself a little shake and smiled brightly. “Well, I put the coffee on in the kitchen. Let’s have a cup before we go.”

They trooped to the back of the house where the kitchen also sported some noticeably empty spaces, and Kathy poured them all cups of coffee.

“Where’s Graham?” Lynne asked as she took a grateful sip.

“Upstairs, saying his goodbye no doubt.” Kathy frowned. “Although I wanted him to check with the mover about going over to the bungalow. I don’t want them unloading everything into the driveway.”

“Shall I fetch him?” Lynne asked, and Kathy shook her head.

“No, I’ll go. You stay here and enjoy your coffee.”

Kathy went up the backstairs as Jess and Lynne sat at the big pine table, sipping their coffee and gazing out at the backyard, the still bright green grass now half-carpeted with leaves.

A sense of peace stole over Jess, catching her by surprise. She was relaxed, she realised. She was even--almost--happy. Then it was shattered by Kathy’s cry of distress echoing through the house.

Lynne jumped up from the table, and so did Jess.

“Kathy--”

Kathy ran downstairs, her hair in wisps about her pale face. “Someone call 911,” she cried, her voice breathless with panic. “It’s Graham!”

CHAPTER THREE

Lynne took a sip of tepid coffee before thrusting the styrofoam cup away. She glanced at Kathy, seated next to her on the old vinyl sofa, her face frozen, the look in her eyes chillingly remote. They had barely spoken since they’d arrived at the hospital; Graham had been sequestered in the Intensive Care Unit, and a nurse with too much sympathy in her eyes had told them a doctor would see them ‘when he had news’.

News, Lynne thought disconsolately. Good news or bad news? Or just... news?

“I knew this was too much for him.” When Kathy finally spoke her voice was little more than a reedy whisper. “The house was too much for us too, but just getting out of it...” She shook her head, blinking back tears that filled her eyes anyway. “I knew he’d exert himself too much, he always does. It’s why I wanted to move in the first place...”

Lynne placed a hand on Kathy’s shoulder, saying nothing. She knew only too well how little one could say. She’d been there herself a year and a half ago. The waiting, the recriminations, the unreal feeling that this
couldn’t
be happening, even as you imagined it happening a hundred times. The fear, the uncertainty, and then the despair.

She didn’t want that for Kathy or Graham. Not yet. Not when the future, for all of them, had seemed so bright and brimming.

“I can’t imagine life without him,” Kathy said, her voice finally breaking, and Lynne squeezed her shoulder.

“And you might not have to,” she said steadily. “At least not yet.”

Kathy turned to her. “I’m so sorry, Lynne,” she said. “This must bring back such
terrible memories.”

Lynne shook her head. “Don’t worry about that.” Yet it did bring back memories, from the acid aftertaste of her coffee, to the squeak of a stretcher’s wheels echoing in a distant corridor, to the way the clock’s implacable face never seemed to shift, the minutes and hours frozen in an endless waiting...

And then, when the doors had finally opened, Lynne remembered, and she’d seen the doctor’s grim face, she realised she wanted to keep waiting, to keep not knowing.

As if alerted by her thoughts, the double doors to Rutland Hospital’s ICU swung outward, and a doctor still in scrubs came over to them.