Forevermore (11 page)

“Yo, Prof!” a student from the venture class greeted. His buddy beside him sang out, “Professor D!”

I smiled and waved. They were the reason I taught, put myself out there in a job that normally wouldn’t fit my demeanor. But I loved it and my students liked me even if my colleagues still thought I was a bit freaky.

Twenty minutes until my first class. I had enough time to duck into my office and drop my bag. With few professors left on campus for the summer, the second floor of the faculty building was as quiet as the house. I didn’t mind it as much here, but the quiet seemed to be taunting me today.

I placed my laptop bag on the desk, ruffling through to find today’s class notes. I didn’t really need them. I taught this core class every semester. It was pretty much branded into my brain.

“Hey, hon,” Briony said as she slipped into my office. Our offices were a floor and a few corridors apart, so we’d often meet in one or the other to save time before classes.

My ears tingled at the sound of her voice. I smiled before I turned around. Happiness was everywhere in my life now. Even in the face of loss, I still had Briony to hold onto.

She matched my smile and leaned forward to brush her lips against mine. She’d gone to bed before me last night and left before I got up this morning. We’d been out of sync with our schedules before, but it felt more significant this time.

“You look beautiful today.” My eyes drifted over her linen skirt and shapely blouse then back up to catch the quirk of her lips. She didn’t need to be told she looked beautiful. My eyes would tell her, but I still liked to say it. My heart fluttered every time she told me. I was pretty sure she felt the same way. “How’d the meeting go?”

“Like every meeting with the dean, worthless and endless.”

I chuckled with her. The dean of the grad school wasn’t exactly known for efficiency. He could drone on and on and be convinced it was all essential.

“Probably the last year for this class, though.”

My eyebrows rose as I nodded. That made sense. Funding was getting harder to justify. They’d likely want to discontinue a class that required significant startup capital from its investment pool.

“I’ll miss it.” A fond smile graced my lips. I had this class to thank for my life now. My full, rich life filled with love and laughter.

“Next summer, maybe we skip teaching. Take a long break,” Briony echoed my earlier thoughts.

“Whatever you want,” I agreed.

She shook her head and smiled. Then she let out a sigh and sadness crept into her beautiful gaze. “Don’t let me break down and get Caleb a dog.”

“Oh, Bri, I’m so sorry,” I said again because it was my fault. She never would have agreed to foster a child if I hadn’t talked her into it.

“Stop it, M.” Her hands came up to grip my face. “It’s not your fault. It’s sad and awful. I hate that I loved her and lost her and that you and Caleb had to go through it, but we had a wonderful family and we still do.”

I pushed back the tears I felt welling in my eyes and reached for a hug. Briony’s hugs could fend off all sorts of horrors.

“Don’t let Caleb guilt me into a dog,” she sighed and clutched me tighter.

“I’ll see if Willa will let us dog-sit for a while. That’ll make him happy.”

She pulled back and smiled, some of the sadness gone from her expression. “You always have good ideas.”

“Ladies,” Javier stepped into the doorway as he did on occasion, even when Briony wasn’t here. His office was six doors down, and he always made a point of greeting me each day. “How’s tricks?”

“Javi!” Briony’s tone showed her surprise. “What are you doing here?” Her eyes darted to me, checking as she always did on my comfort level. Other than students, I rarely let anyone into my office. But Javier and Alexa didn’t exactly do boundaries. It was that callous disregard that actually made me moderately comfortable with them.

“Stopped by to walk with your woman over to our classes. Didn’t expect to find you here.”

Briony’s grin flashed bright. She flicked her eyes to me, pride and happiness shining through. She always relaxed when she detected my ease in social situations.

“How’s my boy?” Javier asked about Caleb. He’d been his soccer coach for three years now and really cared for him. He also came in handy as an everyday male role model when Caleb’s grandfathers were in another state.

“Better,” Briony answered truthfully. “Still acting up a bit.” Or a lot, but we expected that to settle down as soon as he got into a regular summer routine.

“That camp doesn’t tire him out every day?” Javier’s dark eyebrows slanted down in a frown. He wasn’t able to fit in being the assistant coach this year and looked guilty about it.

“Not enough, apparently. I was thinking of letting him be Quinn’s ball boy at her basketball camp this summer.”

“That might do it. Or you could just give him to Jessie for a week. He’d be so tired he wouldn’t even have thoughts of angst.”

We chuckled. We’d already come up with a reason for him to spend a day with Jessie. The effect lasted a couple of days, but then he got snippy about something again and took it out on his mom. It was all a way to cover his hurt, along with some new teenage hormones.

We’d just have to be more creative and attentive. I wasn’t going to let this sadness become a permanent fixture in my family’s life. We would work at it together because that’s what families did.

M / 16

I rapped my knuckles on Willa’s office doorframe. She looked up and smiled, undisturbed by my drop-in. I almost always called, but I was still out of sorts these days.

“Hey, M. Glad you’re here. I could use the break.” She leaned back in her chair and watched as I took a seat across from her desk.

“Hi. Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

She shook her head. The dark brown waves in her hair were more curly than wavy today. The length had gone from shorter to medium over the years I’d known her, but the style remained the same. I liked that about her. Consistent and reliable. “How’s the venture class going?”

Three weeks into the class and it was fun but bittersweet. Kinda like the summer Briony and I were having. “It’s good this year. Only two businesses, but the kids are getting more and more creative each year.”

“As long as none of them are starting gaming companies, I’m all for it.”

I laughed. Willa could always make me laugh.

Her eyes darted away. “Have you heard from her?”

My breath deserted me. One thing about Willa, she knew me pretty well. It scared me sometimes. “Last Sunday. She said everything was okay, but she sounded so, I don’t know…small.”

Her eyes came back to mine. “Like she wasn’t happy?”

“Like she did when we had to tell her that her aunt was going to take her from us.”

“Really sad still?”

“Yes.” I didn’t want to admit it, but I’d heard it in her voice. She was trying to be brave, and so were we, but we were all sad.

“You’re worried?”

I couldn’t really voice what I was feeling. Yes, worried, sad, angry, anxious, almost like I had the first time I walked into a foster home. I didn’t know what to expect, if it would be good or bad. I was worried for her for more reasons than I wanted to admit.

Willa pulled open a desk drawer. She brought up a file folder and handed it to me. “You’re probably going to get really upset with me for this, but I can be an asshole and everyone knows that about me.”

I couldn’t imagine what she’d have in there that would upset me. She thought she wasn’t the best person in our group. She could be grumpy and short tempered, but she was never an asshole. Definitely never to me.

Opening the file, I glanced down at the top page. The subject line was Ian Corcoran. I looked up at Willa, my mouth open and my heart pounding. She’d run a background check on Olivia’s aunt’s boyfriend. I didn’t know what to feel about this. I should be upset that she’d been so presumptuous, so overbearing as to take on a responsibility that wasn’t hers, but instead, I think I felt grateful. I’d been worried when I found out Nell was living with a man. I didn’t want to think that anything bad could happen to Olivia, but it kept me from sleeping well most nights.

The report told me that he was a thirty-nine-year-old pastor born in Silver Spring, Maryland. He’d been leading his own church for eleven years. Four former addresses showed up on the page along with his current residence, which he owned. He’d never been married and volunteered at the food kitchen attached to his church. He had no felonies, misdemeanors, or arrests. Blank spaces after words like “Day 1”were listed along with words like “Time and Location.” It was an incomplete report, which made me both glad and anxious.

I caught Willa’s nervous look. Yeah, she should be nervous. This was a complete overreach on her part. Panic slammed into me. What if she’d done this to me? As soon as the panic started, I quashed it. She wouldn’t do that to me, her friend. She just wouldn’t. “Why did you do this?”

“Everything in there comes from public records. We have a firm that runs background checks on all potential hires to avoid some of the mistakes we made at first.”

That didn’t explain why she would do this. “But what would make you run a background check on him?”

“There’s one on her, too.”

I looked back down at the file and flipped to another page. Nell looked good on paper, too. It made me feel better. A lot better, especially since I hadn’t done it. I would have felt guilty if I’d initiated a search like this. I’d felt uncomfortable even running a browser search for her name when the social worker first told us about her. Other than a typically boring Facebook page, nothing seemed concerning. I looked up at Willa again.

“She’s your kid, M. You can’t make it legal, but she’s yours. I didn’t want you to worry that anything would happen to her.”

I cleared my throat. “You did this for me?”

“Of course.” She frowned at my question. “I can get our investigators to do a more extensive check if you want. I’ve had to learn the hard way that one week of twenty-four hour surveillance can save a lot of headaches.”

I stared at her, trying to figure out why she’d do something like this. Overstep like this. My head shook at her suggestion. As much as I wanted to know if this Ian guy was bad news, I couldn’t justify invading someone’s privacy for my curiosity and peace of mind. I had to have faith that Nell wouldn’t choose a pervert to marry.

“You’re shocked.”

I was. She’d always treated me differently from others in her group of friends. It was subtle, and I thought it was because I was so different from them. Everyone in the group had somehow benefited from her wealth. They were all grateful, certainly, but she’d shared her wealth from this successful software company with them like they were her dependents. She’d never offered to buy anything for me, and I’d always been grateful for that. I wouldn’t know how to turn her down without insulting her.

“Not that I did this,” she was saying. “You’re shocked that I’d do this for you.”

Jeez, she really did know me well.

“I’m going to say this once and in a way that I know only you will understand.” Her eyes locked on mine, something she rarely did.

I waited, a little panicked that she might express a sentiment that I couldn’t reciprocate.

“You’re my phone call.”

My eyes flitted away, down to my hands, and back up to meet hers. I wasn’t sure which phone call she meant.

She let out a breath of air and broke eye contact. “If I ever did something bad, like really bad, you’d be my phone call.”

I pushed out the breath I was holding. I could think of several bad things I could do. Not the kind of bad things someone in our group would think of, like getting a DUI. That would be bad, but not the kind of bad I could dream up. My kind of bad could be seen as malicious, even if I were protecting myself. The kind of bad things I’d envisioned doing to some men prior to meeting Briony.

Yes, that was it. The difference that I recognized in Willa, the reason why she and I meshed as friends so well. She could do those bad things, too.

“Quinn would still love me,” she continued. “She’d try to understand why I did what I did. She’d stand by me, but she’d never think of me the same way. It would ruin her.” She shrugged and glanced back at me. “So if I needed someone to think through all of my options after doing something bad, you’d be the call.”

Talk about an eye opening conversation. “Okay.” Seemed a stupid thing to say, but that was how easy it was to accept. Because I knew she was right. Briony was a lot darker than Quinn. She could deal with anything bad I might do. If Willa ever did anything bad, I’d want to be there to help her figure out what to do about it.

“Okay,” she agreed.

I took a breath and plowed ahead with something I would never have asked her before. “Can I ask you something?”

She smiled briefly and nodded.

“Why haven’t you ever tried to make me take some of your money?” Immediately, I realized that sounded off. “Everything you did for your friends. You’ve pretty much financed their dreams.”

She flushed red and looked away, her head shaking as if to deny what I’d said. “I guess I thought you might consider it insulting.”

Not insulting, but definitely not how I’d like a real friendship to be. But there had always been one weakness for me prior to meeting Briony, and she had to know it. “Not even for a cochlear implant for Hank?”

Her eyes pinged back to mine, widening in surprise. “I’m sorry. I just assumed that he wanted to be deaf. If that’s not the case, you don’t even need to ask.”

I waved her off before she said any more. My heart filled with pride for her. “No, that’s exactly right. There’s nothing wrong with being deaf. Few hearing people understand that. I should have known you’d get it.”

“Good, okay, then. But it should go without saying, if you ever need anything that I can do, just say it.”

My eyes grew moist. I couldn’t stop it. “That’s…that’s…”

“Just so we’re clear.” She saved me from having to voice my emotions. “And I know I overstepped here, but I liked that kid so much. I want her to be safe. I want you to know she’s safe.”