One Summer (25 page)

“No!” Her gaze swung toward him again. Horrified that he should believe such a thing, she said even more forcefully, “No!”

“I don’t believe you.” His tone was brutal.

“It’s the truth!” They were passing the 7-Eleven now, turning down the road that led toward the school. Rachel knew that she owed him an explanation, but she had to sort her feelings out for herself first. Being in love with Johnny Harris was no simple thing, especially in Tylerville. The potential repercussions were horrendous.

“Is it?”

“All right!” she burst out. “All right! This is a messy situation. You know it is. I’m a teacher. I used to be
your
teacher. Did you know my contract says I can be dismissed for moral turpitude? I’m not any too positive that having an affair with you would not constitute moral turpitude, for starters. You’re five years younger than I am, for another thing. How does that look? And you—and you …” Her voice trailed off as she found herself quite unable to put how the townspeople saw him into words.

“And I’m an ex-con and the local pariah?” he finished for her. Rachel glanced over, stricken dumb at something
in his tone, to find that his eyes were glittering savagely at her. “Good enough to hump on the side, but not quite suitable for a lady like you to be seen with in public.”

Rachel bit her lip with helpless misery.

“Christ, watch the road!” he barked, grabbing the steering wheel and jerking the car back over into their lane before it wandered across the median line.

For a few moments after that, neither of them said anything. Rachel, recalled to the need to focus on her driving, gave her full attention to the road until she had safely turned into the school and was pulling up beside his motorcycle. She shifted into park and turned to face him, both hands still on the wheel.

“Johnny, please believe me, I am not ashamed of you. I just need a little time, a little space.”

“Space.” His mouth twisted as he met her look for a sizzling instant. Then his hand was on the door handle, and he pulled it down and got out of the car. Once outside, he leaned in the open door to look at her.

“You take all the time and all the space you need, teacher. Then when—if—you decide you can handle this thing between us, you give me a call, okay?” The icy anger lacing his words flicked Rachel like a whip.

“Johnny—” she began imploringly, not even knowing what she meant to say. But he didn’t give her a chance to finish. He slammed the door, opened the back, pulled out his jacket, and shrugged into it. Then he turned to his motorcycle, yanked on his helmet, and straddled the machine all in less time than she would have thought possible.

She was still sitting in her car trying to think of exactly how to phrase what she wanted to say to him when he kicked the engine into life and roared away without a backward glance.

25

F
riday was one of the most miserable days Rachel had ever spent in her life. First of all, just as she had known would happen, word of her going off with Johnny was all over the school. The moment she had arrived in her homeroom, every single pair of teenage eyes was fixed on her in fascination. Her conviction that she was the object of gossip grew even stronger as the kids and even some of the teachers fell silent when she passed by various chatting groups in the hallways and teachers’ lounge and monitored tables at lunch. But she didn’t know for certain until just after the dismissal bell rang and Mr. James appeared in her doorway as her students streamed through it.

Rachel was gathering up the items she needed to take home with her over the holiday weekend, but she stopped to glance inquiringly at the gray-suited principal.

“Have big plans for the weekend, Rachel?” Mr. James asked, stepping into the room. He was nearing retirement age, but his stern, no-nonsense demeanor made him seem much older. With his thick, slicked-back iron-gray hair and stocky build and his tendency to mumble, he had always reminded Rachel of Marlon Brando’s interpretation of the Godfather.

“Not really.” She smiled at him as he walked over and
watched her stuff compositions that needed deciphering as much as grading into a folder. “What about you?”

Mr. James shrugged. “Not really. Bess”—Bess was his wife of forty years—“and I are just going to stay home and relax. None of the children are coming in.”

“That sounds nice.” Rachel gathered up the last of the papers, the folder, and some books she needed to prepare for next week’s lessons and stood waiting. Mr. James never engaged in small talk. He had sought her out for a purpose, and she was pretty sure she knew what that purpose was.

“We’re looking forward to it.” He cleared his throat, and Rachel knew that whatever he had sought her out to say was coming. “Some of the girls told Mrs. Wylie”—Mrs. Wylie was the girls’ counselor—“a rather disturbing story today.”

Rachel raised her eyebrows.

“They said that that Harris boy came to school to see you yesterday. That you drove off with him in your car.”

“Johnny Harris used to be a student of mine,” Rachel said coolly. Though she had expected to find herself engaged in such a conversation, her hackles rose nevertheless in instinctive resentment. To have her actions questioned at all did not go down well, and to hear Johnny referred to so scathingly as “that Harris boy” everywhere she went was beginning to severely irritate her.

“Then it’s true?” Mr. James looked at her searchingly. His eyes gleamed at her from behind his black-framed glasses.

“That he came to school to see me and that we went for a ride in my car? Yes.”

“It was a one-time thing, I hope. You must know that we can’t have someone like him hanging around the school.”

“What do you mean, ‘someone like him’?” A hint of anger sharpened Rachel’s voice. Mr. James looked surprised.

“A man who has been known to prey on teenage girls, of course. We have a duty to the parents—”

“Johnny Harris would no more prey on teenage girls than I would! I have known him since he was a teenager himself, and I am as convinced of his innocence in Marybeth Edwards’s death as I am of—of yours, for want of a better comparison. He—”

“He was convicted of her murder by a court of law and duly sentenced. That he has paid his debt to society in no way abrogates our duty to our students or their parents. We must protect the children entrusted to our care. Even if it goes against how we feel about the possible lack of justice meted out to him ten years ago.”

The gentleness of his tone robbed his rebuke of much of its sting. Nevertheless, Rachel grew blazingly angry.

“Is my job at risk if Johnny comes to school again, Mr. James?”

“You know as well as I do that you have tenure, Rachel. I appeal to your conscience rather than your fear of unemployment.”

“My conscience is clear, I assure you. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Certainly. I’m sorry if I upset you, but you know what they say about a word to the wise. I trust it will prove sufficient in this instance.”

“Have a nice holiday, Mr. James,” Rachel said tightly, and walked past the principal out the door.

Her anger had calmed somewhat by the time she got home. Mr. James’s attitude was not unexpected, after all, and it was one of the reasons why she had decided she could not let her relationship with Johnny go any further without a great deal of very serious thought. She considered the restoration of her normally placid disposition a good thing as soon as she saw the sleek black Lexus parked beneath the porte cochere.

Michael had come, probably to fetch Becky and the girls back home.

“Michael’s here.” Her mother greeted her with a warning hiss as soon as Rachel walked in the door. From the side yard came the sounds of her nieces shrieking with laughter as they engaged in some sort of rowdy play. Glancing out the pantry window as she set her books down on the table, Rachel saw that Tilda had joined them for a lively game of badminton.

“Do the girls know?”

Elisabeth nodded. “Tilda’s keeping them out of the way. I think he wants Becky to come back to him.”

“What does Becky want?” Rachel opened the refrigerator and reached inside for a single-serving carton of orange juice. Bought for the girls, the drinks had instantly become a favorite of everyone in the household. Rachel inserted the little straw, then drank with appreciation.

Elisabeth shook her head. “I don’t know. They’ve been in the library for almost an hour, and I haven’t heard so much as a peep. I wanted to stay close in case Becky should need me. She gets upset so easily, you know. I just hope Michael’s come to his senses. I’m sure Becky will forgive him, if so.”

Rachel grimaced doubtfully and took another sip of juice. “I’m going upstairs to change and say hi to Daddy. Yell if you need me.”

Elisabeth nodded. “Oh, by the way, Rob called last night, after you went up to bed. I told him you’d call him back today. And Ben called from the store.”

Rachel, already on her way through the doorway, hesitated, glancing back over her shoulder. “Has anyone else called?”

Her mother shook her head. “No.”

Reminded of Elisabeth’s past perfidy in the matter of Johnny’s calls, Rachel turned to fix her mother with a stern look.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Johnny Harris came by to see me at school yesterday.
He told me that he tried to call me several times this week, only to have you tell him that I wasn’t home.”

“If I said that, then I’m sure it was true.” Elisabeth sounded defensive.

“You never bothered to tell me that he called, Mother.”

“I probably forgot. I can forget things, you know. Especially with everything that’s been going on around here lately. Why, it’s a wonder that I remember anything at all.” Elisabeth’s hands fluttered helplessly, but Rachel, who knew her mother well, knew that she was about as helpless as a pit bull.

“You never forgot anything in your life, and you know it. I am a grown woman, Mother. Who calls me, or who I see, is my concern, not yours. I thought I’d made that clear before.”

“Are you expecting that Harris boy to call you?” Elisabeth’s voice was sharp.

“That’s not the point, Mother.”

“It is as far as I’m concerned. What kind of mother would I be if I wasn’t worried about you? You’re my daughter, Rachel, no matter how old you are. I hate to see you getting yourself into a difficult situation.”

Rachel sighed. “I am not getting myself into a difficult situation.”

“I’d call sleeping with that Harris boy a difficult situation.”

“Mother!” Rachel was genuinely shocked, as much by her mother’s outspokenness as by her knowledge, and it showed in her widened eyes as they met Elisabeth’s determined ones.

“Did you think I didn’t know, Rachel? I’m quite intelligent enough to add two and two.”

Rachel could feel herself blushing as her mother’s gaze bore into hers, but she refused to let her eyes drop.

“Do you deny it?” Elisabeth asked.

“I don’t deny anything,” Rachel replied, regaining a
grip on her slipping poise. “Or admit anything, either. It’s none of your business, Mother.”

“None of my business when my daughter is having an affair with a murderer! I suppose you expect me to ignore it when he takes a knife to you, too?”

“Johnny never—”

“Pshaw!” Her mother interrupted with robust indignation. “You can no more be sure of that than I can be that your daddy’s getting better. I may believe so, but it’s always possible that it’s wishful thinking on my part. And so it may well be with you.”

Mother and daughter were silent for several moments in which the undeniable truth of that statement hung in the air. Then Rachel’s lips tightened.

“I’m going to change, Mother,” she said, and turned, starting up the stairs. Before she had ascended more than a quarter of the way, the library door opened.

Rachel swung around to discover Michael framed in the doorway, with Becky, white-faced but tearless, behind him. Below her, Elisabeth, too, had turned to face her son-in-law.

For a moment Michael and the two women stared at each other without speaking. Michael looked far older than he had when Rachel had seen him at Christmas. He had not been able to come down at Easter or over the Fourth of July, when Becky had brought the girls to spend a week with their aunt and grandparents. Dark rings around his eyes spoke of sleepless nights, and the wings of gray behind his ears reminded her that he had celebrated his fortieth birthday this past June. His skin was pale, as befitted a man who only rarely sought the sun, and a faint suggestion of five o’clock shadow roughened his square jaw. Tall and thin, darkly handsome in his blue suit, he was the very picture of an affluent WASP lawyer. She found it hard to believe she had ever been in love with him.

Judging from his expression, it was clear that he was not
pleased to find himself confronting the speculative stares of his mother- and sister-in-law.

“Hello, Rachel,” he said at last, having presumably greeted Elisabeth when he had arrived. Rachel’s eyes strayed past him to Becky, who looked stricken as she gazed at her husband’s back, and she barely nodded in response. It was clear from Becky’s demeanor that, whatever had been said between them, their differences had not been patched up.