Emma said, “I’m going to feed Duchess and take her outside.” She hardly even had to look at the dog for it to follow after her.
Jamie suddenly realized she wouldn’t be home tomorrow for the dishwasher repairman, and she called and left a message that she needed to change the date unless he could come after four p.m. She didn’t expect to hear back today, but at least she’d alerted him.
Harley put her plate in the sink with less noise and drama than earlier. She turned to leave the room as Jamie was ending her phone message. “Hey, I wanted to talk to you about something,” Jamie called to her.
Harley stopped and looked back at Jamie with a careful expression. “What?”
“You know I went to see Mom’s lawyer about her estate . . .”
“Yeah, you told me. That’s how I got my phone.”
“I got a note from Mom along with the papers from the lawyer.” Jamie was starting to hesitate. All week she’d been deciding how and when to talk to Harley about a number of things, like her crush on Greer Douglas, but hadn’t figured out how or when. But before much more time went by, she wanted to inform her about the note.
“I also ran into my friend Gwen. She has an office in the same building.”
“What did the note say?”
“I’ll show it to you, but it basically said I needed to come home and take care of Emma.”
“Come home?” Harley whispered.
“And I told Gwen about it . . . about everything . . . and that’s what I wanted to say. Gwen said it happens sometimes. A person can get a message through to their loved ones telepathically.”
“I don’t believe that!” Her eyes were wide, her body tense. “Do you believe that?”
“I’m just telling you what she said. In fact, what she really said was that I wasn’t her ‘first unicorn.’ I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s not that far out of normal.”
Harley’s gaze dropped to the floor. “I think it’s effin’ creepy. And so do you.”
With that, she left Jamie standing in the kitchen, staring out the window to the backyard and the brittle, leggy stems of the Mr. Lincoln roses.
The teenager had to be put in her place. That’s how it starts . . . when they’re young. Did I want to kill her . . . ? I thought so. I took the knife to the house with that intent. But it all got away from me. She ran to the children.
Next time . . . if there’s a next time . . . I hope there isn’t a next time . . .
But if there is, I won’t fail again.
Chapter Eighteen
Monday morning, Jamie arrived early at the school, where she was handed the day’s assignments for the students of her Language Arts class, and then one of the senior students who helped out in the office showed her around the school and to her classroom.
Jamie felt a few butterflies. Always the case on the first day at a new school. She stood beside the teacher’s desk and smiled at the students as they filtered in. One of the boys slid a look at the others, but then stopped and said to her, “You’re Harley’s mom?”
“Yes, I am. And you are?”
“Greer,” he said.
Jamie tried not to react. She surreptitiously checked him out as he headed toward a group of boys at the back of the room. He was nice-looking and had a confident way about him that she suspected had been the draw for Harley.
Once they were all in their seats, Jamie told them about their teacher’s unfortunate accident and that she’d said that today’s class would be used for writing their semester essays, the theme of which concerned future career choices. A collective groan rose from the back of the room where the boys had congregated. Jamie didn’t have a seating chart. Maybe there wasn’t one. But all the boys gathered together seemed like a no-go. Still, until it became a problem, she wasn’t going to make waves.
Class went pretty well for the first twenty minutes, then the whispering started.
It wasn’t, as Jamie had suspected, the boys. Mostly it was a group of girls who were trying to get the boys’ attention. Jamie slid a look at the main girl, who gave her a sheepish shrug of her shoulders and a big smile when she caught Jamie watching her, before turning her attention back to her paper.
Jamie pretended she hadn’t heard, but she knew what the girl had said. It was a comment to the tallest boy in the class, who she’d heard Greer call Tyler. Was this, then, Tyler Stapleton, Icky Vicky’s son? She glanced down her class roster and found his name.
“You were there, too,” the girl had accused, to which he’d shaken his head.
“Try Troy and Greer,” Tyler whispered loudly back at her.
Jamie thought she heard another female voice say, “Fuck those sophomore girls,” but wasn’t sure.
As if they recognized she was about to step in, they all put their eyes on their papers and started writing. She cruised around the room a few minutes later and learned that most of them were actually working. The girl with the smile was writing about her plans to go to the University of Washington. Jamie noted that was also the college of choice for Tyler. She’d seen Dara Volker’s name on the list and thought maybe she was the one who’d spoken. Greer had plans to take a gap year off and snowboard around the country. Whether that was feasible or not was not for her to judge. His father was Dug Douglas, who’d been Race Stillwell’s sidekick in high school and now was a successful businessman with a collection of independent insurance agencies. Was this, then, the boy Harley was interested in? She wasn’t sure how she felt about
