Heart Echoes (10 page)

Teal handed Pamela's phone to her and looked at the cell in her hand. She couldn't remember how to turn the sound back on.

Before she sank to the floor, Teal felt Pamela's arms around her, leading her to sit on a chair.

Teal could take a lot in stride. Watching a bridge collapse and dozens die in their cars, for one. Learning that her daughter had entered a rebellious season, for another. But the image of Maiya locked up on a campus with a crazy person who probably had a gun or two?

Total paralysis.

Chapter 19

River stood with dozens of other parents on the perimeter of a shopping center parking lot. Arms crossed and lips pressed shut, he held himself together and gazed from behind dark sunglasses. The panic in the growing crowd was palpable.

He had lived through a couple of his own school lockdowns and faced gun-toting and knife-wielding teenagers crazy high on chemicals. San Sebastian Academy housed boys who had been expelled elsewhere. Some did not easily get the hang of new rules.

But at SSA, with a student-teacher ratio of six to one and a male population focused on being their brother's keeper, rule breaking was next to impossible. A lockdown at Saint Sibs meant somebody was already sitting on top of the out-of-control kid while the other boys were confined to their rooms until the director got to the bottom of the situation.

Life wasn't that way at Tremont High.

He felt a tug on the cuff of his jeans and looked down at Teal sitting on the curb. Her legs had given out twenty minutes ago. No hint of fight remained in her eyes.

As he lowered himself to the ground, his breath caught. He silently swore at the earthquake, himself, and the bins of books. “It's going to be okay.” He pulled Teal close.

“You don't know that.” Her voice was muffled against his shirt.

“We have to believe it.”

“I can't. Not at this moment in time.”

He couldn't either. Tremont High was a public school with a solid academic reputation and a blend of ethnicities that added a richness. Maiya loved it. And yet . . .

Metal detectors and police officers were part of the campus decor. Strict dress codes and codes of conduct were enforced. And yet . . .

There were thirty-five hundred students. Some did not play well with others. Some did not play well at all.

River hugged Teal as tightly as he could.

His cell phone beeped, and he unhooked it from his belt. A variety of tunes erupted around him, a discordant ringing of a dozen cells.

“Hello.” Before the word was out of his mouth, an automated voice began reeling off good news. The lockdown was over, everyone was safe, parents could leave or pick up their children.

“Thank you, God.”

Beside him Teal had her own phone to her ear and was talking.

River felt his smile fade.

“Y-yes.” Her voice faltered. “We'll be right there.” She clasped the phone in both hands and met his stare. “That was the vice principal. Maiya is in his office, and Jake Ford is in handcuffs.”

In the five years River had known Teal, he had seen her fly off the handle at injustices and all but hyperventilate over various things involving Maiya. But she had always maintained an air of control.

Except for once.

And except for today. Today made twice.

The first time, Maiya was in seventh grade and had accidentally been marked absent one day. The school contacted Teal—who had dropped Maiya at the school earlier—and asked if she was home sick. Teal phoned River and the police and went to the school. When he arrived, he heard her voice from the front door at eardrum-shattering decibels. The school nurse entered the fray and informed them all that Maiya was in her office, sick to her stomach. By noon that day, River had tucked both of his girls into bed, Maiya with a stomach bug, Teal with a migraine. He had to make her promise not to sue anyone at the school.

It crossed his mind that this time, he himself could be in her lawsuit sights.

In all honesty, he felt grateful to be out of her line of fire for the moment. He'd much rather be in the back of a police cruiser than inside the school. He'd left Teal there, bouncing off the walls and yelling at the vice principal about his decision to suspend Maiya from school.

He turned to Jake Ford beside him, the goofy kid who had so captivated his daughter. “I don't know what to say.”

The lanky boy winked. “Maybe you could say to the cops they should uncuff me?”

“You snuck into a high school, Jake. Be glad they didn't shoot you.”

“I didn't sneak in. A friend opened a back door for me.”

Thank God that friend had not been Maiya.

Unless they were both lying.

Jake smiled. “I swear again, it wasn't Maiya.” His freckled nose and mop of curly red hair easily disarmed others. He wore a denim jacket, but even when his tattoo-covered arms were exposed, people gravitated toward him, people from all walks of life, including the uptight and middle-aged. He was a natural charmer—nothing phony about his charisma—and seemed not to have a harmful bone in his body.

River truly believed he didn't. The kid simply made idiotic decisions that got him into trouble. “You're going to have to rat out the friend.”

“I can't do that. It's all my fault. I talked her into it.”

Her?
A list of Maiya's friends ran through his mind and his stomach twisted. “But it was her choice, and the authorities think that girl was Maiya. They've suspended her.”

“No way! Really?”

“What did you expect? She was hiding you in a band room closet.”

“We went in there before the lockdown announcement. We just wanted five minutes alone.”

“Why, Jake? Why did you do this? You promised me you would not contact her. I trusted your word.”

He shrugged. “It's not what I planned. It was just going to be a quick duck in and out. Hand her the flowers, profess my undying love, and split.”

“And how was that not breaking your promise?”

“Man, we hadn't talked for two weeks. We needed some kind of closure, you know? I had to tell her good-bye.”

“Jake, you're nineteen and intelligent enough to get it: breaking promises will get your friends in big trouble. Breaking laws will land you in jail.”

“I was just trying to see my girl.”

“
Ex
-girl.” River heard the steel in his voice.

“River, I care for her. I really do. I swear I'll stay away, but I miss her. I think she misses me, too.”

“Let me tell you something about love. It means you want the best for the other person and you will help bring that about. The best for my fifteen-year-old daughter at this moment is that her mother and I are not upset. Guess what? We're upset. We are very upset.” River stopped himself short of heaping hot coals of blame on Jake. He thumped the window with his fist to get a nearby cop's attention to open the door.

Jake said, “Hey, I'm new at this, okay? Can you at least put in a good word for me?”

As River slid out the door he turned to look at the boy. “And what would that good word be, Jake? That you can't keep a promise if it's hard?”

“Come on, man. You know me. I got through Saint Sibs with flying colors. I got a regular job at the garage. I make good money.”

River straightened, swore softly, rested his arms on the door, and swore again. Jake's life had been one abandonment after another. If River quit on him now after their mentoring history, the impact would rank just below that of Jake's mom and dad.

The distraught faces of Teal and Maiya flashed through his mind.

He was not in a good space for decision making. He leaned back down into the car. “Jake, you chose the wrong girl to mess with.”

The boy squirmed, his hands still uncomfortably handcuffed behind his back. “I'm sorry.” There was a new note of fear in his voice. “I'm sorry, Mr. Adams. It won't happen again, sir.”

River's heart pounded in his ears. His throat felt tight.

A tear slid from the corner of Jake's eye.

“I can't promise. But I will carefully consider speaking on your behalf.” With that he walked quickly away before he caved in.

Nuts.
He'd never seen the kid cry before.

Chapter 20

Keeping her head as still as possible on the bed pillow, Teal removed the ice pack from her forehead and dropped it to the floor.

River climbed into bed beside her. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah.” She turned slowly onto her side and faced him. “Thanks.”

He smiled and his eyes crinkled. In the dim light the cobalt blue appeared almost black.

The migraine had sent her to bed before dinner. It was now after ten o'clock. “What did I miss?”

“More tears and apologies. Poor kid. What could she do? The love of her life suddenly appears with a bouquet of roses in an empty school hallway where she happens to be on her way from study hall to the library. We forgot to include this scenario in our ‘just say no' lectures.”

“How naive of us.”

He chuckled. “Just say no to booze, drugs, sex, and guys bearing gifts in the hall during class.”

“It lacks a certain ring.”

“I'll work on it.”

“Do you buy their story?”

“Sure,” he said. “Her history class was given library passes the first day of school to work on a project during study halls. It would've been easy for Jake to learn her schedule. It would've been easy for the anonymous friend to find out if she would go to the library today.”

“Or encourage her to do so because Jake was coming.”

They stared at each other.

Teal said, “Did you ask her that?”

“Didn't think of it. Did you?”

“I only thought of it now. But she insists she did not know his plans or who opened the door for him. Same thing as innocent bystander?”

“Could be, up to that point.”

She sighed. “It kind of breaks down when we get to the part about the cops finding them in the band room closet. The officials don't buy that she wasn't hiding him.”

“Maiya probably did panic like she said and had no idea the lockdown was about him. No way to prove it, though.”

“So we can't fight the suspension.”

“No, we can't, Ms. Lawyer. Our focus should be on supporting Maiya while she deals with the consequences of her actions.”

“You always take the oomph out of my battering ram, Mr. School Counselor.”

His smile came and went. “Her boss called her tonight. He said with school back in session he needs to cut staff. Not enough ice cream customers to keep everyone on, and since Maiya was the latest hire . . .” He shrugged.

“That's not fair. What a lame excuse! That chicken—”

River put a finger on her lips. “The bottom line is she's learning a huge life lesson early in the game. She'll be better for this mess in the long run.”

Teal moved his hand and held it. “But what about the short run? I'll take her with me to the office tomorrow, but I can't keep that up. And she can't go with you every day.”

“She'd be fine in my office or helping out in the main office.”

“But we're talking six weeks off of school. Six weeks of her
junior
year. Six weeks' worth of
zeros
in every class. She needs a tutor to keep up.”

“We'll find one.”

“River, it's more than that. It's—it's—”

“Sh.” He wiped at the outer edge of her eye. “Relax. Take a breath.”

She took two. “She needs loads of attention right now. I should be mommying her. I missed out on so much when she was little.”

“She's fifteen and she's grounded. Life is difficult.”

“I love you,” she said.

“And I love you. What's up?”

“Can you say that other part? I need to hear it. ‘I love you, da, da, da'?”

He waited a couple beats before saying anything. “I love you no matter what. And for the record, I am in for the long haul.”

She smiled. The first time he said he was in for the long haul was the day he proposed for the umpteenth time. That was the time she finally replied
yes
. His words had struck a long-dormant chord within her, and she knew that she had been created to hear such music.

“River, I want to take her to Cedar Pointe for a few weeks.”

He blinked. “Camp Poppycock?”

“I think I'll stop using that derogatory moniker.”

“Why?”

“Because it's not user friendly. She's not going to like the idea anyway—”

“No, I meant why do you want to take her there?” He interrupted her, his voice tense. “Why Cedar Pointe, your nemesis?”

“It's complicated.”

“Care to uncomplicate it?” His mouth was settling into a grim line.

“Because it's so far off the grid. It's disciplining her with the advantage of getting her away from all the chaos in the city. I don't want her to be continually faced with no social life and no school and now no work.”

“All of which is the whole rationale behind disciplinary action.”

“But she never should have been
suspended
. Us grounding her from after-school activities is one thing, but this is totally unfair punishment. It'll haunt her for years and have such a major, negative impact on her grades and college applications.”

“You're overreacting. You two would leave home and you'd leave work for weeks because she might get an A-minus and have to go to her second college choice? What's really going on?”

Tears pooled in her eyes. She felt all twisted and squeezed inside. “I'm losing it, River. I haven't slept through a night in weeks. I drive crazy routes to avoid others, and still every day I go past rubble. I'm always hypervigilant. Sirens scare me to death. I can't focus at work. I can't stop reading all those obituaries.”

“Oh, Teal. Why didn't you tell me how bad it is?”

“Because you'd say I should talk to someone.”

“You should. Start with Pastor Lillian.”

“I just want to go away.”

“To Cedar Pointe.” Disbelief filled his tone. “The place you've avoided most of your life, especially the past nine years.”

“I have a plan B.”

“Of course you do.”

“We could all go visit my new best friends in Iowa. See the Mississippi.”

“Mm-hmm. Spit in it. Reel in a catfish or two.”

“Or plan C: you could come up and fish in Oregon. They have salmon.”

He did not reply to her obvious hint.

She knew better. Even if his superiors allowed him time off, there was no way on earth he would leave his boys at the critical start of a new year.

She said, “I'm sorry. That wasn't fair.”

“It is what it is. If you feel that this is what you need to do, go. Your mind is made up.” Exasperation clipped his words. “Why not rent a place closer? I could easily visit you out in Palm Springs or down in San Diego.”

“I don't want a vacation.”

“What exactly do you want, Teal?”

She had no words that could encompass the desires she had. They were deep longings that had struck like lightning bolts inside her, burning and splitting. If she didn't do something soon, the thunder would explode and there would be no way out.

“I want to go home.”

He gazed at her as if struck himself.

“Everyone should be able to go home when they're in trouble. Right?”

River moved over and gently slid his arms around her.