Sleeping With the Enemy (17 page)

Jesse sighed, turned and wrapped an arm around her, then settled back into deep sleep.  Comforted by the rise and fall of his breathing and lulled by the distant whisper of the surf, Rose lay there for a very long time before she went back to sleep.

chapter ten

“Mr. Lindstrom?”

Jesse looked up blankly from the paper he was grading.  Amanda Ashley hovered in the classroom doorway, one knee sock down around her slender ankle, her limp blond hair falling over a heart-shaped face that might have been pretty if it hadn’t been hidden behind all that hair.  “Amanda,” he said.  “What can I do for you?”

“I was just wondering…I didn’t do too hot on that last paper.  I thought maybe you could show me what I did wrong so next time I can get an A.”

Jesse slowly removed his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes.  Amanda was a solid C student.  “Not everybody gets an A,” he said.  “There’s nothing wrong with a C.”

“Try telling that to my mother.”

Amanda’s father owned the local hardware store, and her mother sold real estate.  The Ashleys lived in a split-foyer house in a new development on Meadowhill Road.  So far, neither of them had found the time to attend parent-teacher conferences.  “Your mom’s pushing you to get better grades?”

Amanda nodded.  “I brought my paper.  You marked it all up, but some of it I don’t understand.  I thought if you explained it, I’d remember better.”

Her paper had been a disaster, loaded with grammatical errors and misspellings and lapses in logic.  Not quite what he wanted to deal with at 2:30 on a Monday afternoon.  But he couldn’t say no to a kid who needed his help.  He’d never been able to.

“Pull up a chair,” he said.  “We’ll go over it together.”

As they went through her paper, point by point, he explained about dangling participles and run-on sentences, split infinitives and passive voice and subject-verb agreement.  He circled misspelled words, reminded her what a dictionary was and how to use it, recommended the grammar handbook that was his bible.  “You should have learned all this stuff back in junior high school,” he said.

“We moved around a lot.  And English never was my best subject.”

And it never would be.  “Maybe what you need is a tutor.  Somebody who can help you with some of the basic grammatical stuff you seem to be missing.”

She coiled a strand of hair around her index finger.  Without looking at him, she said, “Isn’t that something you can do?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a peer tutor.  Another student.  Somebody who has a good grasp of the subject and the time to tutor you.”

Intently studying her paper, she said, “I’d rather have you,” and flushed beet-red.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened.  In the ten years he’d been teaching, more than one young girl had fancied herself in love with him.  It was always awkward, always difficult, walking that fine line between courteous distance and outright rejection.  “I was thinking,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “that maybe my stepdaughter might be interested.  Devon Kenneally.  Do you know her?”

Amanda gave a noncommittal shrug that could have meant anything.  Jesse repressed a sigh.  “Are you willing, if she is?”

“I guess so.”

“I’ll talk to her tonight.  See what she says.”

Amanda hung her head.  “Okay,” she mumbled.

“Then I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

It was clearly a dismissal, but it still took her a while to gather up her books and leave.  When she was gone, he propped his feet on the desk and tapped his pen against the lined writing tablet in his lap.  Sooner or later, the situation would blow over.  In the meantime, he would avoid being alone with her, avoid singling her out in any way from the pack.  Young girls, especially the more desperate ones, sometimes had a tendency to view simple friendliness as encouragement.  That was the last thing he needed.

He considered mentioning it to Henry Lamoreau.  But Henry would issue dire warnings and stew unnecessarily.  Better to remain silent than to stir the principal up over something as innocent as a teenage girl’s crush on her English teacher.

He was catching up on yard work that afternoon when he saw Devon trekking across the field with an enthusiastic Chauncey bounding around her feet.  He stopped and leaned on his rake to watch her approach.  At first, he thought she would avoid him and go directly to the house.  But slowly, with greatly exaggerated reluctance, she crossed the yard to see what he was doing.  “Hi,” he said.

She folded her arms.  “Hi.”

“Chauncey likes to run, I see.”

“I guess.”

“I have a proposition for you.  I have a student who needs an English tutor.  Somebody who can help her with basic grammar.  I thought you might be interested.”

She studied him with dark eyes that seemed to see all the way into his soul.  “Maybe,” she said.  “What’s it pay?”

“Nothing.  You’d be doing it because you’re an incredibly wonderful human being.”

She snorted.  “Yeah, right.”

“Think about it.” He returned to raking.  After a moment, he said, “You looking for a paying job?”

Her eyes lit up before she remembered she was supposed to be a martyr.  “Doing what?” she asked warily.

“Here.” He handed her the rake.  “Give an old man a break.  I’ll pay you five dollars an hour.”

“You’re not old.”

“Nice try, but I’m still only giving you five bucks an hour.”

She struggled to hold back a smile while he pretended not to notice.  “The rest of the lawn,” he instructed, “all the way to the tree line.  The leaves go in the wheelbarrow.  When it’s full, you dump it in the compost pile over there.  Think you can handle it?”

“I can handle anything.”

While she raked, he stood at the kitchen window, warming his hands with a cup of coffee and absently scratching Chauncey’s massive head.  Maybe it was his imagination, but he thought he’d detected a chink in that armor of hers.  Could it be that she was softening toward him?

She was a great kid.  Right now, that greatness might be far enough beneath the surface so you had to hunt for it, but every so often, in spite of her best efforts, a piece of it broke free and floated to the surface.  She and her brother were both great kids.  Luke was adapting well, and Devon would adjust with a little more time.  Both of them were living testament to their mother’s strength.  He didn’t think Rose knew how good a mother she was.  But he knew.  He’d seen her in action.  She might be a little flaky.  A little disorganized.  But he’d never met a woman who cared more for her children’s welfare.  What she lacked in administrative skills, she more than made up for in love.

***

That night, in bed, he told her about Amanda Ashley.  “The girl makes me uncomfortable,” he said.  “I don’t know what it is.  I’ve been through this before, with other kids.  But there’s something about her, something I can’t put my finger on, that tells me to tread carefully.”

“Get her out of your class,” Rose said with a vehemence that surprised him.  “Right away.”

He plumped up the pillow and folded his arm beneath his head.  “I thought about that.  But we’re into the second quarter now.  She’s doing passable work.  I think I can get this kid through the school year.  If we shuffle her around, she’s likely to fail.”

In the darkness, they were both silent.  “I don’t suppose,” she said, “that it would ever occur to you to think about your own welfare?”

“I can’t do that, Rose.  I’m a teacher.”

“Yes,” she said.  “You are.  You always give the kids your all, no matter what the cost to you.”

The darkness hid her face, and he didn’t know her well enough yet to gauge her sentiments from her voice alone.  “Is that something that bothers you?”

“It’s one of the things I respect the most about you,” she said.  “You’re a teacher who really cares about the kids you teach.  It’s a rare gift.”

Warmth flooded his body at her words, for they were the last words he’d expected to hear from her.  Rose was a chameleon, as unpredictable as the sea, distant and aloof at one moment, warm and inviting the next.  It was one of the things that fascinated him the most about her.  “Thank you,” he said.  “That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Sounding bewildered, she said, “I only speak the truth.”

***

She was doing paperwork the next morning, making the most of her free time before her appointment with Torey Spaulding, when the flowers arrived, a dozen long-stemmed red roses. 

This man was making detachment increasingly difficult.  She buried her face in the blossoms and inhaled their incredible scent.  They smelled good enough to eat.  Mary Lumley, passing by in the hallway, saw the humongous bouquet on Rose’s desk and backtracked.  “Secret admirer?” she said.

Rose toyed with a velvety crimson petal.  “My husband.”

“Ah,” Mary said knowingly.  “What’s the occasion?”

Rose shrugged her shoulders.  “Damned if I know.”

Mary grinned.  “That’s the best kind.”

Vicky poked her head into the office door and grinned.  “Wow.  Looks like somebody’s pretty fond of you.”

She didn’t know how to answer.  How to react.  What to think.  In fourteen years of marriage to Eddie, he’d never once sent her flowers.  She’d always thought that women who went gaga over a bouquet were mindless twits.  She hadn’t understood until now that red roses had the power to turn a woman’s insides to pabulum.

Rose picked up the phone and called her brother.  “What does it mean,” she demanded, “when a man sends a woman a dozen red roses? For no reason at all?”

“Well,” Rob said, “first of all, there’s always a reason.”

“But what if there isn’t? There’s no special occasion, nothing out of the ordinary.  They just show up, out of the blue.”

“I didn’t say it had to be an obvious reason.  But there’s always a reason.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I can only tell you what it would mean if I was sending them to my wife.”

“Which is?”

“A rough translation might be: 
You are my love and my life, you own my heart and my soul, you’re the very air I breathe.  Let’s go to bed right now
.”

Dryly, she said, “You’re such a sentimental guy.”

“Works every time.  Look, Rose, maybe it just means he loves you.  Did you ever consider that?”

“Tell me another one.”

“Although I can’t imagine how he could, with that vicious tongue of yours.”

“Go to hell.”

“I love you, too, pumpkin.  Call me tomorrow with your crisis
du jour
.  They’re always so entertaining.”

She was still sitting there, admiring the damn things, when Torey Spaulding showed up for her appointment, twenty minutes late.  “Nice flowers,” Torey said.  “Who’re they from?”

“My husband.”

“Hah.  I’d have to be dead for my husband to send me flowers.”

She found an empty room for Torey to sit in to take the vocational aptitude test which, like everything else around the place, had already been in use when Fred Flintstone was a kid.  She spent the rest of the morning sitting in her office, doodling on a sheet of paper and staring at those damn flowers.

That afternoon, she skipped out of work early and drove to the IGA.  It wasn’t often that a domestic urge struck her, even less often that she acted on such an urge.  But the flowers had managed to weasel their way into some soft, womanly place inside her that she usually kept closed and locked.  She hummed along with the Muzak as she pushed the cart from aisle to aisle, picking and choosing from the pathetic choices available here at earth’s end.  The locals stared in open curiosity, whispering behind her back after she’d passed.  Damn their hides.  She gritted her teeth in determination, smiled pleasantly at each face she met, and wondered how long it would be before they found something better to talk about than Jesse Lindstrom’s new wife.

The cashier seemed intensely interested in her purchases.  “Linguine, tomato sauce, fresh garlic and basil,” she said.  “Guess I can figure out what you’re making for supper tonight.”

Rose pulled out her checkbook.  “I suspect you probably can.”

“I went to school with your husband, you know.”

Rose’s mouth thinned.  “You and everyone else in town.”

“Ever since kindergarten.  We did sandbox together.  I had a wicked crush on him in high school.   He broke more than a few hearts, I’ll tell you.”

“I just bet he did.  How much do I owe you?”

The cashier seemed surprised to note that there was a line forming behind Rose.  “Twelve-fifty,” she said, and Rose wrote out the check and tore it off.  “Thanks,” the woman said.  “Tell Jesse that Eileen said hi.”

The house was blessedly silent.  Rose unpacked her meager purchases and began chopping vegetables.  She sautéed them in olive oil, threw in the basil and a pinch of oregano from a jar she found in the spice rack.  She was stirring the sauce and had just put on the water to boil for the linguine when the phone rang.

Rose lowered the heat beneath the sauce, scurried across the kitchen, and snatched it up.  “Hello,” she said, stretching the cord to maximum capacity as she opened the refrigerator and took out a stick of butter.  She popped it into the microwave and began punching buttons.

At the other end of the line, in a cool, clipped British accent, an elegant female voice said, “Good afternoon.  May I speak to Jesse, please?”

“He’s not here right now.” The microwave beeped, and she popped open the door.  “Can I take a message?”

“I really must speak with him directly.  Is this his sister?”

Rose wiped her hands on her apron.  Impatiently, she said, “This is his wife.  Are you sure you don’t want to leave a message?”

At the other end, there was a moment of absolute silence.  “His wife?” the woman said. 

Rose squared her jaw.  “That’s right.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.  That sly dog got married and didn’t tell me! That explains why I haven’t heard from him in so long.  He’s been honeymooning.  You lucky girl!  I suppose I don’t need to tell you just how fortunate you are.”