Teacher Beware (A Grace Ellery Romantic Suspense Book 1) (12 page)

MY FAMILY OWNS a small house and a Dutch barn. The barn has a broad gable roof and bright-red walls. We also have a coop for chickens, six cows, four pigs, and two horses. In comparison, the house is lackluster. It's made of southern yellow pine. It was painted white when my parents married, but the paint has peeled and it's the color of decaying teeth. My father passed away three years ago—after he spent two years struggling with intense abdominal pain and withered away from a strong farmer to a frail man. It's as if the house is dying in the same way that my father did.

I watch my mother knit a scarf. She always makes a scarf for everyone in the family—including my father, which she leaves in front of his gravestone. It keeps her mind busy in between her shifts at the hospital.

"Mom," I say, as I sit across from her. She looks up, her eyes wide as if she had forgotten I had been cleaning out her gutters.

"Gracie Jane," she says. "How is it out there?"

"Just a little bit chilly," I tell her. The yarn she is using is a dark blue and bright yellow. The colors clash together, but I suppose during the winter, nobody will care as long as they're warm. "Is there anything else you need done?"

"I don't know…" She glances around the house, her hands no longer moving.

"Are you ready for winter?" I ask. "Is the wood chopped and everything?"

She frowns. "No. I thought I would get one of those electronic heaters—"

"Mom, that's not going to keep you warm. You'll have to carry it around with you, and you don't have that many plugs in this house."

"Hmm." She stares out the window. I lean over to look out the window, too. The only thing that you can see through the window is a hammock that hangs between two apple trees. The hammock was just big enough to hold her and my father, but now my mother doesn't seem to even try to use it.

"Mom…do you want to talk about Dad?" I ask. She turns her head, but seems to look straight through me.

"No…" she says, "I have to get ready for work."

She stands up, dropping the half-finished scarf on the table. She passes by me without saying a word, without touching me, without even acknowledging that I am still there. Her grief is heavier than any winter clothing she could knit, and it makes me feel like my own grief is drowning within it.

I leave the house and walk to the barn. I grab the axe, which lies against the wall. I walk into the woods until I find a large tree that has fallen down. If it's no longer connected to its roots, the wood becomes dry enough that it will burn well. I slam the blade into the log, splitting the wood in half.

~~~~~

WHEN I RETURN to my family's house—even with my father deceased and my brother gone, I can't bring myself to say it only belongs to my mother—my hands are stiff from gripping the axe's handle so hard. I sit down at my mother's dining room table. It's starting to get dark. I don't know when she was supposed to be home from work, but I should make her something to lift her spirits.

I put on a white apron with the words
Smells Delicious, Tastes Delicious
across the chest. I take out the flour, shortening, sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, sticks of butter, and apples. The apples are from the trees out front. I used to collect them with my parents, and then we would spend the day making everything we could think of with apples. My favorite was always apple pie.

I mix the flour, shortening, and water to make the crust. As I roll the crust flat. I hear a knock on the door. I wipe my hands on the apron. I stroll over to the front door and open it.

A young man—in his late teens or early twenties, stands in front of the doorway. He's tall, maybe a few inches taller than me, with muscles that seem too large for his structure. His head is shaved, but I can see the specks of dark hair beginning to grow. He's holding a bouquet of red roses out to me. I carefully take them, unsure of what is happening.

"It's me, Grace," he says. "Francis Tate."

"Oh," I say before I have completely processed the information. The cold breeze from outside hits me. I realize he's only wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He must be cold. I gesture for him to come in, stepping aside. He walks in, his eyes glancing around the kitchen.

I set the roses down on the dining room table, next to my mother's knitting.

"How…are you?" I ask.

"Good, good," he says. He looks over at me, his eyes wide with excitement.

"I'm sorry…but how did you find out I was here?" I ask. "This isn't my apartment."

"No, I went to your apartment," he says. "I talked to your landlord. I told him I was delivering divorce papers to you on behalf of your husband."

"I don't have a husband."

"I know. Pretty smart of me, right?" He grins. He sits down at the table and pulls one of the roses away from the bouquet. "Do you like these? I wasn't sure if you would like them. You don't seem like the kind of girl who likes the classic romance stuff."

"Romance?" I ask.

"You haven't answered my last few e-mails," he says, continuing the conversation without acknowledging what I'm saying.

"What e-mails?" I ask. "If you kept e-mailing me at the Bishop e-mail, it wouldn't have worked. I'm working at Washington School now."

"Oh?" he asks. "Is that why you never replied?"

"I guess," I say, as I look over him. His physique has clearly changed over the last two years, but his whole attitude seems different as well. Confident. Arrogant might be a better word. "Didn't you used to have a stuttering disability?"

He smiles. "You remember! Yes. I spent weeks practicing famous speeches to get rid of it. I owe you for that as well. You gave me the courage to better myself."

"I'm glad," I say, though I'm not sure if happiness is the emotion I'm truly feeling. He glances over at the kitchen cabinets.

"What are you making?"

"Pie."

"Apple?" he asks, standing up. He walks over to the counter. He glances at my ingredients.

"You know, my grandma has this recipe that used cream cheese for the crust," he says. "We should try to make it sometime."

"We?" I ask, walking over to him. "Francis…you do realize that, as my student, nothing could ever happen between us?"

"But I'm not your student," he says. "I stopped being your student about two years ago."

"You're still my student to me," I say. The corner of his lips drop. I squeeze his shoulder. "Look. You're a great kid. You'll find a great girl. I promise."

"I'm not a kid," he scolds. "I'm a man."

"Of course." I try to soothe him. I reach out for him again because he looks like he's about to cry. He knocks my hand away.

"Do
not
patronize me," he snarls. "Like I said, I'm not one of your students anymore. You can't trick me with your fake kindness and your slutty clothes."

I feel my cheeks heat. "Francis, it's not nice to use that word."

He pushes me so suddenly that I can only fling my arms back to stop myself from slamming against the counter. When I look back at him, fury burns in his eyes.

"I'm so sick of you bitches," he says. "You always end up with those bullies like Tom Rifter and wonder why you're miserable. You could have been with
me
. I'm your intellectual equal. I could have given you everything you ever wanted. But no. That's not how life works for me, is it? I'll always be the kid named
Francis.
Francis, the nerd. Francis, the loser. Francis, son of a devil and a whore."

"Francis…" I say, but I know it's too late. Rage radiates off him, and I'm trapped between his body and the counter.

I glance to my side and spot my mother's knife block. As Francis takes a step toward me, I grab the paring knife. As I slash downward, he grabs my wrist. He slams my hand against the counter and my grip on the knife loosens. The knife falls out of my hand and onto the counter.

Francis grabs it. I barely see the glint of the silver before he thrusts it into my abdomen. I can't process the pain before he jabs it into me again.

As he pulls the knife out, I feel the warmth of my blood sliding down my stomach and soaking into my jeans. He thrusts the knife into me two more times. His body is pinning me against the counter, so I can't fall down, but my vision is getting blurry.

There's a bright light. The thought of an afterlife brings me a flicker of hope, but then I realize it's the headlights of my mother's Ford Edge.

I hear the knife clatter to the floor and Francis's footsteps as he runs away. I slump to the floor. The last thing I remember is the deep crimson red of my blood.

~~~~~

JOHN SHAKES HIS HEAD at me, taking a sip from his beer.

"It's a good thing that you've stayed single for so long," he says. "Or else there would be a line of broken hearts behind you. How could you be so stupid?"

I throw my hands into the air. "I thought the secret line would be fine to cross if it was literally a life-or-death situation."

"It's always a bad idea," John says. "If there was a villain with a gun to your head, and he said, 'Tell me your girlfriend's secrets or die,' you would be better off dying."

"What if the villain's gun is pointed to her head? And I should mention that the killer has aimed his gun at her multiple times."

He shrugs. "Keep the secret and save the girl at the same time. Didn't you ever watch any of the princess movies?"

"No," I grumble. "My parents had me watch the
Discovery Channel
as a child."

"How is your dad?" he asks.

"He's doing all right. He got out of the hospital. My mother is talking about possibly coming down for Thanksgiving, which would be a miracle, because they have never gone out of their way to be together as a family and when we were together, dinner was usually delivery pizza."

"You should probably learn to cook then."

I groan, covering my face with my hands. "What am I going to do?"

"I think this is the part where you're supposed to apologize," he says. "And not any of that half-assed apologizing either. The kind of apology that's sincere and you don't make any excuses for your behavior."

"You mean the kind I suck at?"

"Yeah, that kind."

"Do you remember the time I tried to apologize to Alicia?" I ask him. "She was breaking up with me for not supporting her and—"

"And your excuse was that you found interior decorating boring." He raised an eyebrow. "I remember. I was at your house at the time. She threw her stiletto at you. There's still a dent in your wall."

"I should fix that."

"You should fix your relationship with Grace first," he says.

"I don't know how."

"I'd start with flowers," John says, taking another sip of his beer. "And then I'd eventually escalate to groveling and begging."

I take a swig of my beer.

"Am I taking romance advice from a divorced man?"

He claps me on the back. "I'm your only option, Sam. May God have mercy on your soul."

"May God have mercy," I repeat, finishing the last of my beer.

~~~~~

I VOLUNTEERED AT the food bank and participated in Habitat for Humanity all through high school. I didn't attend school sports events or dances. My single-minded focus on community instead of high school didn't make me popular with most of my classmates—they thought I was the holier-than-thou type that looked down on their activities of sports and gossip. I wasn't like that. I understood their need to connect and the feeling of solidarity that came with sports, I just couldn't muster up the same amount of enthusiasm. Regardless, I didn't date at all during high school. I spent my prom talking to a Korean War veteran at the food bank.

While I was an undergraduate at Ohio State, I tried dating. The farthest I got was with a guy named Travis, who I went on three dates with before we slept together. I thought I was falling behind on my social development and people made such a big deal about sex, so I figured I should just get it over with. Honestly, I regret it. I don't want to regret it because I want to pretend that it was meaningless, but it was uncomfortable. He finished within a matter of minutes, and then told me that I should go because he had to get up early. We decided to not see each other again. The fact that I was a commuter student who worked almost a full day on my family's farm before driving to campus made it so I was too preoccupied to even think much about dating. After graduation, I moved to Cincinnati to take a job as a social worker in a community resource organization, a job I held while I was getting my master's degree in education.

To make a long story short, Sam was the second man I had slept with…and the only one I'd had a strong connection with. Sex with him was more than two bodies weaving together—it was passion personified.

But now, I feel worse than when I had slept with Travis and felt only disappointment. Now I felt like something more than dignity had been taken from me—by giving away my secret like any other piece of information, he had also thrown away the last part of me that I had felt I had control of. Tate had taken over my dreams and made me fear even the most mundane things, but at least I could keep the memory of his attack concealed. If no one else knew about it around me, I could pretend that it never happened. Now I can't.

I sit on a swing at Waycroft Elementary School, barely swaying, with a cigarette between my lips. I haven't lit the cigarette—at least I know the immorality of doing that in a playground, but with the stress of everything, I need something to calm my nerves and this is the best that I can do…convince my mind that I'm smoking by going through the motions. I watch two little girls chase each other around the seesaw. I try to imagine who they will grow up to be. Ballerinas, teachers, cardiologists, killers. It makes me miss interventional education. There was always so much potential in all of the students, and I always felt like they had a chance to be better than those who succeeded with ease, because they knew how to continue to fight even when they were struggling.

The blond girl tags the girl with black hair. They both fall onto the shredded rubber mulch, giggling. They clasp their hands together as their laughter fades and they look up at the sky with big smiles on their faces.

Oh. That's what I missed when I was busy trying to be a community leader and studying. Relationships. Finding people you could look at and think
this is where I belong. This is home.

The swing next to me sways. I look over to see Sam standing behind it, his fingertips touching the metal chain. A black sports jacket is slung over his other arm.

I glance back to the girls, but they're both running toward their mothers.

"How did you find me?" I ask.

"I figured you'd want to be alone and I was trying to figure out where you could walk to from the hotel. For a teacher, an elementary school made the most sense. Where's your protective detail?"

I nod toward the jungle gym, where the police officer is leaning against the metal pipes. He's either texting or playing a game on his phone. I'm not sure he even noticed Sam come over.

"Well…that's not reassuring," he says. "Maybe we should sneak away and see how long it takes for him to notice."

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

He steps over the swing and kneels in front of me. I look down, surprised by the vulnerability in his actions. He stares straight up at me.

"Grace," he says, my name pronounced with tenderness that I've never heard before. "I messed up. I was selfish and stupid. I didn't think about your feelings and that was wrong of me. You opened up to me and I betrayed your trust. I am sorry. And I don't mean sorry in that Hallmark card kind of way. I mean, I regret hurting you and being an asshole. I wish there was something I could do to reverse what I did, but there isn't. So, all I can do is apologize and try to be a better person. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

He stands up, finally breaking eye contact, and digs something out of his jacket pocket. He takes out an anatomical heart shaped out of clay.

"I noticed that you had clay in your hotel room, so I thought you might need some more…but I got nervous while I was coming here, so I played around with it. I'm sorry. I'm really bad at apologizing."

He's giving me his heart. He placed it in my hands.

He turns to leave, but I grab his wrist. He stops and glances over at me.

"Can you walk me back to my hotel?"

He smiles. "Of course."

I stand up and we walk together. As we reach the sidewalk, I lean against him, wrapping my arm around his waist. He slips his arm around me, too.

This is where I belong. This is home.

~~~~~