“Miss Carson, what’s a fine cowgirl like you doing in a place like this?”
Shoot. Sheila had no choice but to look up. Hank stood where the waiter had been just seconds prior.
“Eating.” She didn’t return his smile.
Hank seemed nonplussed by her cold manner. “I won’t bother your supper. I just saw you over here and thought I’d say hi. You live in the neighborhood?”
I thought you said you wouldn’t bother me. “Yes.” She wasn’t about to say where.
“Wow. Me, too. In The Newbridge.”
Sheila worked hard to hide her surprise. He lived in the complex just three blocks from hers. Not that he would find that out any time soon. “I think I know where that is.” She kept the terseness in her voice, hoping he would get a hint.
His smile did begin to waver, and he seemed uncertain of how to reply. Sheila wished he would just leave. The awkward silence hanging between them was beginning to have an adverse effect on her appetite.
Finally, he said, “Look, I also wanted to apologize for what happened in the hallway. When my kid ran yours down, I mean.” He shrugged. “I guess I was kind of insensitive, huh?”
Yeah, kind of. She swallowed back the sarcastic reply. He was asking for forgiveness, and as a believer, she was obligated to give it to him.
She forced a slight smile. “Don’t worry about it. It’s water under the bridge.”
“Appreciate it kindly.” He tipped an imaginary hat, a grin slowly returning to his face. “Enjoy the rest of the weekend.”
He turned and walked away, and Sheila considered waving her waiter down and asking for a to-go box. She suddenly felt strange, knowing that Hank was lurking nearby. What if he got it into his head to ask if he could sit down and eat with her? She would tell him no, of course, but she would writhe in discomfort in the process. She was dealing with enough stress as it was.
What are you so paranoid about? He’s just a colleague, trying to be friendly. You need help. Now, eat.
She felt duly chastised by her self-scolding, and decided to stay. She closed her eyes for a moment, willing herself to relax. Where had those butterflies in her stomach come from? When the fluttering in her gut subsided, she picked up her fork to stab at a piece of chicken. The meat trembled on the end of the fork tines, and she then realized her hand was shaking. What is wrong with me? She could only come up with two conclusions. One, that Hank somehow frightened her. Or two, that his being around her stirred up emotions she’d intended to keep buried the rest of her life.
The first was impossible, the second unthinkable. Sheila let out an exasperated breath loud enough to elicit a glance from the people seated at a neighboring table, and pulled a hot corn tortilla out of its flat covered dish.
* * *
“Say, Hank, what’s the good word?”
Hank had left the church sanctuary and headed for the supply closet for a new guitar string when the E string broke in the middle of practicing “Here I Am to Worship.” He’d made the same trip a dozen times before at about the same time, 9:30 on Sunday morning, but this was the first time he’d run into the senior pastor of the church, Bill Dubose, on the way.
“I’m blessed of the Lord, Pastor, hallelujah.” Hank stopped and gave him a conspiratorial grin. “If folks see you out of your office before service, they might think you’re being unspiritual.” A few weeks ago, Pastor Bill had been “caught” prior to a Sunday morning service talking to some members in the church kitchen about the upcoming football season. The woman who had overheard and disapproved of the behavior had promptly written him a letter informing him of her decision to leave the church, because “such conversation should be considered too base for a man of the cloth,” especially when he’s supposed to be getting ready to minister.
Pastor Bill winked. “I was committing a very base act in the restroom.”
Both men let out a hearty laugh, and Hank turned to continue his path toward the supply closet, but he stopped abruptly.
“Pastor Bill,” he said, “Hypothetical situation. A man gets to start liking a particular woman, but then something tears them apart and the man’s feelings eventually smolder. Years later, he meets another woman, and he thinks God is drawing them together, but this new woman apparently wants nothing to do with him. In the meantime, the first woman waltzes back into his life. Where would God be in all this?”
Pastor Bill stared at him, then smiled. “Starring in an episode of Days of Our Lives, sounds like. If indeed we are just speaking hypothetically.”
Hank knew that his pastor knew darn well and good that not one thing he’d said was hypothetical. Even though he’d only belonged to the church a few months, he already knew Pastor Bill was a man of integrity and godliness, so he was not bothered by him knowing his business. However, he hadn’t planned to say anything about his conundrum to anyone, and was surprised it had slipped out.
Then again, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. From the moment he left Miss Carson at her table in the restaurant the night before, his mind had been a horse on a merry-go-round, going up and down from this woman to the other, from one conclusion to the next, but always ending up in the same place he started.
Confused.
“The hypothetical man,” Hank said, feeling the corners of his mouth stretch upward, “would probably want his hypothetical pastor to be a little more serious. Even if they were just being hypothetical.”
Pastor Bill’s smile remained, but his eyes grew softer. “Of course.” He shoved a hand in his pants pocket and jingled his keys. “Then his hypothetical answer would probably be that God is in every part, but that He just hasn’t shown you—excuse me, the hypothetical man, I mean—the reason for all that. He would want the man to take one day at a time, and walk by faith.”
Hank heaved an exaggerated sigh. “A most vague answer, considering that it’s only hypothetical.”
“Hey, Hank, we need you in here!”
Hank looked up to see the drummer gesturing at him from the other end of the hall. “Be there in a minute,” he called, then turned back to his pastor.
Pastor Bill’s face grew serious. In a low voice, he said, “Son, I will be praying for you. Now, get on your way, before they fire you from the band.”
Hank grinned his thanks and sprinted off to the supply closet.
* * *
Monday mornings were the most peaceful. The weekend always had a subduing effect on the children; they were all the quieter after long breaks. Sheila noted that even Edgar sat in relative calm the Monday after Thanksgiving as he flipped through the pages of a Dr. Suess book. After the class settled down to read, Sheila looked around the room to take attendance. Juan was out. Again? His mother was so overprotective. The boy had only to sneeze and the poor child was dragged to the free clinic as if he were coming down with the Bubonic Plague.
A quick glance at the other side of the classroom revealed another absence. Sheila would not have been concerned, had the Thanksgiving incident at the homeless shelter not occurred. But it had, and despite her best efforts to forget about it and enjoy the brief vacation, the scene of Diana fleeing in the hand of a woman unknown to Sheila had haunted her the rest of the weekend.
Diana had not been a second late, let alone absent, a single day so far. Was it only coincidence that she was gone now? Sheila gave an audible sigh that caused two children seated near her desk to giggle. She shot them a look that quieted them in an instant. She was in no mood for horseplay. Her favorite student was absent, and Sheila knew she had something to do with it.
“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill,” Margaret told her after school that day. “Winter’s coming. It’s getting colder. Stuff is going around. The lady—her aunt, or whoever she was—was probably just short on money, and wanted to make sure Diana had a good Thanksgiving meal. Maybe she thought you’d get her into trouble because you knew she wasn’t a street person.”
That idea hadn’t occurred to Sheila, and
appeased her somewhat that evening and the next day, when Diana still hadn’t shown up. But Wednesday came, and still no Diana. Sheila determined to get to the bottom of it.
“She’s probably in Mexico,” Mrs. Cortez, the school data controller, told her when she marched into her office asking if Diana had withdrawn. “You know how they do—give them a five-day weekend, and they turn it into ten so they can visit all their relatives.”
Sheila frowned. “But I called the home number, and it’s been disconnected.”
Mrs. Cortez sighed, gazing at Sheila over her glasses. “So have half the other numbers on the emergency cards,” she said, impatience edging her voice. “That doesn’t mean we send out a posse when a kid’s gone for a few days.”
Sheila bit back a retort and left. Though Mrs. Cortez could have found a less sarcastic and condescending way to express herself, Sheila truly hoped she was right. But when she visited the address which Diana’s aunt had left the office when she’d taken custody of the girl, no one was there.
She went to the apartment manager’s office.
“The slut ain’t paid her rent in two months.” The obese woman sitting at the desk puffed on a cigarette, turning her head to the side to blow out smoke. “I told her to scoot, and she did.”
“You kicked a five-year-old out into the street.” Sheila wanted to strangle the woman.
The feeling was apparently mutual, because this time when she sucked on the cigarette, she blew the smoke directly into Sheila’s face. “I don’t run no charity here. And I treat everybody the same. You pay on time, you stay. You don’t, you leave. I can’t be no softy, or else the proprietor will put me out, you got me?” She crossed her arms over her chest, narrowing her eyes. “What business is it of yours, anyway?”
“I’m the child’s teacher.”
The words must have had an impact, because the manager’s face softened. “Oh.” She uncrossed her arms, leaned back, and set the cigarette in an ashtray. “Well, then, I suppose it’s okay to tell you that I heard tell that she and the little girl are staying at a shelter downtown. Can’t give you nothin’ more specific, though.” She began rummaging through a pile of folders on the desk, then looked up with narrowed eyes. “You do know about Rosa Manriquez, don’t you?”
Sheila shook her head.
“I think the polite term is lady of the night. And she has—had—her share of gentleman callers come in at every ungodly hour.”
Sheila stammered a thank-you and left, taking a deep breath as she stepped outside. Diana’s aunt was a prostitute? Someone in the fine Texas judicial system hadn’t done their homework before awarding her custody of her niece. What kind of indecencies had Diana been exposed to over the last couple of weeks?
Past reports of abuse to children caused by negligent mother’s boyfriends paraded into her mind, and a chill went down Sheila’s spine. If anyone would ever dare touch Diana—
Father, please, help me find her. She got into her car, and put the key into the ignition with a shaky hand, a mixture of anger and fear whirling inside her. She didn’t know if she was more upset at Diana’s aunt for taking Diana in, at Diana’s father for not alerting the court as to his sister’s lifestyle, or at the imagined “gentleman callers” who might be doing God-knows-what to Diana.
Sheila’s only consolation was that if they were living in a shelter, Diana might actually be safer than in an apartment with her aunt. Sheila prayed that the apartment manager’s sources were all reliable.
But according to Mrs. Cortez, Diana still showed up on the computer as registered at Roosevelt, not at one of the schools nearer the downtown area. And the shelters took great pains to make sure the children at their facilities were not truant. Was Diana just sick, then, and her aunt intending to continue bringing her to Roosevelt, or. . .had they fled the area entirely?
Sheila braked at a stop sign, and lay her head against the steering wheel. Please, let Diana be all right, she prayed. And help me find her. She drove home, wondering if she should bother checking out the homeless shelters if Diana didn’t come to school the next day. She didn’t want to risk further alienating her aunt if she did find them there. Suddenly she wished she could afford a P. I. to do her investigating for her.
She laughed at herself, shaking her head. Now you’re really going over the deep end.
But the idea lingered the rest of the evening, and followed her to bed.
* * *
The last thing Hank wanted to do was to go to Sheila Carson’s classroom. If she really was as icy as she had so far made herself to be whenever he’d encountered her, then what he was feeling was pure lust and had nothing to do with God. Pastor Bill was just a man, after all. He could have been wrong. But he had a nagging sense in his gut that there was more to Miss Carson than she was willing to show. And all day the next Thursday, he kept thinking he needed to go talk to her.
What for? he argued. I haven’t even seen her in passing all week, and she’s no doubt perfectly fine about that. But the feeling didn’t let up. So that afternoon, after dismissing his students, he headed down to room five.
And he had no idea what he was going to say.
He steeled himself as he approached her room. He expected that she would be too busy for small talk. He expected she would politely and frigidly ask him to leave.
He didn’t expect to hear a loud argument when he got in front of her classroom door, which was closed.
For several seconds, he stood immobilized by indecision. His first instinct was to leave. If she was already in a bad mood, his presence probably wouldn’t help any. Besides, she might resent such an intrusion, and she seemed the kind of person who would prefer to keep her personal life well-hidden.
But as he listened a few moments more, he realized hers was the only voice he heard. Strange. Is she talking to herself? Not that he would judge her for that. If he had a dime for every conversation he held with himself, he’d be a rich man.
Regardless, she definitely sounded unreceptive to visitors at the moment. He turned and began to walk away.
Go in.
The command, however brief, was clear. Hank went back to the door and knocked. Sheila quieted, then opened the door.
She raised her eyebrows and turned a slight shade of pink when she saw him. “Oh, hi. Can I. . .help you?”
“No, actually, I, well—do you mind if I come in?” Lord, You sent me here. Now give me the words, please.
Sheila shrugged, opening the door wider. “I guess.”
Hank bumped into a paper plate turkey hanging from the ceiling.
“Shoot, I forgot to send those things home again.” Sheila stood on her toes to unclip the turkey from the clothespin holding it in place. “Maybe if I stick this one with my lesson plans, I’ll remember to do it tomorrow.”
“I’d be happy to take them down for you now, if you want.”
Sheila eyed Hank with suspicion. “No, you don’t have to. . .well, why not? Thanks.”
Hank began walking around the room, removing the turkeys. “I’ve been called the walking stepladder.”
When Sheila laughed, it was a melodious sound that made Hank pause. Thank God, she has a sense of humor.
“That’s better,” he muttered.
He hadn’t meant for her to hear, but she did. “Better than what?”
He set a handful of turkeys on the nearest table. How was he going to explain what he meant? I overheard your argument with yourself. Thought maybe you’d caught yourself chewing gum in school. “Well, I could be wrong, but when I got to your door, I. . .nothing.” He took on his happy-go-lucky tone. “It’s not important.”
Sheila sat down on top of one of the low tables, frowning. “Was I praying that loud?”
Praying? She’d been praying?
“What did God do,” Hank asked, “tell you to give your life savings to a televangelist? Sorry,” he added quickly. “It’s none of my business.” Have some water to wash down that foot stuck in your mouth, cowboy. H
ow insensitive could he be?
To his surprise, Sheila smiled. “If He had, I would’ve been screaming at the top of my lungs.” She went over to the table to rescue his pile of turkeys from toppling over. “I’m just frustrated about something. Usually, I can pray with Margaret, and I’m okay. But she called in sick today. So it was just me and the Lord, having it out.”
As she walked away with her hands full, Hank stared after her. Talk about wrong first impressions. And second and third ones. Suddenly, the woman he thought capable of sinking the Titanic was as friendly and genuine as anyone he’d ever met. Praying was good for her.
“So,” Sheila said with her back to him, “I know you didn’t travel all the way from the top of the building to take down my kids’ turkeys.” She set the plates down on the back counter and turned around, a question mark on her face.
Hank cleared his throat, shoving his hands into his pocket. In a flash, he understood why he’d been summoned down there. “How ‘bout we make a deal?” he said, as nonchalantly as possible. “I promise no more kids running in the hall, and you let me help you with that frustrating issue.”
Sheila furrowed her brows and wrinkled her nose like she’d just caught a whiff of an unpleasant odor. He should have never brought up the hallway incident. She’d probably forgotten about it; that’s why she’d been so friendly to him. Nice going, Roy Rogers. Now he’d reminded her about his rumored incompetence as a teacher, and was going to be asked to leave.
And it would serve him right.
Then her face softened. “Oh, why not. One of my kids has up and disappeared, and I think she might be in trouble.”
Hank almost asked her if that meant she really wanted him to keep his end of the deal, but decided he should just let sleeping dogs lie.
She added, “I know, I know, professional distance, kids move away all the time without the teachers being informed, yada-yada-yada.” She plopped down on one of the tiny chairs, looking perturbed.
“I wasn’t fixin’ to say nothing like that.” It was after school; he could let his Texas grammar—or lack of it—shine through. He perched on top of the table across from where she sat. “Tell me what’s going on.”