by Vicky Jones
They lay there together for the rest of the night, their breathing and heartbeats completely in sync, their bodies melted together as if as one.
Chapter 32
After finishing all of her morning chores, Chloe lay on the couch for ten minutes to rest. Waking with a jump five hours later, she looked up at the clock.
“Oh my gosh!” she exclaimed, seeing that it was well after four. Running over to the telephone in the hall, she dialed Shona’s number at the garage.
Seconds after hanging up the phone on Chloe, Shona locked the garage doors and sped off in the direction of Fairview Elementary where David had been waiting for over an hour to be picked up.
Skidding to a halt just inside the school gates, Shona jumped out of the truck and ran over to the reception where she leaned over the desk, breathless. “I’m here to pick up David Clark?” she squeezed out between gasps.
The receptionist looked up from her Rolodex and pinched the corner of her cat-eye glasses, pulling them forward. “Name?”
“Clark. David.”
The receptionist rolled her eyes and straightened her beehive. “No,” she replied, “your name.”
“Shona Clark.”
“Relation?”
“Aunt,” Shona said.
There was a long pause while the receptionist got to her feet and walked over to the filing cabinet behind her, her kitten heels clicking on the wooden floor. A few moments later, she walked back and met Shona’s expectant stare with a hard one of her own. “You’re not down as a nominated adult, so I can’t let you take him. Is your sister at home for me to call?”
“Yeah, she’s the one who sent me.” Shona’s patience was wearing thin.
“Hold on.” The receptionist dialed their home number and in a few moments was pointing the way to David’s classroom. Reluctantly thanking her, Shona headed off in search of David. She finally located Room 19 and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” called a light feminine voice from inside.
Shona pushed open the door and looked around the room for David, who was playing with a red wagon on the carpet in the corner. Shona grinned and rushed over, scooping him up in her arms.
“David, I’m so sorry you had to wait, but I’m here now.”
David wrapped his little arms around Shona’s neck and nuzzled into her. “It’s OK, I got to play with the red wagon and the blue wagon. Miss said I could because I’d been a good boy today.”
“Is that a fact?” Shona replied, turning around to face the front of the classroom. She saw David’s teacher sitting facing her, a look of complete disbelief on her face. She stood up, a hand up to her mouth and in total shock. It was a look matched instantly by Shona.
“Shona, this is Miss Adamson. She’s my teacher,” David said as he rolled a wagon innocently up and down Shona’s arm.
“It can’t be. Lucy?” Shona gasped, her eyes like saucers.
“Did you call home?” Principal Miller asked, her hands on her hips as she bore down on her seated receptionist.
“Of course I did, Mrs. Miller. But Mrs. Clark said it was fine for her sister to pick the child up as she wasn’t feeling too well today.”
Miller took her glasses off and chewed on the end of one earpiece. “Where is this Shona now?”
“Gone down to Lucy’s classroom to pick up the boy.”
“Hmm… OK, leave it with me.” Miller set off back down the hallway. When she reached her office, she closed the door, sat down at her desk and picked up the telephone.
“Hello, is that Mrs. Clark? This is Principal Miller at Fairview Elementary. My receptionist has informed me that you’re not feeling too good today and have therefore sent an advocate to pick up your son?” She paused. “Oh, I see, that is correct. Well, now may I suggest that, going forward, we make a record of your sister’s contact details so we can update our records.” She waited. “Oh, nothing much, just her full name, address, that sort of thing.” Miller paused as Chloe replied. “So her address is the same as yours? Right. Pardon me for sounding surprised, but you didn’t put it on the forms when you enrolled David. No, no, it’s fine. Alright, well, thank you, Mrs. Clark, for clearing that matter up. Good day.”
Miller hung up the telephone and sat back in her chair, her hands clasped together, fingers steepled and pressed against her chin.
“What are you doing here?” Shona squeezed out after what felt like an age staring in shock at the ghost from her past.
“I could ask the same about you,” Lucy replied, equally bemused.
“I’m here to pick up my s…” Shona stopped herself before saying the word. “Nephew.”
“Your name isn’t on the list. I checked all the next of kin when I filled in my planner at the start of semester. I would have noticed your name.” Lucy’s cheeks were flushed, the look in her eyes alternating between shock and amazement. Finally, she couldn’t suppress her smile any longer. “You look good. How long’s it been now?”
“Eight years,” Shona replied, her whole body ice cold.
“Eight years? Wow.” Lucy shook her head and bit the corner of her lip, hardly able to believe she was standing in front of her so many years after what had happened in Mississippi.
Shona snapped out of her shock. “I have to go.” She held on to David, who was still sitting snugly against her hip, his arms wrapped around Shona’s neck.
“Wait!” Lucy exclaimed. “Um… I need to clear it with Principal Miller. If you’re not on the list then…”
“The receptionist called home. It’s fine.” Shona stormed towards the classroom door, ripping it open with her free hand, David wriggling in the crook of her other arm.
“Shona… Shona, stop! Please,” Lucy called after her.
Principal Miller came out of her office, appearing large in the corridor in front of Shona who almost, in her haste to escape, barged her over. “What on earth is going on here? Lucy?” Miller looked over Shona’s shoulder at a red-faced Lucy.
“I just needed to check that it’s OK for Miss Jac…”
“Clark,” Shona interjected with an urgency that startled Lucy.
“Miss Clark, would you mind if I took David for a moment?” Miller reached to take David from Shona and beckoned Lucy into her office. “I won’t be a moment. We just need to check one or two things.”
The door closed. Shona watched through the window as Lucy opened her arms out wide as if to say she didn’t know something. Miller let out a long breath and nodded, her hands firmly clamped on her hips. Finally, the office door opened and David appeared, still clutching his red wagon.
“Send your sister our best wishes for a speedy recovery, Miss Clark,” Miller said, a forced smile plastered on her perfectly made-up face.
Shona nodded, picked up David and strode away, casting the quickest of glances back to Lucy.
“This can’t be real,” Shona muttered to herself. “Why? Why here? Why now?”
“I think Miss Adamson looks like Mommy. They have the same hair,” David said as he rolled the red wagon he’d taken from his classroom up the back of Shona’s seat.
“She’s nothing like your momma,” Shona snapped back. She wiped her brow and chewed on the end of her fingers as she drove, her eyes fixed on the horizon. So many thoughts were whizzing through her mind. Eight years had passed since that fateful night at Dorothy’s house. Shona rubbed the side of her ribs where the first blow had landed, the memory of it flooding back. Her thoughts drifted to Chloe. How on earth was she going to tell her that her son’s teacher was the same person who nearly got the love of her life killed? Would they really have to now up and leave town—again? All because of the past? It was all such a mess. But Chloe had to be told. There was no way Shona could keep this a secret.
Minutes later, they arrived home and Chloe rushed out of the house to greet them.
“Oh baby, I’m so sorry. Momma fell asleep and lost track of time.” She scooped David up in her arms and smoothed his hair down. “Are you OK?”
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br /> “Yeah. Shona came and got me. She met my teacher,” David said, rolling his wagon up Chloe’s sleeveless arm.
“Well, I’m due to meet her next Tuesday night at parents’ evening and I can’t wait,” Chloe replied, smiling. A flicker of dread crossed Shona’s eyes. “Why don’t you come with me, Shona, now you’ve introduced yourself to the school? I’m sure Miss Adamson won’t mind,” Chloe asked.
“No,” Shona said, then strode straight past Chloe and David down the boardwalk to the beach. In a second or two she was out of sight, leaving Chloe open-mouthed at her reaction.
“So, are you gonna tell me what’s eating you?” Chloe asked, looking down at Shona, who was sitting cross-legged on the white sand.
Shona looked up and squinted into the lowering sun. “Nothing. Just had some heat from that principal, that’s all.” She looked back out to the water. Somehow the words hadn’t quite fallen into place in her head yet to explain how she felt about seeing Lucy again. Anger had emulsified itself with hurt, a hurt tinged with regret that their friendship had ended the way it had. All of these feelings were wrapped up in a tangible web of frustration that, because of Lucy, she’d had to leave Mississippi and a job she adored, not to mention having to leave Dorothy on her own. But what was conflicting her more was the thought that if all that hadn’t happened then she wouldn’t have ended up in Alabama and met Chloe.
Shona blinked hard, hoping her shattered mind would clear.
Chloe sat on the sand next to her and leaned against her arm. “She can be a dragon. She called me while you were there. I think she bought the idea that we were sisters, so if you want to, I think you should come to parents’ evening.” Chloe reached out to stroke Shona’s face. “I’d really like you to come with me. He’s your son too. At least in my eyes, if not in the eyes of the law.”
Shona blinked back the tears. “I can’t. I’m sorry,” she replied, then got to her feet. “I gotta go out for a bit.” She walked away, leaving a confused Chloe sitting alone on the sand.
“Why Shona, this is a nice surprise. Come in,” Minnie gushed after opening the door.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Minnie, but I need someone to talk to. I really don’t know what to do. Something’s happened and…” Shona’s voice was breaking as she spoke.
Minnie wrapped an arm around her shoulder and walked Shona into her opulent living room, sitting her down on a cream-colored wingback chair. “Now you just take a minute to settle yourself. I’ll go get us some tea and you can tell me all about it.”
Minnie disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Shona to attempt to piece together her jumbled thoughts. Five minutes later, she returned holding a tray with two tea glasses sitting on it and a plate of ginger cookies. After placing the tray on the coffee table, she sat on the chair opposite Shona and leaned forward, her wrinkly hands clasped.
“Now, tell me what’s troubling you, dear.”
“I don’t know where to start.” After a few more minutes of coaxing from Minnie, Shona finally began to find her words. “I met David’s teacher today. She’s a girl I knew when I lived in Mississippi eight years ago. It was before I met Chloe and, oh Minnie, I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d ever see her again after what happened.”
“Is she a girl you knew well?” Minnie said, an eyebrow raised.
“I thought I did. But not like that, Minnie. We were never… Oh, it’s all such a mess, Minnie. My head is spinning.”
“Here, take a sip.” Minnie handed Shona her glass of tea and waited while she took a huge gulp. “Better?”
“Yeah. Thank you.”
“So, this girl was a friend of yours? Back in Mississippi,” Minnie asked.
“I was working in this garage called Wreckers and Lucy would come over every day to see me. She had this boyfriend, Frank, who was treating her real bad, so I thought she just wanted a friend to talk to. And we got real tight for a while, but then Frank started to get her to dance in the bar he owned. Then he made her do more.”
“More?” Minnie asked, sipping her drink.
“Yeah. With some guys who’d pay him for her company.”
“I see. And how did that make you feel, Shona?”
“I didn’t care at first, but one night I saw her with some guy. They were in bed and he was doing things to her that made my stomach turn. It made me sick. I couldn’t control it. Back then, I hadn’t dealt with the shame of who I was. That I liked girls.” She lowered her eyes. “Back in Louisiana, my father and this doctor friend of his tried to cure me by making me sick when I saw pictures of women. When I saw Lucy that night with that guy, she looked so similar to a picture in a magazine the doctor made me look at while they put an electric shock through me and…” Shona shuddered, the shame of her treatment flooding back through her. “Anyway, afterwards Lucy tried to explain that she wasn’t going to do it anymore. She’d spoken to Frank and told him she was gonna take college more seriously and that was that. We started to get close again, and the sight of her in that bedroom started to fade. She became Lucy again, a girl I’d grown to really like. I couldn’t show it, though, in case I ruined our friendship. When I was growing up back in Louisiana, I fell in love with a girl when I was a kid and when she found out how I felt, our friendship was ruined and I had to run away. I didn’t want that happening again with Lucy. And I was happy in Mississippi living with Dorothy and working at Wreckers. But then I started to get the feeling Lucy was after more from our friendship so…”
Minnie waited while Shona took another deep breath.
“One night she came round to my house. I was real nervous because I was starting to have feelings for her too. But I still wasn’t sure. Until she leaned in to kiss me.”
Far from looking shocked, Minnie leaned closer to Shona. “And? What happened, Shona?”
Shona buried her face in her hands for a moment, then looked back at Minnie. “She’d tricked me. She called me a ‘screw-up,’ then I was grabbed by this guy called Chuck. It was all a set up, you see? Lucy just wanted me to show my true colors. She must have arranged for Chuck and his friends to follow us home, then creep in and catch us in the act. The way Lucy jumped up made Chuck think that I was doing something bad to her.”
“What did he do to you, Shona?”
Shona swallowed hard and blinked away the tears. “He hit me so hard I felt something in my chest crack. I couldn’t breathe. Then the other guys jumped in and that’s all I can really remember, other than Dorothy being by my side in the hospital.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Minnie said clasping her hand over Shona’s. “That’s why you left Mississippi?”
“Yes. I had no choice. The rumors were already going around about what I was. They were calling me a ‘monster’ and a ‘deviant.’ Dorothy told me that Lucy had left town not long after, so the truth never got told. But it wasn’t my fault, Minnie. I never did nothing wrong.” Shona began sobbing.
“No, you didn’t, honey. You did nothing wrong. It’s Lucy who should be ashamed of herself. She befriended you, then betrayed your trust, all for some sick little game to catch you out.”
“And now she’s here. Living in the same town as me again. What do I do now, Minnie?” Shona asked, her red-rimmed eyes wide. “Dorothy told Chloe about Lucy years ago when Chloe visited her, but how do I tell Chloe that Lucy’s here? Not only that, but is our son’s teacher as well?” She tailed off and sank her face into her hands again. “Urgh, it’s all such a mess. I feel so much rage for Lucy, yet I gotta play nice for the sake of the boy. We can’t move again, not now. We finally got the law off our back, we got a beautiful home, Dorothy’s buried here.” She paused, a lump catching in her throat.
Minnie clasped her hand on Shona’s knee. “Tell Chloe. Tell her everything. You have no feelings for Lucy, right?”
Shona didn’t answer, but Minnie continued anyway.
“You can’t pretend this isn’t happening. Chloe knows about Lucy. The only surprise for her will be that Lucy’s here and you
should both deal with that together, as one.” Minnie paused, her gaze travelling up to a framed photograph of her and her husband on the marble stone mantelpiece. “When you love each other, you share your troubles. You shouldn’t deal with them yourself. Go home and tell Chloe everything. She’ll only find out later, then it might be worse.”
Shona knew Minnie was right. She took in a huge breath. “I can’t believe this is happening again, Minnie. Will my past ever stop haunting me?”
Shona walked into the hallway and turned left to go into the kitchen, but a voice from the living room opposite halted her.
“What are you not telling me?” Chloe whispered. The thread from the armrest she’d been pulling at came loose. “I always know when there’s something bothering you.”
Shona perched on the end of the chair nearest the living room doorway. “Today. At the school. When I met David’s teacher. It was Lucy.” Her words were stilted, like tiny rumbles of thunder from an oncoming storm. She waited for a glimmer of recognition from Chloe, but it didn’t come. Shona took a deep breath and repeated “The Lucy. From Mississippi. She’s here.”
Chloe’s open face became frozen in disbelief. “What?” she breathed. “I don’t understand. Why is she here?”
“I don’t know. I knew her family lived in California somewhere, so I guess it makes sense.” Shona’s voice caught in her throat. She swallowed, then looked at Chloe through glassy eyes. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I swear I didn’t know she was from this town. I never would have brought us here if I’d known that. I hate her. I was almost killed because of her lies.” Her words were falling out of her with abandon now. Chloe, realizing Shona’s body was slipping from the arm of the chair, rushed over to grab her.