A Child's Wish

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Black-and-white jewelry, black-and-white leather satchel. She’d been hoping for a black-and-white kind of day—and had ended up splattered in red.

  “Ms. Foster, could we have a word with you?”

  Glancing up sharply, Meredith stopped. She’d noted the van in the parking lot, of course. Enough to be aware that it was there. Not enough to have noticed the Tulsa local-news logo on the side or the two people who had just emerged from it.

  “We’d just like to ask a couple of questions.”

  She walked past them to her car.

  “We’re interested in the editorial that ran in Monday’s Republic. I understand that the newspaper didn’t contact you. Is that correct?”

  She looked at the brunette, who was her age, at least, dressed in jeans and a white sweater, and wondered if she liked her job. The hefty, bearded cameraman behind her she ignored completely.

  “We’ve got some good tape from Mr. Barnett,” the woman said, her eyes showing something akin to sympathy. “My producer was ready to run with it, but I insisted that you deserved to have your side told, as well.”

  Keys in hand, Meredith stood there another second, assessing. Granted, her senses weren’t honed at the moment, but she believed the other woman was sincere.

  The brunette dropped her mic at her side. “He was pretty brutal,” she said. “I’d like to hear what you have to say.”

  Meredith glanced back at the school. Mark would kill her if she said anything.

  And if she didn’t? She’d be crucified.

  Who’d stick up for her? Ruth Barnett? Hardly. The woman was a classic battered woman, so intimidated by her jerk of an ex-husband that she’d still lie just because he told her to. And that left—who? Her boss? Fat chance.

  “What do you want to know?” She regretted the words even as she said them. There would be hell to pay. And at the same time, she felt better. She’d done nothing wrong, had nothing to be ashamed of. Unlike Larry Barnett.

  “Did you tell Mr. Barnett’s wife that he was abusing his son?”

  Meredith glanced at the school one more time. This was her last chance to walk away.

  But for what? To let that man take everything from her, without even trying to defend herself?

  “You can’t blame people for what they’re going to think, if you don’t give them another perspective,” the other woman said, her gaze compassionate.

  “I told her I suspected his father was inflicting some pretty severe emotional abuse.”

  “You suspect,” the woman said, moving nearer with her microphone as the cameraman closed in behind her. Meredith was trapped between her still-locked car door and what suddenly felt like two vultures. The school was behind her—a perfect backdrop.

  “You have no proof,” the woman prompted gently, after a long pause.

  “No.”

  “What made you suspect?” The question was more curiosity than accusation. She was receiving a fair chance to be heard. Which was more than she’d expected following Mark’s pronouncement Monday night over ice cream. Ruth Barnett had said her ex-husband was not going to let this go away.

  Give me strength, she asked her unseen source of guidance—as she’d already done uncountable times over the past week.

  “Tommy was a student in my class. I listened to him, as I listen to all of my students.”

  The reporter’s eyes narrowed. “So Tommy told you?” she asked, perhaps seeing a larger story brewing. If it was found that the D.A. actually was abusing his son, she’d have a much bigger audience for a longer period of time.

  “No.” Meredith hated to disappoint her. She sighed, searching for the best words. “But every time fathers were mentioned, or Tommy mentioned his father, I sensed that there was great turmoil. But no physical danger—at least not yet.”

  “You sensed.”

  Meredith nodded.

  “As in how? You just thought about it and reached this conclusion?”

  That was how Mark saw the situation. And probably the majority of Bartlesville, as well. Meredith was tempted just to leave them to it. In the end, it might be far less painful than to have everyone think she was some kind of quack.

  But if she didn’t stand up for herself, who would? How could anyone even have a chance of choosing to believe her, to understand, to support her, if she didn’t speak out?

  And if she allowed herself to be lied about, allowed her credibility to be crushed beneath Larry Barnett’s expensively shod foot, how would she ever do any good in this world?

  A vision of Tommy Barnett’s innocent young face appeared before her.

  “I get feelings,” she said. “I tune in, focus deeply and I can feel what other people are feeling. Sometimes.”

  “So you’re saying you’re psychic.”

  “No.” She didn’t believe there were special people who were granted the right to know everything about someone else, both past and future. “I don’t get grand messages,” she said. “I’m not told secrets, nor can I predict anything that’s going to happen in the future—no more than you can predict your own future. I can just feel what they’re feeling. Sometimes.”

  She wasn’t some kind of weirdo. She didn’t run around town invading people’s privacy.

  “What am I feeling?”

  “I don’t know.” She didn’t want to know. She wanted to go home. Perhaps cry. Call her mom. Take a hot bath.

  “What’s he feeling?”

  “I don’t—” Meredith glanced at the cameraman, let her guard down without meaning to. “Good,” she said, head slightly tilted as she eyed him with warning. “Not nice, but good. Self-satisfied. I’d guess he’s having inappropriate thoughts about something or someone and feeling good about them.”

  The camera slipped, was righted…and Meredith met the man’s eyes. She didn’t know if she’d been the target of his thoughts and she didn’t know if they’d been sexual in nature or just mean-spirited, but she knew she’d caught him.

  And he knew it, too.

  The reporter chuckled uneasily. “Uh, you ever think about working with the police?”

  The woman believed her.

  “No.” Meredith smiled straight into the camera. “I’m a teacher, not a cop. And I’m nothing special.

  “Everyone has the ability to do what I do,” she explained, paraphrasing what she’d read in the books that had finally made her abilities make sense. “My senses are heightened in this area, but we can all—with focus—tune in to other people’s energy. Their emotions.”

  Except that in her case, sometimes she couldn’t turn off the feelings.

  “Wow,” the woman said. “I’d like to hear more about this, but unfortunately we’re out of time. This is Angela Liddy for KNLD news.” She clicked off the wireless microphone and nodded to her cameraman, who lowered his equipment and turned back toward the van.

  “Thanks,” she said to Meredith. “I don’t know what good it’ll do, but I’m glad we got both sides.”

  Meredith hoped she’d be glad, too, already regretting what she’d done. “When will it air?”

  “Tonight, if I get back in time,” she said. “If not, then it’ll start tomorrow morning.”

  Unlocking her car, Meredith dropped her bag on the floor behind the driver’s seat.

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” Angela Liddy said, speaking softly as she paused beside the car. “But you should know that Larry Barnett is determined to see you lose your job.”

  Yeah, Meredith had gathered that much. “It’ll take more than my speaking with his wife to make that happen,” she said. “I have rights.”

  “And he has power,” the reporter said. “I’d be careful if I were you.”

  Careful. What did that mean—not talking to reporters? Okay, she’d screwed up that one. And otherwise she was just living her life, going to work, coming home, watching the game-show network while she graded papers. What could she do that would be any more careful than that?

  Not feel, not be he
rself?

  How the hell did one do that?

  MARK CAUGHT the news Wednesday night, lying in bed alone with the television on, attempting to fall asleep. Heart sinking when he heard the intro to the coming stories. Remote control in hand, he raised the volume another couple of notches.

  She’d done a damned interview? Bad enough that Barnett was spreading this all over the media, but did Meredith have to feed the frenzy? Did she have no sense at all?

  One thing was for certain: she was making him mad. Furious. He was going to have to fire her, just to keep from wringing her neck. Murder one wouldn’t sit well on him.

  By now, Mark was standing at the footboard, waiting through the commercial, impatient as hell. He’d done all he could for her and she just wouldn’t listen. There was nothing more he could do. He couldn’t help, couldn’t save her job.

  “Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen,” the newscaster said. “We went to Bartlesville today, where they have a psychic in town…or do they?”

  He bowed his head, couldn’t watch. Barnett’s interview came first and the man was impressive—the sort of lawyer who could probably convince a jury to set a six-time sex offender free if he wanted to. And here he was merely attempting to demolish the credibility of one relatively harmless third-grade schoolteacher.

  “It pains me to say this, but I believe Meredith Foster needs psychiatric attention,” Barnett said, his voice seemingly filled with compassion. “I mean her no harm, but she can’t be trusted with our children….”

  Hogwash. Bullshit. Mark paced to the window, back and forth. Barnett told of other incidents in which Meredith had spoken to parents concerning their children, making her sound like a certifiable lunatic.

  How had the man unearthed all this stuff?

  Mark had told Meredith so many times to stop. He’d warned her that something like this could happen.

  But had she listened to him?

  No.

  And if she had, would Amber Walker still be alive today—or would she be dead?

  Barnett was citing some statistic about the number of people in psychiatric wards and prison who believed themselves to have psychic abilities. Mark was shocked at the percentage.

  And then Meredith was there, standing with the solid bricks of Lincoln Elementary School at her back, giving thoughtful and intelligent responses to an off-camera reporter.

  Thoughtful and intelligent. Which he knew her to be.

  But she was wrong about Tommy Barnett. Wrong to speak out based on hunches. Misguided to believe she could see inside people and know when they needed help. All the same, she was smart—and kind.

  And…

  He reached for the phone and for his laptop computer, looking up a number and then dialing.

  “Hello?” She sounded wide awake.

  “You give a damn fine interview.”

  “Mark?”

  Only then did he realize that he was standing in his bedroom late at night wearing nothing but a pair of thin cotton pajama bottoms.

  “I’m sorry,” he said immediately, glancing at the clock. “I forgot it was so late.”

  “It’s only ten,” she told him. “I’m still up.”

  “Did you see the news?”

  “No.”

  “You were on it.”

  “I know.”

  “And you didn’t watch?”

  “I never watch the news.”

  “Ah, right, too depressing.” He flipped off the set and walked over to gaze out at his backyard.

  The grass needed to be cut.

  Perhaps he should get Kelsey a pool this summer. She’d been asking for one for years. Maybe that would make her happy again.

  Happy with him.

  “And I most particularly wouldn’t want to see Larry Barnett eat me up and spit me out,” Meredith said, her voice welcome in his darkness. “What purpose would that serve?”

  None. At least none that was productive. But most people would’ve watched anyway. He would have.

  He didn’t answer, figuring her question had been rhetorical.

  “Well, did he?” she asked.

  “Eat you up? Yeah,” he said softly, offended all over again as he thought about the interview. It hadn’t been so much what Barnett had said—some of it Mark would have had to verify, had he been asked. It had been the way he’d said it, making Meredith sound like some kind of freak. “But before he could spit you out, there you were, sounding so…sane.”

  “Yes, well, that’s me,” she chuckled. “Sane as they come.”

  Fifteen minutes ago he’d been ready to fire her. “You take everything in stride, don’t you?”

  “I try to.”

  “I try, too, but you seem to be much better at it than I am. What’s your secret?”

  “I live alone,” she quipped. “I hide a lot.”

  “Really.”

  She paused and Mark wondered if he’d been too transparent, said too much and allowed her to figure out that at the moment he admired her a lot. Personally.

  He hoped not. He had to hang up. Should never have called.

  “I just know that there are only certain things I can control in this life,” she said softly after a moment. “I try to focus on those and let go of the rest. It’s that ‘rest’ that drives us all crazy—and we’re never going to be able to change it anyway.”

  He needed to think about that.

  “And while we’re so busy fretting about stuff we have no control over, we miss opportunities to make choices that will direct the things we actually can change.”

  “Are you always philosophical late at night?” he asked, afraid of what he couldn’t control at the moment; afraid she might know that he wanted the conversation to continue, that her voice sounded good to him. That even while he didn’t believe in her so-called abilities, he trusted her logical insights. And that right now, with his daughter seemingly slipping away from him, she was a safety net.

  “It’s not that late. And I’m philosophical all the time, Mark,” she said, laughing at him again—or at herself. “But I normally spare those around me and keep my torture to myself.”

  He needed to call Susan. Immediately. Before his thoughts took him into territory that would only prove his own instability. There were a few things he admired about Meredith Foster, that was all. He didn’t want to stay on the phone with her—or think about how she looked late at night in her own home. That was none of his business.

  His focus had to remain on the choices she made that he didn’t agree with. And to make certain that she didn’t continue to make them at work.

  Susan had been doing rounds at the hospital tonight. Perhaps she was still awake and would be willing to drive over for a glass of wine.

  “Well, I apologize again for calling so late,” he said, back beside his nightstand, poised to drop the phone in its cradle. “I just wanted to tell you you’d done a good job.” Not that he expected anything she said to have noticeable effect on Larry Barnett.

  “Hey, don’t apologize. I appreciate the comment, especially coming from you.”

  Mark smiled—it was nice pleasing someone. Even if that someone was a general pain in the ass. Go figure.

  He’d tell Susan about it when he called her.

  “Okay, then, see you tomorrow.”

  “Okay, good night—”

  She clicked off before Mark could say the “sleep well” that was on the tip of his tongue.

  Pushing buttons rapidly, he waited for Susan to pick up. Lesson to self: never call your teachers late at night. They morphed into something weird after eight o’clock. Or maybe he did….

  CHAPTER SIX

  “PSST, KELSEY!”

  Kelsey glanced at Josie as the two of them walked through the playground, taking a shortcut to Josie’s house after school on Thursday.

  “I thought you were only going on Fridays,” blond pigtailed Josie said, glancing toward the bushes on the far side of the baseball diamond.

  “I am,” Kelse
y answered, also glancing at the shrubbery from which another call would be forthcoming if she didn’t change course. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see her mom; she did. But she felt bad ditching Josie.

  And she couldn’t get that Don guy out of her head.

  “We were going to play The Sims.”

  Josie was close to Kelsey’s size, just a little taller. Even if she told Josie about her mom’s boyfriend, the two of them together wouldn’t be enough to keep her safe if that man tried to hurt her or anything.

  “I know,” she said, trying to think about the computer game with its own world, where she built a family and even got to be the mom if she wanted. Or a kid with a good mom who lived in the same house with the dad and took care of the kids like Josie’s mom did.

  “Psst. Kelllseeey!”

  “Just tell her you’ll see her tomorrow,” Josie said. “I already told my mom we were going to swing and stuff before we come home tomorrow.”

  And that was something else. She kept having to make Josie lie to her mom about Kelsey having the secret job helping a teacher after school on Fridays to earn money for a new saw for her dad for Father’s Day. Kelsey had dropped his old one and broken it one day when Josie had been over to play, so her mom knew all about it. She had no idea what she was going to do after Father’s Day, if Josie’s mom ever said anything to Daddy about his new saw.

  But it would be summer by then and maybe they’d all forget.

  “Kelllllssssseeeeey.” Mom’s whisper was so loud it practically had spit in it.

  Kelsey didn’t really know what to do. “I’m afraid to tell her no,” she said to Josie, stopping to stare at the bits of color she could see behind the bush. Her mom was wearing red and blue today. She must be in a good mood. “What if it hurts her feelings and she doesn’t come back?”

  “Yeah.” Josie’s face got all scrunched, the way it did whenever they had a problem to figure out. “I forgot she gets upset so easy. Okay,” she said, sighing. “You better go.”

  With a quick hug to her best friend, Kelsey ran off. “Tell your mom I was helping Jennifer with a math problem. I’ll be there by four-thirty,” she called, using yet another excuse on the list. It was getting harder and harder to make up new ones.