He walked toward the door.
She opened it before he got there, and stepped outside. The day was cool and a quick wind had risen midmorning. He paused by the side door, holding her gaze.
“You saw the paper.”
“I didn’t need to,” he replied, and when she looked surprised, he went on. “I found out that I’ve become friends with a felon during the question-and-answer portion of the Patriot Club dinner last night.”
Her jaw went slack and her pretty eyes filled with sorrow. “I’m sorry. Very sorry. It was a long time ago and I was told the records were sealed.”
“They should be,” he interrupted, but then he leaned in. “If you were a juvenile when this occurred, then it’s supposed to remain confidential for a reason. Kids don’t make the best decisions. They mess up. Don’t you get it, Christa?” He huffed out a breath and drew his hand through his hair, then across his neck in exasperation. “It’s not about them finding out. It’s about me not knowing.”
“And being blindsided.”
“No.” He stared at her. She wasn’t getting it. She raised her gaze to his and he wondered how they could see this so differently. “I don’t care that you made mistakes as a kid. A lot of people do that and life goes on.” He crossed his arms and braced his legs. “I care that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me. That I didn’t matter enough for you to be honest. That I had to hear it from some sanctimonious jerk last night and I had no idea how to defend you or our relationship because I didn’t know I had to. I looked stupid and I don’t like looking dumb or unprepared, but I can live with that.” He paused again because this next part was the hardest thing to do. “What I can’t live with is deceit. The lack of trust. You knowingly kept this from me while I was running for office. Were you ever going to tell me, Christa? Because when you’re getting serious with a lawman, it might be in everyone’s best interests for him to know that you’ve committed a felony.”
Her shoulders straightened and her chin firmed. “Well, you know now. And if that’s all you’ve got to say, then I need to get back in to the boys. I can’t be leaving them on their own and it wouldn’t look right to invite you inside. You never know who might be hanging around with a camera.”
He didn’t care about a camera. Or the article. He worked with kids all the time, and he understood their mess-ups better than most.
He cared about being betrayed. Being left out of the loop. He turned to leave, then swung back. “Were you ever going to tell me, Christa? Were you ever going to be honest with me?”
She held his gaze. Didn’t flinch. And then she pointed one finger toward his SUV. “Please go.” Then she pivoted, opened the door and went inside, quietly but firmly locking that heavy wooden door.
He wanted to scream and yell and let out all the frustration that had been building since last night’s confrontation.
He didn’t.
He strode toward that SUV even angrier than when he’d arrived. How had this happened? Why had it happened? And why had it happened to him after all the talk about God’s perfect timing? What was perfect about discovering the woman you loved was a fraud? A liar.
He climbed into the driver’s seat and shut the door a lot harder than he needed to.
He was too on edge to head home. It was the first weekend of November, the kids were at his mother’s and—
Firewood.
He’d do what millions of men before him had done to calm their frayed nerves and explosive tempers. He’d cut firewood, and when he was done, he’d cut some more because it was going to take a whole lot of cutting and splitting to get through this. Fortunately, his father had kept a tract of forestland when he’d sold the orchard. It was quiet and filled with trees. The ideal place to go and be alone when you were about to lose something very near and dear to your heart.
Not the election.
There would always be more elections.
He was about to lose a woman he cared deeply about. A woman he loved, he realized as he drove north toward the forested areas. And not because she’d been a foolish kid, but because a relationship should be built on trust, and if she didn’t trust him enough to be truthful, how could he trust her enough to be honest?
* * *
The last thing Christa wanted to do was face Darla and Glenn when she dropped the boys off on Monday morning, but there was no choice. What must they think of her?
That question jumbled her brain. She put a firm hold on her racing thoughts. She couldn’t afford to let worry distract her in the classroom. She had a job to do, and she had every intention of doing her best as long as they kept her on.
“Hey.” Darla hurried to the door when Christa approached their back steps with the boys. She took one look at Christa and swung the door wider. “I’m giving you fresh coffee, and no hug because I can see you’re hanging on by a thread,” declared the older woman. She leaned the door shut behind Christa. “But I will share some words of wisdom handed down by my grandmother—‘and this too shall pass.’ When she first laid that on me, I’d lost the man I loved. He’d been killed in Vietnam and I thought my life was over. It felt like it was, and for just a little while, I wanted it to be,” said Darla as she fussed with the coffee system. “I was in such despair.” She popped a pod in place, pressed a button and turned. “Then this apple farmer started delivering fresh fruit to the nursing home my father ran over in Quincy. He’d bring bushels of fruit with a smile, and every now and again he’d leave an apple or a pear on my desk. Even if I wasn’t at my desk, he’d leave it there, right in the middle, just to make me smile. Later I found out he was scared I was going to starve myself to death, I’d gone so thin and gaunt. And he thought maybe a little fruit would tempt me to eat something. And it worked.” She finished fixing Christa’s coffee and handed it over. “Of course, it wasn’t the fruit that made the difference. It was the patience. The steadfastness. That he would stop by my little billing office and leave samples of polished fruit he grew himself.”
It wasn’t a stretch to imagine the kind, quiet fruit farmer leaving a treat on Darla’s desk, but Darla had done nothing wrong. “My case is quite different.”
“It’s not about blame,” Darla insisted. “It’s about timing and circumstances and faith. Stuff happens. We deal with it and move forward. Right now you have a lot to deal with and I’m sorry about that, but you did nothing wrong here, Christa. I blame dirty politics.”
“If I hadn’t messed up when I was fifteen, they’d have found nothing,” she whispered. The boys had scrambled to the table where Darla had set triangles of warm French toast on their plates and she didn’t want them to overhear. “I talked to Jubilee yesterday, and she’s going to seek advice from her supervisors. Who knew that a stupid mistake back then would make such a difference now?”
“It shouldn’t make any difference.” Glenn came in from the dining room. He tipped his reading glasses up on his head and frowned. “Sealed should mean sealed and I don’t have any respect for someone who goes out of their way to malign someone else. I’ve got a good mind to show up at the school board meeting tonight and tell them exactly what I think.”
The biweekly school board meeting was scheduled for that night. Before tomorrow’s election. And the moment Glenn mentioned that, Christa knew what she needed to do. “Can you guys watch the boys tonight?”
Darla nodded. “Of course. I’m home all evening.” Then she put two and two together. “You’re going to the meeting.”
“Yes. I didn’t listen to a lot of my mother’s advice when I was young, but she taught me to face things head-on. Not to shrink back, and I’m going to do that tonight. I’ll put myself on the list of speakers. Better to charge in on offense than play the whole game on defense.”
“A football strategy I admire,” said Glenn, and then he surprised her with a hug. “Let us therefore come boldly before the throne.” He met her gaze calmly. “Paul
was instructing the Hebrews to go forth boldly. It’s a message that still works today.”
She didn’t want to do it.
That didn’t matter.
She had to face this head-on because the thought of others talking carelessly about her wasn’t just aggravating. It was wrong, and she was the only person who could set the record straight.
When she got to school, she messaged the secretary that she wanted to be put on the speakers’ list for tonight’s meeting. Then she planted a smile on her face and went into her classroom, determined to do her best. She couldn’t control the newspaper or Tug’s political opponent or the school board, but she could control what she brought to that classroom each day, and as long as she did that to the best of her ability, that was enough.
Chapter Sixteen
Seventeen kids showed up to shoot hoops on Monday afternoon.
Renzo walked into the gym, spotted the turnout and whistled softly. “This is double what we’ve been getting. That’s a nice change.”
“Agreed.”
“Split into two?”
The gym was big enough for two small courts or one large one. “Yes. And then let’s do some of our old drills halfway through.”
“Get them ready for next year’s tryouts.”
“That’s the hope,” Tug answered softly.
Renzo divided the groups up for a scrimmage, and when Tug re-formed the kids into drill lines for the last thirty minutes, a few complained.
But most listened.
Tillie had kept score for the scrimmages, but now she surprised him by getting into line for the drills. “Hey.” He grinned and checked the ball to her.
She caught it and nailed him with a quick and accurate chest pass. “They’re having a girls’ team, too. I figured, why not?”
“I like how you think,” he told her, then wondered if his mother might be able to watch Tillie’s little brother so Tillie could practice.
By the time the drills were done, the kids had to scramble to catch the late buses home. He grabbed a towel, slung it over his neck and glanced at the clock. Christa would be picking up the boys in about fifteen minutes. He’d stay at school to purposely avoid the confrontation. He fist-bumped Renzo and headed toward his office.
“You’re not going home?”
“Soon. Paperwork calls.”
“You avoiding Christa?”
A thread of displeasure crept up Tug’s neck. “That’s not open for conversation, Renzo.”
A basketball whizzed by his head. He turned swiftly as the ball careened off the closed bleachers. “What was that for?”
“To get your attention because you’re being stupid. Are you seriously ditching a wonderful woman because she messed up almost fifteen years ago?” Renzo came closer. “You? The guy who works with kids all the time, the guy who hands out second chances like popcorn at the movies?”
Tug retrieved the ball and kept walking.
“So that’s it?”
He tucked the ball beneath his arm and turned. “Renzo, we’ve been friends all our lives, but this is different. You can’t help on this one and I can’t fix it. It’s not about what she did back then. It’s about keeping it a secret from me. How can I trust someone who doesn’t trust me enough to be honest?”
Renzo’s brows shot up in disbelief. “You’ve known her for seven weeks. Is that supposed to be enough time for her to blurt out her life story? With you running for sheriff and her in a new job and then suddenly guardian to two little boys, one of them about to be wrenched away by the courts. Yeah, I can see why you’d be upset because she didn’t manage to fit in fifteen years of explanation into that scenario. It’s not as if she came here for a normal job only to end up losing family and gaining two kids. My bad.”
Renzo didn’t stick around to hear Tug’s answer. He crossed the gym and the soft click of the outside door said he’d left the building.
Tug put the ball away and started walking back to his middle-school office.
Renzo was right.
He hated that.
He’d been thinking along those same lines all day, but each time he went to pick up the phone or stop by Christa’s room, he stopped himself because honesty mattered. It mattered a lot, and he couldn’t work his anger around an excuse, but Renzo’s argument made sense. It wasn’t as if they’d had time for heart-to-hearts about anything. Their lives had been twisted around jobs and kids, the coming election and moving Christa and the boys into the O’Laughlin house. Thinking back, he didn’t know many women who could have done half of that with Christa’s panache.
“See ya tomorrow!” Tillie had grabbed a couple of books from her locker and was trying to shove them into her worn backpack as she rushed past him to catch the bus. “Thanks for practicing with me!”
“Anytime, kid.”
A handful of marching band members joined her inside the exit door. When he saw the small group chatting, it touched his heart. Tillie wouldn’t have talked to those kids a few weeks ago. She wouldn’t have stayed late, or changed her schedule to get home to Alfie and stay up later to do her homework. She’d shown him a B on two papers the previous Friday and there was no mistaking the pride in her eyes.
He gathered his things and headed to his mother’s, but when he got there, Jeremy and Jonah were happily eating cheese pizza at the table. “Christa didn’t come for the boys?” he asked as he came into the room.
“Later,” Darla told him. “She’s addressing the school board tonight and needed some time to get ready, so I’m keeping the boys here.”
“Addressing the school board?” He’d been reaching for the coffeepot on the counter. He stopped. “About the article in the paper?”
“She said she wants to face it head-on,” Darla told him. “Gutsy move.”
It was. The article had been primarily hearsay and innuendo, told through the eyes of old neighbors or classmates because the official records were closed to the public, but it had enough fact to make people assume that they’d hired a former felon to teach their young. “She doesn’t have to do that.”
“Maybe she does.” His mother handed the boys each a juice pouch and turned. “If everyone reacts badly to that article—”
Like he had. She didn’t say it but he read the implication in her tone.
“—then she has to live her life dodging gossip and misconceptions. Better they hear it from the source rather than make up their own stories behind the scenes.”
“Is Christa in trouble?” Vangie came into the kitchen and crossed her arms in a move that reflected his.
“No, of course not,” he told her, but would they pressure her to leave? He really had no idea. “Mom, are you okay if my two hang out here also?”
“The more the merrier,” she told him. “You want a sandwich before you go?”
“I’ll get one later.” He’d have just enough time to get to the meeting if he left right now.
* * *
He pulled into the Golden Grove Schools central office parking area a few minutes after the meeting began. He slipped into the back of the room and scanned the seats.
He spotted Christa at once. She was right up front, her hair pulled back into a bun, chin up, face calm as she listened to the board attend to normal business. Tonight, this was a typical meeting room. Tomorrow, it would be used for voting in the general election. Her fate was being challenged tonight. His would be decided tomorrow. The irony that the two situations would take place in the same room wasn’t lost on him.
It was nearly seven o’clock before the board completed their last scheduled discussion. The board president called Christa’s name and the room watched as she moved to the public microphone. She set a paper onto the lectern and folded her hands, but not before Tug noticed the slight tremble of her fingers.
Sympathy swept him. He tamped it down because honesty wa
sn’t too much to ask, was it? But Renzo’s words sparked truth, too. Maybe he was expecting too much in the short time they’d had together.
He stopped thinking about it when she addressed the board. “I’ve come to apologize to the board and to this community,” she began. “Someone has been digging into my past, and if you’ve read the article in the Sunday Chronicle, you’ve seen what they hinted at about me. I am here to tell you that each and every word you read is sadly true.”
Not one person on that board moved a muscle. They sat as one, watching. Listening. Just like him, and hearing Christa recount sordid details from her past for the next ten minutes, he got a real clear image of what her life had been like then.
Yet here she was. A teaching professional who sought a life dedicated to helping children from all walks of life attain the education she’d worked hard to secure for herself.
“I pleaded guilty because I felt guilty,” she finished, after offering the horrific details of the night in question. “The public defender assured me that was the best way to go.” She paused, then explained the situation. “I was fifteen and I’d greatly disappointed my hardworking mother. If we’d had better advice about the legal system, or money for a better lawyer, it would have been handled differently and probably none of us would be here now because there would be no sealed records to talk about. But poor kids don’t generally get those choices. I’m not saying that for sympathy,” she assured them. “It’s simply a fact.
“I did my community service, finished school and went on to college. A professor there used an example of how difficult it can be for a white teacher to earn the trust of a minority classroom. Not because of the teacher’s lack, but because those children sitting there might not be able to fully relate. That’s when I decided to become a teacher.
Learning to Trust Page 15