The Last Mrs. Parrish(75)

“I’ve signed you up for French lessons three days a week. The class starts at 2:45. That way you can still get to the foundation on your two days there and the gym beforehand.”

The girls were doing their homework at the kitchen island, and Tallulah looked up, pencil poised in the air, waiting for me to answer.

“Jackson, what are you talking about?”

He looked at Tallulah. “Mommy’s going back to school. Isn’t that great?”

Bella clapped her hands. “Yay. Will she come to my school?”

“No, darling. She’ll go to the local university.”

Tallulah pursed her lips. “Didn’t Mommy already go to college?”

Jackson walked over to her. “Yes, my sweet, but she doesn’t know how to speak French like you two do. You don’t want a stupid mommy, do you?”

Tallulah’s eyebrows furrowed. “Mommy’s not stupid.”

He laughed. “You’re right, sweetie. She’s not stupid. But she’s not polished. She came from a poor family where they don’t know how to behave in polite society. We need to help her learn. Right, Mommy?”

“Right,” I answered through clenched teeth.

The class was right in the middle of the day, and I hated it. The professor was a snobby Frenchwoman who wore fake eyelashes and too-red lipstick and talked about how crass Americans were. She took special delight in pointing out the flaws in my accent. I’d only been to one class and was already sick of it.

I was nonetheless getting ready to go back the next week when I got an emergency call from Fiona at the foundation. One of our clients needed to get his son to the hospital, and his car wouldn’t start. I offered to take him, even though it meant missing a class. Of course, I never mentioned a thing to Jackson.

The following Monday, I received a frantic call from the girls’ school just as I got back to the house after a long massage and facial.

“Mrs. Parrish?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve been trying to reach you for three hours.”

“Is everything okay? Are the children all right?”

“Yes. But they are quite upset. You were supposed to pick them up at noon.”

Noon? What was she talking about? “They don’t get dismissed until three.”

An exasperated sigh on the other end. “It’s a teacher planning afternoon. It’s been on the calendar for a month, and we sent a note home. You should also have received an e-mail and a text.”

“I’m so sorry. I’ll be right there. I didn’t receive any calls on my cell,” I said apologetically.

“Well, we’ve been dialing it for hours. We couldn’t reach your husband either. He’s apparently out of town.”

Jackson wasn’t on a business trip, and I had no idea why his assistant hadn’t put her through.

I hung up and ran to the car. What could have happened? I pulled out my phone and looked at it. No missed calls. I checked my texts. Nothing.

At the red light, I searched through my e-mails and didn’t see any from the school. A sick feeling wound its way from my belly up to my chest. Jackson had to be responsible, but how? Had he deleted the e-mails and texts from my phone? Could he have blocked the school phone number? And why would he do this to the girls?

I skulked up to the main office, dying of embarrassment, and took my little girls from the office of the disapproving headmistress.

“Mrs. Parrish, this isn’t the first time. This behavior cannot continue. It’s not fair to your daughters, and frankly, it’s not fair to us either.”

I felt my cheeks go warm, and I wished the floor would swallow me up right then and there. Only a couple of weeks before, I’d been over an hour late for pickup, and Jackson had been called to retrieve the children. Earlier that day, he’d come home for lunch, and after he’d left, I was suddenly exhausted and lay down for a quick nap. I didn’t wake up until the three of them came in the door at four o’clock. I had slept right through the phone alarm.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Sinclair. I don’t know what happened. I don’t have any of the e-mails or texts, and for some reason my phone never rang.”

Her expression made it clear she didn’t believe a word I was saying. “Yes, well. Please see to it that it doesn’t happen again.”

I went to take their hands, and Bella pulled hers away, stomping ahead of me toward the car. She didn’t speak to me the entire ride home. When we got to the house, Sabine was waiting, fixing a snack for them.

“Sabine, were you here this afternoon? The school was trying to reach me.”

“No, madam. I was at the grocer’s.”

I picked up the house phone and dialed my cell. It rang in my ear, but the cell phone in my hand didn’t buzz. What was going on? With a sinking feeling, I unlocked my phone and went to Settings, tapped Phone, and looked at My Number. My mouth dropped open as it revealed a number I didn’t recognize. I took a closer look. It was a new phone. My old one had a tiny crack in the plastic by the home key. Jackson must have replaced it. Now I wondered about the other time I’d been late for pickup. Had he drugged me?

“Daddy’s home!” Bella squealed.

As she ran into his arms, he leveled a look at me over her head. “How’s my girl?”

She stuck her lip out. “Mommy forgot us at school again. We had to sit in the office all day. It was terrible.”