Paradise Falls (Paradise Falls #1-5)(6)
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t… I… ah…” he trailed off, and backed away.
All of a sudden, she couldn’t take the way he was looking at her. It was her ring. Her wedding band went from itching on her finger to throbbing, like it was getting hot. She tugged at it, found it stuck fast as it ever was, and folded her arms again.
“Listen,” he said. “Rachel is right. If you want to go to the police, I’ll give a statement. I’ll back you up, one hundred percent. Promise.”
Jennifer looked up. “Why? Why’d you bother?”
She could see his jaw working as he thought about an answer, but the bell ringing interrupted. Students quickly filled the hall like they sprung out of the ground. Jacob stepped back, but it was too late. Jennifer could feel the wheels turning, the rumors and innuendos taking shape around her. Miss Katzenberg the Ice Queen was talking to a man.
“So, what’s your class load like?”
He blinked and leaned on the lockers. “AP Calc, Trig, Algebra II and another Trig.”
“Wow,” Jennifer said. “That sounds complicated.” She felt her mask settling back into place, and raised her voice a little. “Aren’t you a little young to be teaching?”
“I’m on an emergency cert. I only have my bachelor’s in math.”
“Oh,” Jennifer said. “Well, good luck with all that. I’ll be across the hall if you need me for anything.”
He looked at her again, and she could swear he appeared almost wistful. “I’ll be there if you need anything, too.”
As he retreated to his classroom, Jennifer leaned back on the cool brick wall and watched the kids. Krystal stole glances at her from down the hall, and conversed with some of her friends in a hushed huddle. Jennifer pointedly looked away, and avoided engaging them. Krystal drew up wedding plans whenever a male teacher showed her any attention. At this rate, she’d have to stop them from baking a cake. Gently explaining it was inappropriate and irritating only seemed to egg her on, so Jennifer simply gave up.
Free from hall duty when the warning bell rang, she stepped back into the room and closed the door all in the same motion, then took a sharp breath of chilly air. The ductwork that ran around the classroom’s high ceiling had the same Frankenstein quality of old grafted onto new, just like everything else in the building, but it worked well enough on the outside rooms. It would actually be cold in here until the students came in.
Jennifer took a walk around the room, swinging and lifting her arm in an attempt to dry out the sweat. She felt calmer now, centered. Still, the conversation in the hallway nagged at her. His scar, the expensive car, his fingers. His eyes. She shook her head and walked over to the window. The truth was she’d have plenty of work tomorrow, or maybe next week. But on the first day of school, there was little to do but lay out her materials.
Clouds rolled in and threw huge shadows over the athletic fields. Behind and to the right of her window, a large hill rose on the other side of the deep but narrow gorge dug out by the Susquehanna river south of town. A windy road led to the very top of the biggest hill, and a sprawling house held up by pilings driven into the ground crouched over a sheer drop. The house once belonged to her great grandfather. He founded the dairy, building it into a commercial empire that kept the town growing and prospering after the oil production declined and coal mines closed up.
Activity surrounded the house this morning. She couldn’t read the markings on the two large tractor trailer rigs crouched outside. Shiny yellow scaffolding crawled up the side of the house. Workmen in white coveralls gradually covered the fading white paint with a fresh coat. A nearly identical truck rumbled past the school and she caught a glimpse of the side: M. Morrel, Movers. Something about that tickled her brain. That name.
Jennifer pulled herself away from the window and distributed the syllabi. Ninety minutes was both an eternity and a blink in a school. She wasted nearly twenty minutes just staring at the house on the hill, thinking.
3.
Jennifer headed back into the hallway to wait for the bell. Jacob was out in the hall with his arms folded, towering over all but the tallest boys. Calmer than she’d been on her first day, he introduced himself to the students warmly as they walked into his room. He shook the boys’ hands while looking them in the eye, and gave the girls big smiles. Most smiled back, while a few formed knots in the flow of traffic and spoke secretly to each other. He ignored it just the right way, without making it obvious he was ignoring it. Jennifer couldn’t hear what he was saying over the din of the class change. She authoritatively looked around, stood to her full height, and then half-closed her door as a subtle reminder to the kids still lingering in the hallway that the time was upon them.
The warning bell tolled. Jennifer turned back to her classroom. She had a full count of kids, so she pulled the door shut and went to her desk to grab a stack of papers, letting them chat until the tardy bell. Honors courses could be just as difficult, behavior-wise, as any other class. This was a small group, but she couldn’t let that lower her guard. When the tardy bell rang, she strode to the center of the room.
“Everybody grab a syllabus,” she said.
Jennifer watched them pull the papers she laid out from the center of the tables and start flipping through them.
“Let’s make sure we’re all here.” Jennifer pulled her clipboard from under her arm.