Her eyes meet mine, and they change. I feel the moment she puts up an invisible forcefield around herself.
The important thing, I tell myself,is that she’s here.
“We need to talk,” I say at the same time she says, “I have something to say.”
My stomach roils, but I force myself to wait for her to speak.
She swallows as she looks at the ground. “I want to tell you why I came here mid-year.”
My jaw drops. That’s . . . not what I expected. A lightness takes over me. She wants to tell me something I suspect she hasn’t told anyone. I’ve been waiting for her to open up to me. I laid myself bare, told her every shameful detail of my past. And it was all worth it because now she’s going to open up too, let me in.
I lean forward, gesturing to the chairs across from my desk. “I want to hear it.”
She glances at me before dropping her gaze to her hands. “I was at Everett Academy for a few years. Even though it was stuffy, full of traditions and stuck in their ways, I liked it there. I think they liked me. It was a private school, so the pay was great, I always had materials for the classroom, there were more school holidays than usual. I even taught at the summer camps.”
I nod. Most of this isn’t news to me, Everett Academy is one of the best private schools in the country, right alongside Groton and Exeter.
Her lips press together. “There was this teacher. Hewas about ten years older than me, and he’d been there from the start of his career, almost twenty years. He was respected and had Everett’s version of tenure. Christopher.”
Christopher.Already, I hate him. My heart clenches at the turn this is taking, but I stay utterly silent, not daring to move a muscle.
Brie tells me how it started innocuously. They went out barely more than a month when she decided she didn’t really like him.
“What I didn’t know,” she continues, “is he wasn’t actually getting divorced.”
My gut corkscrews.
Her voice wavers. “He was in the process of moving back in with his wife the whole time we dated.” She laughs humorlessly. “They were trying to reconcile. It finally made sense why he kept hearing of these great new restaurants that just happened to be across the city.”
How could anyone want to hide Brie? This cheating piece of shit Christopher, that’s who.
“Well,” she goes on. “I didn’t know this, I always stayed out of the politics of the school, but his wife turned out to be this really powerful board member. And she wasnotnice.”
Her eyes grow shiny as she tells me about the ugly aftermath of him twisting the truth to his wife. The rumors that spread about not just Brie and the scumbag, but falsities about her and other teachers, dads of students. Her persecution, thinly veiled as a meeting.
She avoids eye contact as if she’s ashamed. “I was told I could stay for the rest of the school year, but my contract wouldn’t be renewed. I applied for jobs over winter break, but I figured the break would mellow everyone out, that I’d finish out the year at Everett. But things gotway worse on the first day back.” Her voice lowers to a whisper. “I was a pariah.”
I’m grinding my molars now.
She finally meets my eyes. “After school that first day, I had a missed call offering me to sub the third grade class here in Blue Ridge. I didn’t think twice, just put in my notice and started packing. It wasn’t professional, but I had to get out of there.”
I want to break something. Of course she had to leave for her own sanity. Nasty rumors? Whispers literally behind her back? An entire community utterly against her? It must have been deja vu, the exact same shit that happened to her when she last lived here. Except this time, Brie was completely alone.
She hugs her arms tight around herself, her words hanging in the air between us.
White hot fury thrums through my veins. I stand and pace in front of her.
I hate it.
I hate what she went through, I hate the weasel who caused her pain, and I absolutely hate she’s making herself smaller because of it. My anger boils over again atChristopher. I even hate his name.
Brie wrings her hands again, eyes shifty, and I realize I haven’t said a word since she started talking. I resist the urge to touch her and stuff my hands in my pockets.
“Brie.” My voice is unintentionally dark and gruff. I stop pacing and brace myself on the arms of her chair. “I’ll ruin him.”
Her eyes cut to me and she laughs, a wet sound between relief and amusement. “While I’d pay any amount of money to see him ‘ruined,’ he’s not worth your energy.”
My fingers twitch, but I keep my mouth glued shut as I count to three in my head.
