“Brie! What are you doing here?” She tugs me into her and I breathe in her warm softness, a shock after dealing with Sawyer’s attitude.
My eyes dart toward him, and I pull away from my sister. I don’t want to lie to her, but I can’t tell her the whole truth. I can’t tell anyone. “Substituting.”
“Here?For how long?” Mara raises her eyebrows, but not at me. AtSawyer. Her gaze is pointed, and Sawyer quickly looks away.
Before I can wonder about it, I focus my attention on her. “Just for the semester. What’re you doing here?” Last time we spoke, she was still working her private cybersecurity job.
“I asked her to help secure the student laptops with age-appropriate apps,” Sawyer says tersely, looking back at Mara with narrowed eyes.
Mara’s lips curve into a smile, oddly playful in nature. “Yup. Ran into him last week. It was very . . .therapeutic.”
Now Iknowsomething’s up. Again, I glance at Sawyer,wondering what he’s hiding. Does he have a secret too? A muscle ticks in his jaw.
“We’ll let you get back to it, Mara,” he huffs, something like warning in his voice. He grabs a computer off her cart. “I need to issue Brie a login before I show her to her classroom.”
I stand there, looking between my sister and my enemy, wondering why a bully like Sawyer seems to be at Mara’s mercy.
“Shall we?” Sawyer’s clipped words are more order than suggestion.
He doesn’t touch me, but his hand hovers over the small of my back, guiding me toward the computer lab. I jerk toward the room just to create more space between us, even if part of me wants to dig my heels in and elbow him in the ribs.
“I’ll call you,” I say over my shoulder to Mara.
“Kids’ll be arriving soon,” Sawyer snarls, close enough that his warm breath tickles my neck.
I stand awkwardly as he opens the computer and leans over it on a desk. As his long fingers move deftly over the keyboard, he brings me up to speed on day-to-day expectations for the third grade class. The muscles of his forearms, on display with his rolled-up sleeves, pop as he types. His eyes are focused on the screen, but his jaw is tight as he speaks, like he’s barely tolerating my existence.
While he explains the different applications I have access to, a light pitter patter of feet down the hall begins, gradually turning into a stampede.
Then I hear a sweet little gasp outside the door. “Aunt Brie?”
Sawyer pauses his monologue as tiny arms wrap around my torso.
“Hey, Dizzy Lizzie!” I hug my niece back tightly as warmth oozes through my chest.
How did this girl even recognize me? I haven’t seen her in person since last summer, when I joined her and my sisters for a Lake Michigan beach weekend. The love in her big green eyes, so similar to her mom’s, fills me with a painful kind of affection.
“Aunt Mara told me to come here for a surprise! What’re you doing here?” Her sweet little voice is filled with hope and wonder.
I don’t look at Sawyer despite his heavy, impatient attention on me.
“I moved here,” I say, keeping my tone light. “At least, for a little while.”
“Why?” she asks in that overly-familiar way kids have.
Thinking fast, I scrunch my nose and say, “Too cold in Indianapolis, so I’m substituting for the third grade class!”
She frowns. “I wish I was in third grade already.”
I boop her nose. “Next year, you will be.”
Her face lights up. “Will you have dinner with us?”
My face freezes in a tight smile. “Probably!”
Heavy guilt sinks into my stomach. I didn’t think any of this through, just drove all night like a maniac and showed up here.
She audibly gasps. “Will youlivewith us?! We can have dinner every night!”
