“I need to talk to Kathleen. If that’s okay.”
Adding the last part pained him, but these ladies seemed to need a gentler touch than he was currently capable of giving.
“Well,” Extensive Neck Scarf Collection said slowly, sharing a look with her colleague, “I think she’s with a class right now, and I’d hate for her to be interrupted.”
Whit closed his eyes just briefly, then said, with all the sad-widower-ness he could muster, “I really need her help. It’s an emergency.Please?”
The two women clocked his change in tone and posture, and their faces fell in unison.
“Oh, well, if it’s an emergency,” Wet-Looking Curly Hair said with what could only be described as rapacious pity.
Extensive Neck Scarf Collection began scrambling for a pass. “Yes,” she said, “if it’s an emergency, I suppose...”
Whit snatched the pass from her hands.
“It is. Thank you.”
And he tore down the hall.
Kathleen Pryor was halfway through readingEverybody in the Red Brick Buildingto a first-grade class. She sat in a gold-painted rocking chair beneath the tree made of construction paper and felt, and fifteen or so kids listened from the beanbag chairs and floor pillows that surrounded her. It was a quaint scene until Whit burst through the doors and every head snapped to look in his direction.
“Mr.Longacre,” Kathleen said, half-surprised, half-admonishing. “Is everything all right?”
Whit’s cheeks burned a bit under the gaze of so many six-year-olds and their very intrigued teacher leaning against a nearby shelf. In an instant, he remembered the last time he’d been in this room, weighed down with an unspeakable weariness and a sense of failure that seemed like a self-fulfilling prophecy. But then he had met Merritt, and so much had happened, and now he stood here, huffing and puffing, invigorated.
“Yes,” he said, ignoring Kathleen’s tone and the universal attention that felt like the heat of a spotlight. “No... I don’t know. I need to talk to Merritt, but she’s not at work, and she’s not answering her phone, but I need... I need her.”
Kathleen’s eyes opened wide.
“Whit,” she said, a little more softly, a little more gently, “if you’ll just wait fifteen minutes—”
“Kath—Mrs.Pryor, please, I can’t wait.”
Kathleen looked at the students around her, then at her watch. From the shelf, the first-graders’ teacher cleared her throat impatiently. Kathleen sighed.
“She’s not here. She left for New York late last night—”
“New York?”
“Whit, please, if you’ll just give me fifteen minutes—”
“She’sgone?”
The teacher cleared her throat again. Kathleen set her jaw.
“Yes, dear, she left for New York—”
More throat-clearing.
“Do you need a cough drop, Ms.Santo?”
“Mm-mm,” the woman said, shaking her head with a false smile, “all good.”
Whit did not have time for this. He turned to leave.
“Where are you going, Mr.Longacre?” Kathleen called. “Whit?”
“New York,” Whit answered.
