Lisa Scottoline - Save Me

Rose seized the proverbial teaching moment. “You don’t have to be a kid to be left out, huh?”

“No.” Melly looked over, breaking into a rueful smile.

“You don’t have to talk funny or have special needs or wear glasses. Anybody can get left out for any reason, anytime. Or even for no reason.”

“Or a dumb reason. Like Ryan. Josh won’t play with him and calls him Rye Bread because of his name. How dumb is that?”

“Dumb. Ryan can’t help his name, and he can’t change it.”

“I know, right?” Melly rolled her eyes. “He teases you if you have diabetes, like Sarah. She has to wear a pump, she showed us. And he teases Max because he can’t eat peanut butter. He has an EpiPen all the time.”

“See what I mean? That’s just dumb. We can’t control what people do or say, even if it’s dumb.” Rose hit the gas as the traffic started to move. They’d had some of their best talks in cars, and she knew other moms felt the same way. All across the country, kids were captive when that door locked, and cars became family therapy on wheels.

“That’s what Ms. Canton says. I made a picture for her. Wanna see? It’s in my backpack.”

“Sure.”

“Wait.” Melly got her backpack from the foot well, extracted her binder, and slid out a drawing on a piece of yellow construction paper. “Look. It’s me, Albus Dumbledore, and Ms. Canton.”

“Wow,” Rose said, looking over. Melly had crayoned two smiling girls, one big and one little, and they were holding hands with a figure in a peaked hat. “That’s a great drawing.”

“Thanks. I made it for Ms. Canton, but I didn’t get to give it to her. The fire happened, and I didn’t see her.”

“Oh, right, you see her in the afternoons, so you didn’t see her that day.”

“Also she was sick. Mrs. Nuru said she wasn’t going to be in, and we’d have a substitute.”

“Oh.” Rose had known that Kristen was sick the day of the fire, but she hadn’t focused on it before. Now she put two and two together. Marylou Battle, the substitute teacher who was killed, must have been called in to substitute for Kristen.

“I’m worried I made Albus’s beard too long. It isn’t that long in the books.”

Rose’s mind went elsewhere. “Melly, let me ask you something. When you and Ms. Canton eat the Kristenburgers, is it in the teachers’ lounge?”

“Yes.”

“It’s just you and she, because it’s on Friday and she’s on a different schedule from the other teachers?”

“Yes.”

Rose thought a minute. The substitute teacher had been killed in the teachers’ lounge, and the cans of polyurethane had been there, too. If Kristen had been at school that day, she would have been killed in the lounge. And if Melly had been with her, they both would have been killed. Rose’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel.

“Do you think his beard is right, Mom?”

“Perfect,” Rose answered, but she felt unsettled, uneasy. Kristen had lied about where she was and had left Reesburgh in a hurry, claiming she was upset about the fire and the reporters. But maybe that wasn’t the real reason.

“She’ll love this picture.” Melly placed the drawing back in her binder and slid it into her backpack. “We can mail it to her.”

“Sure we can,” Rose said, preoccupied. The scenario was fishy, and a series of strange what-ifs popped into her mind. What if Kristen had known the explosion was going to happen? What if she’d made sure she wasn’t in school that day? What if she’d been involved somehow, and she’d quit and run away, to avoid being caught?

“Are we almost there?”

“Almost.” Rose returned to her thoughts, confused. It made no sense. A devoted teacher wouldn’t blow up a school full of children. But then again, Kristen would have known that the kids would be outside the building, at recess, at the time.

“How long will it be?”

“About an hour.” Rose would have thought it was crazy, except for the fact that Kristen had lied. Why would Kristen lie about where she was? And if she’d lied about that, what else had she lied about?

Rose had an odd sensation that something was wrong. She couldn’t stop the questions from coming, and she couldn’t deny that there was one person who would know the answers.

Kristen.

Rose pulled into the driveway next to their cabin, a charming, three-bedroom Cape Cod with cedar shakes, which was nestled next to the Vaughns’ in the middle of an autumnal woods. Leo had bought the place as a getaway, and when they’d married, he’d called it his dowry. The memory made Rose smile, but she put it out of her mind. She didn’t want to think about Leo now.

She cut the engine, parked the car, and waved to Gabriella, who was in front of her house, kneeling as she worked in a garden overflowing with pink asters, poppy-red anemones, and tall black-eyed Susans, their black centers like so many punctuation points. It made a gorgeous sight, but Rose was still preoccupied, her mind on Kristen.

“Hey, Mrs. V!” Melly hollered through the open window, and Gabriella stood up, leaning on a bulb planter with a long handle.

“Melly!” Gabriella smiled, and her hooded eyes followed the car. Her silvery hair was in its chic wedge, and her baggy work shirt and gardener’s pants hid a slim body that she kept fit, making her look more forty than sixty-five.

“Girl, you cannot look this good!” Rose called to her, opening the car door. She got out of the seat and stretched, breathing in fresh mountain air. Up here, the sun felt warm and the breeze was balmy, but all she wanted to do was get to her laptop.

“You’re wonderful for my ego!” Gabriella came toward the car, tugging off her patterned gloves, black with soil at the fingertips. “What a treat to see you again. I was so glad when you called.”

“We’re here!” Melly flew out of the car and ran headlong into her arms, followed by Princess Google, caught up in the spirit.

“Melly!” Gabriella gave Melly a big hug and managed to pat the dog, jumping onto her pants in a bid for attention. “How are you, dear?”

“We’re on another vacation!” Melly let her go and picked up the bulb planter. “What’s this, Mrs. V?”

“A tool for planting bulbs. Give it a whirl, over there.” Gabriella pointed to an open patch on their lawn, already raked clean of leaves. “Hold it by the handle, press down, and twist, then drop a tulip bulb inside the hole.”

“Like this?” Melly ran over and jumped on the planter, like a pogo stick.

“Perfect.” Gabriella beamed.

“Really?” Rose hoisted the sleeping John to her shoulder. “She’ll break it that way, won’t she?”

“I hope so, I hate that thing.” Gabriella chuckled. “Mo got it for me, and I don’t have the heart to tell him I’d rather use my hands.”

“Ha! So good to see you!” Rose gave Gabriella a hug, breathing in the smells that clung to her work shirt, L’Heure Blue and Merit Lights.

“You, too.” Gabriella hugged her back, then stroked John’s small back, in his T-shirt. “He’s gotten bigger since June.”

“I feed and water, as needed.”

“Give him to Grandma. I need a fix.” Gabriella held out her arms. “I won’t wake him.”

“An earthquake wouldn’t wake him. Please take him, then I can unpack the car. We stopped before we left and got some groceries.” Rose handed John over and went around to the back of the car, and Gabriella followed, cuddling him against her cheek.

“I can’t say I’m surprised to see you, after what I’m reading about you and this fire at the school.” Gabriella eyed her with sympathy. “My heart goes out to you, and thank God Melly’s okay.”