3

Afternoon coffee at Lynn’s that week came with an unpleasant surprise.

“I made you a training chart for our 5K.” Lynn set the chart and the coffee side-by-side in front of Rachel. “The good news is that you’re not starting totally from scratch. Working out with Coach Donovan has given you a little muscle and endurance—although he doesn’t work your cardio enough to really help with running.”

Rachel tipped her face forward and breathed deeply, letting the coffee fumes work their magic. These afternoon sessions with Lynn were supposed to be uplifting, not depressing. Studiously ignoring the chart, she sipped her coffee and described the first week of school. When she vented about a memo encouraging them to be faster about responding to parents’ e-mails, Lynn shook her head and silently refilled Rachel’s mug.

“I bet I know where this is coming from,” Rachel sniffed, contemplating the e-mails from Dorothea Potts, Jessica’s mother, pinging regularly into her in-box. Never had Rachel known the parent of a Straight-A student to be so high-maintenance. Given what an achiever Jessica was, the monitoring just didn’t make sense.

“The only time the parents contact us or answer our emails is if they’re mad at us,” Rachel told Lynn. “Or when their kids are failing. Maybe it’s time for them to have a taste of their own medicine. But apparently Yolanda has other ideas.”

“She’s in a tough position,” Lynn observed. “I know I would never want that job.”

“Me neither, although our jobs are also no picnic. Did you know that they now want us to step up policing the hallways and bathrooms between classes and after school? Apparently, there’s some sort of graffiti situation this year, so on top of everything else going on, it’s also our job to keep an eye on that.”

“Speaking of everything else you have going on, did you choose a play yet?”

Rachel pushed a hand halfway back through her curls before her fingers got stuck. Distracted, she clutched at the snarled mess. “I’ve pre-read three or four of them, but I can’t find one that has the right cast size but is also the right length, has set and costume designs that fit our budget, doesn’t have anything too inappropriate, and isn’t soul-crushingly stupid.”

Rachel paused as from the next room came the sound of Ethan singing the states and capitals in a high falsetto.

“He’s studying,” explained Lynn. “And speaking of studying…”—she reached a finger to tap the training plan next to Rachel’s mug—“be sure to hang that on your fridge when you get home so you don’t forget about it.”

Rachel groaned and leaned forward, peering at the chart through squinty eyes. “Why do I have to start next month if this so-called ‘fun run,’”—she sketched air quotes around the last two words, “—isn’t until December? Ann said a 5k is equal to three miles, so she’s not even starting her training until after Thanksgiving.”

“Ann’s already in shape,” said Lynn. “And a 5K is actually three-point-one miles.”

“Ann and I work out together.” Rachel protested. “I’m in shape too!”

“You were on your way to being in shape before you broke your ankle. But as far as I can tell, you haven’t darkened the door of a gym since the school year ended last May. Even then, you’d only been doing stretching and a little upper body stuff while you waited for your ankle to heal. Whatever strength and cardio you built up in the past is probably gone by now. And besides, you’ve never really done any running. I’m starting you out really slowly.” Lynn smiled and tapped the chart. “Don’t worry. I know you can do it. I believe in you.”

“That makes one of us.”

~*~

For the fall drama, Rachel eventually chose Murder Came Knocking. The play wasn’t perfect. The storyline contained plot holes wide enough to drive a Russian tank through, but the story was unpredictable and the dialogue zippy. Best of all, this play had the right number of characters. Eighteen kids had signed up to try out, and Murder Came Knocking required only fifteen, plus a few extras. Hopefully, Rachel wouldn’t have to cut anybody. She would just need to decide who would be cast with speaking roles.

Chris auditioned first, having chosen to write his own monologue—a snarky rant about cafeteria food. Even before he’d finished his try-out, Rachel had penciled him in as the mustache-stroking buffoon Sir Rodger McBluster.

Todd Perkins offered an overly-dramatic reading of Longfellow’s poem “O Captain! My Captain!” which he had memorized for Rachel’s class the year before. His Adam’s apple bobbed so alarmingly that Rachel worried it might actually upstage him.

Then came Jessica Potts, stomping across the stage and delivering Kate’s “Fie, fie” monologue from The Taming of the Shrew—an ambitious choice obviously made in hopes of earning extra points with Rachel. It worked.

Jessica pulled off the speech in fine style, having trouble neither with the vocabulary nor the Elizabethan syntax.

Perhaps Rachel should have chosen the scaled-down version of Hamlet after all. Here, certainly, would have been her Queen Gertrude. She scanned the rest of the audition list and thumped sharply back to reality. While Jessica Potts might be capable of pulling off Shakespearean dialogue, she was likely the only one.

Rachel endured anguish-inducing efforts on the part of several freshmen and some short, fun monologues from Shayla and a few of her friends. There followed a brief lull.

Then Rachel looked up to see Alice Claythorne standing center stage, staring at the ground. The new girl didn’t fidget or sway: she simply stood still, as if waiting for a signal.

“Any time you’re ready,” Rachel said.

The girl’s head lifted, and she spoke. Her voice was light and clear. She projected without sounding forced. Her eyes, for once, were bright. “Listen: I am ideally happy.”

Although part of Rachel’s mind recognized these words from the frantic readings of her undergraduate study, they seemed as natural and unaffected as if Alice were inventing them on the spot, churned up from somewhere deep within her core.

While Alice spoke, a hush settled over the auditorium. She spoke of living out her happiness as a challenge to the world; of her happiness being something she carried deep inside. These were not her words, of course. But she spoke them with such warmth, such conviction, and such fierce pride, that anyone who heard her would have been hard pressed to think otherwise.

Rachel felt her mouth hanging open and shut it slowly.

The monologue complete, Alice returned to what seemed her resting state: shoulders rolled forward, head down, eyes glued to the floor.

“Was that…Nabokov?” Rachel asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you a fan of Russian literature?”

Alice shrugged.

“Well, that was certainly an interesting choice, if a little short. Do you have anything else prepared?

Alice shook her head. “I didn’t have time.”

“Well, that’s fine.” Rachel doodled question marks next to Alice’s name. Then, forgetting for the moment that she had definitely decided against Hamlet, she scrawled the name Ophelia.

~*~

That afternoon, Rachel stopped by the carriage house on her way home from school to pick up some things she’d left behind when she moved out. Ann happened to be home due to a canceled ride—a rarity this early in the afternoon—so Rachel promptly collapsed on the leather couch and began verbally processing her day, ending with Alice Claythorne’s unique monologue. “She’s an enigma,” Rachel said.

“But you had enough kids try out, so that’s the important thing. I’m sure you’ll figure out what to do with her eventually.”

“She can obviously act. I mean, when she was speaking that Nabokov piece, she was like a different person. But I don’t know if I can trust her with a large role. What if she’s a flake? Or a quitter? I mean, there’s really no way of telling. She’s a completely unknown quantity.”

“So give her a small part.”

“But then her talent would be wasted.”

“So give her a big part.”

“But that’s a risk.”

“So don’t do it.”

“I’d hate to feel like I wasted her talent.”

“So don’t waste her.” Ann sighed and pushed out the footrest on the recliner. “Are you staying for dinner?”

“Are you making dinner?”

“No.”

“Then I guess not. Besides, Lynn’s coming over tonight to ‘train’ me.”

Ann chuckled, leaning back in her chair and yawning.

The soft afternoon sun slanted through the bay windows. No upstairs neighbors played any obnoxious music. In fact, there were no actual neighbors, not for miles. Though Rachel had once found this fact creepy, she now envied the soothing restfulness. She slipped off her shoes and curled sideways on the couch.

Ann opened one eye and peered at her. “You’re not putting off going back to your apartment, are you?”

Rachel bolted up. “Of course not. Why would I put off going home? I like my new place.” She slid her feet into her shoes and reached for her keys.

Ann snorted.

“I do. It’s very…”

“Clean?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Shut the door on your way out.”

~*~

Rachel’s first running session with Lynn actually involved only walking.

Despite this, Lynn showed up sporting full workout gear, fancy sneakers, and a complicated watch that tracked heart rate, speed, and distance. She offered an explanation. “I’ve decided to ease you into things. Today we’re just going to speed walk and talk at the same time. It’ll be a good test of your cardio.”

She was right. By the end of the block, Rachel was already winded. “How am I already out of breath?” she wheezed, embarrassed. “This is stupid.”

“I told you that we needed to start with baby steps, but don’t worry. I’ve seen worse.” Lynn’s voice was kind.

“When have you seen worse?”

“Well, I haven’t. But it felt like I should say something nice.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome. Have you called Detective Smith yet?”

“I told you. I’m not calling Detective Smith. He’s a busy man, and I don’t want to bother him for no reason.”

“Rachel. Calling a man who has asked you to call him is not ‘no reason.’ But if you need an excuse, why don’t you ask him to come over and help you kill spiders?”

“Oh, yes. And I can just imagine how that call would go. ‘Hello. My name is Rachel. You gave me your number last year and told me to call you. My home is now full of giant arachnids, and I was wondering if you’d like to come over and help me kill them.’”

“He’d probably be thrilled. Men love problem-solving.”

Rachel laughed.

“Really!” Lynn warmed to her subject. “That’s how I snagged Alex.”

“Breaking down alongside a major highway and having the first guy who stops to help you be an attractive, non-creepy single man isn’t exactly what I’d call snagging anybody.”

Lynn shook her head. “It was fate.”

“Fate.” Rachel snorted. “If it were up to ‘fate,’ you know where I’d be right now.”

“Married to Call-Me-Matt. Heaven help us. Does he know you’re back in town?”

“Beats me how he would know. I didn’t see him in church on Sunday. The only people who would have told him I’m back are you and Ann, and I know neither of you have, so…”

Lynn shook her head. “He hasn’t been to church in weeks. At first I wondered if he was just out of town or sick, but then I thought maybe he’d stopped coming because you weren’t there anymore.”

“That seems likely.”

“Rachel. Listen. Maybe you’re being too hard on him. I know you never trusted his motives for coming to church, but he did continue to come for a few weeks after you left for the summer even though he knew you wouldn’t be there. Don’t you think you should maybe cut him some slack?”

Rachel pondered this. She didn’t like to admit it, but if the events of the last school year had taught her anything, it was that her first impressions of people weren’t always accurate. Most situations carried unknown undercurrents, and people had been known to surprise her. Perhaps it was best not to jump to conclusions until all of the information was in. Rather than admit this aloud, however, Rachel changed the subject. “How much longer do we have to walk?”

Lynn consulted her fancy tracking watch. “We’ve done half a mile.”

“It’s only been half a mile?”

“It’ll go faster when you’re running.”

“So let’s jog a bit. I don’t have all night.”

“Rachel, you’re already out of breath, and we’re just walking.”

“If we stop talking, I could jog. Probably.”

It turned out that she could—for about fifty feet. She quickly developed a stitch in her side and a stabbing pain in her right ankle. “Stop, stop, stop!” she gasped, stumbling the last few steps.

“We’re just supposed to walk today anyway,” Lynn said.

Rachel stood beside her, leaning forward with her hands braced against her knees, wheezing.

Lynn reached forward and patted her back. “But I didn’t want to dampen your enthusiasm by saying no.”

“I hate to break it to you,” Rachel wheezed, “but that wasn’t enthusiasm. I have zero enthusiasm for running.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call that running—”

“Now you sound like Ann.”

“Maybe she’s with us in spirit.”

“No wonder I feel so depressed.” Rachel shook out her stiff ankle.

Lynn laughed. “Don’t worry; we’ll start adding little jogging intervals next week, and then this won’t take so long. Didn’t you look at the chart I gave you?”

“I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

They resumed walking at a more leisurely pace. This may have been because Lynn had taken pity on Rachel’s condition. It could also have been because the sunset had begun to bathe them both in hues of pink and gold, and it seemed almost sacrilege to tarnish the beauty of the moment with physical strain.

That night as Rachel showered and prepared for bed, trying her best to ignore the shouting of her next-door neighbors, she wondered if Lynn and Ann were right about Detective Smith.

They’d met under the strangest conditions possible—when Rachel thought she was being stalked by a serial killer. It was a meeting she never could have orchestrated. She couldn’t help feeling that if God really intended them to meet again, they would.

That’s why you have his card, stupid—so you can meet him again. Even though Ann was across town, Rachel could still hear an echo of her logic talking in the back of her head. She towel-dried her mop of wet curls and sighed.

What if she went with Lynn’s logic and decided that Detective Smith was waiting for her to call him? But then, what if pursuing him was outside God’s will for her life? Then again, what if she didn’t call Detective Smith and therefore missed something that could be God’s will for her life?

It seemed an impossible riddle. Perhaps it was safest to do nothing for the time being.

As the upstairs neighbor cranked his music and added his nightly jam to the shrieking from next door, Rachel flopped her towel over the top of the shower curtain and grabbed her hair dryer, the noise of which almost—but not totally—drowned it all out, including her own thoughts.

~*~

Shayla tapped her copy of Much Ado about Nothing with one sublimely-manicured finger. “It’s like everybody’s always overhearing what everybody else is saying, and then they put the worst possible spin on it.”

“Examples?” Rachel asked.

“There’s an example in, like, every scene!”

“Then it should be easy for you to find one.”

Shayla sighed and flipped through Act I. “OK. Here we go. Scene two. Antonio tells Leonato that he overheard that Don Pedro is in love with Hero and plans to propose to her. Although, of course, he gets it wrong. It’s Claudio who’s going to propose. And there are more examples later. Like when Borachio tells Don John about the plans, and Don John decides to mess everything up if he can.”

“Very good, Shayla. You’ve single-handedly identified the most important theme in the play.”

Shayla straightened, glowing. “I have?”

Chris held up his hands and began doing giant, overdone claps that were entirely too loud, given how early in the morning it was. The rest of the class groaned. From the side of the room, Ryan threw an eraser at Chris. Rachel, half tempted to throw something herself, pretended not to notice.

“If you don’t know by now that Shakespeare was big on wordplay, then I’ve likely taught you nothing,” Rachel said. “But this is a good time to point out to you that the title of this play is actually somewhat of a pun in itself. In Elizabethan England, the word nothing was actually pronounced a lot more like the word noting, which was a synonym for eavesdropping. So the title became a sort of pun, implying that you can make a mountain out of a mole hill by eavesdropping. And that’s basically the whole plot in a nutshell.”

Ryan waved his hands. “No spoilers, Miss Cooper! No spoilers.”

“The play’s been out for a while, Ryan. If you haven’t even bothered to read a basic plot synopsis before now, I’m hardly to blame.”

Chris gave a derisive snort.

She ignored him. The short bell rang, signaling the end of the period. Rachel reached for her planning book to read off the night’s assignment—read the first few scenes of Act II and interact on the online class discussion board. “And for those of you who tried out for the play, know that I’ll be posting the cast list on my door by the end of lunchtime. So be sure to check for that.” At the mention of the play, a ripple of excitement ran through the room.

In the back, Alice looked up for the first time that day. As soon as she realized Rachel had noticed her, she shunted her gaze aside. Swooping her books into her arms without bothering to put them into her bag, she hurried from the room.

Rachel noted Chris’s gaze trailing after Alice, his expression guarded.

Jessica Potts stepped in front of Rachel’s podium, flashing her million-watt smile. “I can’t wait to see the cast list, Miss Cooper. I know that whatever part you give me, I’m going to enjoy it. And I’m going to love working with the rest of the cast. My mother said to tell you she’s excited to volunteer wherever you need her as well. She’d love to be as involved as you want her.”

How involved did she want Dorothea Potts to be? Rachel bit her lip to keep from laughing in Jessica’s face.

She couldn’t even tell if these statements were sincere, or if they were merely calculated to make Jessica seem like a team player. Rachel gave herself a mental shake. Hadn’t she decided to stop this sort of cynical thinking? You don’t know everyone’s thoughts and motivations, she reminded herself. Perhaps she had pegged Jessica all wrong. Perhaps she really was an eager, sincere actor who couldn’t wait to tackle any role thrown her way.

One way or another, they seemed destined to find out. When the cast list went up, Jessica would be in for a big surprise.

~*~

Rachel wolfed down lunch at her desk, eating with one hand while she clicked through her e-mail inbox with the other. After pecking out quick responses to parent e-mails—carefully regulating her breathing as she answered another demanding missive from Mrs. Potts—she opened an all-staff memo from Ms. Martinez. As she scanned it, her eyebrows nearly hit her hairline. Any graffiti spotted on the walls, desks, lockers, or elsewhere was to be saved until someone from Administration could come to inspect it personally. Only after it was photographed and categorized was it to be cleaned. Apparently there was more to the graffiti situation than Rachel had realized.

She didn’t have time to worry about that now, however. Shoveling the last of her lunch into her mouth, she shut down her computer and clicked off the classroom lights just as the lunch dismissal bell rang, signaling that the students had fifteen minutes to make it to their next class.

Rachel flattened her back against the wall next to her door. From this angle, she would be impossible to see through the little window, but she’d still be able to overhear the students’ reactions.

Lee had once hidden just like this, lying in wait for her. When she’d entered carrying a stack of files, he’d reached out and grabbed her arm. She’d nearly gone to an early grave. To his credit, he’d stayed behind to help her put all of the files back together, and then he’d taken her to Stu’s and picked up the tab by way of apology.

Rachel sighed. There was no getting around it: she missed Lee. Not only did she miss his physical presence at the school, but she also missed him just being part of her life. After the awkwardness at the end of last school year, they’d somehow fallen out of the habit of texting. Although she’d thought of him often during her eight-week road trip, she’d tamped down the urge to contact him, thinking that giving them both a chance to cool down might be for the best. Now it seemed impossible to work their way back to the easy camaraderie they’d always enjoyed. She’d hoped that having coffee last week would have smoothed out some of the tension. If anything, it had only added to the constraint.

She knew that Lee would have appreciated this moment. If this were a year ago, and nothing had changed, he would have been beside her in the dark classroom, his own back flat against the wall as they waited to hear the students’ reactions to her casting choices.

Rachel loved hearing their joy as they reveled in their parts. She felt a bit guilty about sneaking around behind doors—like a character from Much Ado About Nothing: Ursula, surely…not Borachio—but she knew that if she were anywhere in the students’ line of sight when they read the announcement, she would have a dampening effect on their natural reactions. She liked gauging the initial temperature of the cast this way, for better or for worse. It helped her gain inside information before the initial cast meeting.

Chris and Shayla arrived first. Rachel heard them coming, their brash laughter rising high above the disorder in the hall.

“Yes!” Chris crowed when he spotted his name near the top. “I got Sir Rodger McBluster!” His tennis shoes squeaked against the floor, and Rachel envisioned him jumping in triumph. “The lord of the manor! Prepare to carry my books for the rest of the semester,” he informed Shayla.

Shayla had been cast as the stoic, all-knowing housekeeper. Also, she would become an accidental accessory to Sir Rodger’s murder in the third act, when she would unwittingly deliver him a poisoned cup of tea. This piece of information lent a certain irony to their current conversation.

Suddenly, the little celebration in the hall quieted as students shushed each other. “Here she comes,” one of them whispered, and the quick sound of receding footsteps brought a smile to Rachel’s face. She would have wagered her entire, tiny fortune that Jessica Potts approached with her cheerleader entourage.

She would have lost it all.

In place of the cheerleaders’ high-pitched voices and hollow laughter came an eerie blanket of silence. Rachel risked a quick peek and saw Alice Claythorne in profile, her eyes widening as she contemplated the list, seemingly shocked to discover her name at the very top.

After much deliberation, Rachel had cast Alice in the role of Agatha Turnweed, the clever murderess posing as a private investigator posing undercover as a maid. In the course of “investigating” the murders that she herself had committed, Agatha Turnweed would rack up quite a body count. With Alice’s narrow, dark looks and seeming ability to switch personas on the edge of a dime, she seemed ideal for the role.

Rachel risked another peek, but Alice was gone. In her place stood a slack-jawed Jessica Potts, staring at her name halfway down the list. Jessica muttered a short, sharp word under her breath, a word she’d never have said had she known Rachel lurked only a few feet away. She turned on her heel and stomped away, her long, blond ponytail swinging jerkily behind her.

Rachel sighed as she resigned herself to another ranting e-mail from Dorothea Potts. She switched on her classroom lights and prepared for her next class.

~*~

During her drive home that afternoon, Rachel composed texts to Lee in her head. She would tell him about the play. She would tell him she’d caught Jessica Potts swearing, but she couldn’t write her a demerit without revealing the fact that she’d been creeping in the dark behind her own classroom door. She would tell him that it was stupid for them to ignore each other like this.

By the time she pulled into her apartment complex’s parking lot, she had the exact wording of the text nailed down.

In the end, however, it didn’t matter.

She limped up the sidewalk to find Lee sitting on her doorstep.