9

Saturday morning, Rachel met Lynn and Ann for brunch. The original plan had been for just Rachel and Lynn to meet and go for training. Instead, Rachel called an emergency summit at Stu’s. Her desperation for their advice overcame her horror of recounting the actual story.

To their credit, Ann and Lynn listened without interruption, sipping their drinks in silence and from time to time exchanging significant glances. Not even the adorableness of Clark and his dimples derailed Rachel’s story. She didn’t even pause talking to take a bite of her hot breakfast when the food arrived. Her coffee cooled in her mug.

“And then he stormed out,” Rachel concluded, picking up her fork and poking her wilted hash browns. “And here we are.”

Lynn wiped her lips on her napkin, folded her arms, and leaned against the tabletop. “Well. That’s quite the drama.”

“Thish ishn’t a joke.” Rachel spoke around a huge gob of eggs.

“No,” Ann said, “but you have to admit that it must have been a little funny.”

Rachel swallowed mightily. “I can’t imagine what you might mean.” Her tone would have frozen her students to the marrow.

Ann seemed unfazed. “Come on, Rachel.” She waved a hand through the air. “You and Lee, alone on an empty stage, having this big melodramatic moment—”

“It wasn’t melodramatic—”

Ann chuckled. “Can you imagine if anybody else had been in the auditorium at the time? Like the janitor or something, mopping the floors and minding his own business? And then suddenly here are Rachel and Lee, sharing this big moment—”

“It wasn’t a big moment. And we weren’t center stage.” Rachel frowned. “Not the whole time, anyway.”

“Why not?” Ann asked. She leaned forward and whispered confidingly. “Did you forget your blocking?”

Lynn covered her mouth with one hand and closed her eyes, obviously struggling to hold her composure.

If Rachel didn’t think it would get them kicked out of Stu’s, she would have flipped the table. “What’s wrong with you two? Why aren’t you taking this seriously?”

Ann snorted.

Lynn leaned forward. She took Rachel’s hand and patted it. “Rachel, it’s not that we don’t take you seriously—”

“I don’t,” Ann clarified.

Lynn shushed her and continued. “Lately it’s been one drama after another with you, and most of them have centered on Lee.”

“That’s not my fault,” Rachel reminded them.

“Actually,” said Ann, “it is.”

Lynn pressed on. “Rachel, think about it. Lee gave you some gifts last year, yes, but you were the one who decided that the gifts were from the Memento Killer.” She lifted a hand to forestall an indignant counter-protest. “I’m not saying there wasn’t reason for concern, but I’m also saying that Lee wasn’t entirely to blame for all of the drama. Also, the entire situation surrounding your fight yesterday is based on your faulty assumption that Lee wrote lines of poetry on the play set.”

“Not one of your finest moments,” Ann observed.

“I still don’t see why that upset him so much! It’s something he used to do all the time, and I thought I’d check with him before I alerted Yolanda so she could investigate whatever it is she’s investigating!”

“I thought Lee made that fairly clear,” Lynn said. “He’s upset because it’s just more evidence that you haven’t realized he’s grown up.”

Ann cleared her throat. “And we all know why that thought upsets him.”

“Not that again.”

“Let me ask you this,” Ann said. “Since you walked in here, have you bothered to ask either of us how we’re doing?”

Rachel blinked. “Well, no, but I invited you both and said I had something to talk about, so I just thought…” This sounded lame, even to her, but she had to say something.

“Which is why you felt justified in sitting down and saying ‘Stop everything!’ and derailing our whole conversation just as Lynn was about to tell me about her doctor’s appointment. Not that you would care about anything like that, since it doesn’t affect you personally.”

As flabbergasted as Rachel was to face this direct attack from Ann, her overwhelming concern for Lynn overwrote everything else. Her gaze snapped to her friend, scanning for clues. “Why did you go to the doctor? What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

Lynn sat back in her seat and sighed. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It could be a big deal,” said Ann.

Lynn blew her bangs from her forehead and fanned herself with a coaster. “You’re not going to believe this, but I had an appointment with my gynecologist this week—”

“Are you pregnant?” Rachel squawked. Other diners turned to look, and she ducked her head, blushing. “Well, are you?”

Ann stared at Rachel. “What is wrong with you?”

“According to you, a lot,” Rachel shot back, still stung. But now was not the time. Her gaze swiveled to Lynn, scanning her up and down. “Tell me.”

“It’s not a huge deal. Dr. Jackson thinks that I’m at least peri-menopausal, or maybe actually starting early menopause. She did some blood tests, which I’m waiting to hear back on.” Lynn took a calm sip of her water. “So, probably not pregnant. Although she did make me take a pregnancy test just to rule it out.”

“Isn’t it really early for you to be worried about menopause?” Rachel struggled with the mental math. Lynn was the eldest among them, but she wasn’t that old.

“That’s what I thought.”

“How do you feel?” Rachel’s eyebrows knitted with concern.

“Mostly I feel fine,” Lynn shrugged, “except for the hot flashes. Waking up in the middle of the night in a pool of sweat with my clothes pulled off has taken some getting used to.”

Rachel’s eyebrows practically disappeared into her hairline. “I bet Alex hasn’t complained.”

Ann snorted as she reached to spear the pineapple from Rachel’s fruit cup.

Lynn laughed. “It’s not a huge crisis.” She waved their concern aside. “And it’s not like I didn’t know this day was coming. I just didn’t think it would be coming this soon.”

“So you want to cancel today’s training session, don’t you?”

“Of course not. If I’m going to be a hot, sweaty mess, it might as well be for a good cause. But let’s wait until evening so that we don’t die of heat stroke.”

“I’m all for that,” Rachel agreed.

Ann cleared her throat. “About the poem you found backstage…”

Rachel took a deep breath, nostrils flaring. She’d almost forgotten.

“The way I see it, there’s no use worrying about what it means until you know who wrote it. If you figure out one, you figure out the other.”

Rachel nodded. This made sense.

Ann continued. “Figuring out who wrote it is the most important thing, because if it’s really taken from a suicide note—”

“I did some reading online, and it turns out Sara Teasdale wrote this poem more than a decade before she killed herself. But still, she did kill herself. Most people point to this poem as a clue behind why.”

Ann cleared her throat. “What I was going to say was that if it really was taken from a suicide note—or has anything to do with suicide—then you should pay attention. It could be that whoever wrote it actually intended for it to be found. Maybe even wanted you to be the one who found it.”

Rachel sucked in a breath. In her relief that it hadn’t been written by a frustrated, lovelorn Lee, and then her subsequent obsessive worry over their stupid fight, Rachel had neglected to consider what other implications the scribbled message might have. “Do you think one of my kids is suicidal?”

“I think you’d better find out.”

~*~

Somewhere in Rachel’s summer travels, she’d fallen out of the habit of reading her Bible every day. The next morning, driven partially by panic, Rachel rose early to read a Psalm and pray before church. If she was going to identify a suicidal student, she was going to need all the help she could get.

Lifting her eyes from the page, her gaze caught a glint of gold. Squinting, she identified a strand of silk directly in front of her face. Rearing her head back in surprise and blinking rapidly, she beheld a tiny spider descending from the ceiling directly at eye-level, its thin strand of webbing perfectly catching the morning light. It would have been beautiful if it weren’t so utterly horrifying.

Rachel instinctively launched sideways on the loveseat, swinging her Bible through the air like a cricket bat. When the book came in contact with the spider, she released her grip, suddenly convinced that the spider would attach itself to the pages, crawl up her arm, and chew off her face. Also worried that the spider was still attached to the web and would momentarily swing back at her like a tiny, eight-legged wrecking ball, she flopped forward and face-planted directly on the carpet.

She came up panting, itching everywhere at once and slapping herself repeatedly.

It was not an auspicious start to the Lord’s Day, nor did it raise Rachel’s hopes that she was the sort of person capable of unraveling a potentially life-threatening and time-sensitive mystery.

Help me, she prayed silently, pushing her bedraggled curls back from her forehead. I really don’t have a chance without divine intervention.

~*~

After such a start to the morning, Rachel did not find herself in the proper frame of mind to concentrate on the worship service. While her pastor spoke on the importance of developing spiritual discernment, Rachel pondered the events of the past week. When was it all going to end—her embarrassment over mistaken assumptions? When would she outgrow her tendency to miss the big, obvious problems while obsessing over the little ones? When would she learn to read the signs, to listen, to pay attention, to examine life as closely as she examined literature?

It was no good to say that knowing was half the battle, because this was a problem she’d known about for a while now—ever since breaking her ankle last spring and suffering the subsequent life implosion. Yet here she was, starting the same cycle again.

As her pastor moved from point to point through his sermon, Rachel doodled a little row of question marks around the references she’d written down: Psalm 119:66 and Proverbs 15:21. Then, out in the margin, she worked on the week’s to-do list. Writing things down usually helped clear her head. Perhaps if she wrote these items down, she wouldn’t need to worry about them so hard.

Grade essays

Find new set-construction director

Check on wardrobe for Murder Came Knocking (budget/availability)

Identify suicidal student(s)

Buy spider bomb

She wasn’t entirely sure a spider bomb actually existed, but it sounded like something that should. A spider bomb would be similar to a flea bomb, except for spiders. If spider bombs did exist, she needed to purchase one immediately. Rachel jolted in her seat as she remembered that awful moment when she’d envisioned the spider swinging toward her face. In her notes, she underlined the words spider bomb and circled them three times.

Lynn nudged her sharply in the ribs, and Rachel jumped again. She glanced up from her list to encounter Lynn’s meaningful look. Lynn then swiveled her head slowly to stare across the aisle.

Rachel followed Lynn’s gaze, and behold—there sat Detective Ian Smith.