Czytaj książkę: «Consequences»

CHAPTER ONE

LUCIA OSBORNE was the principal of the middle school in Crystal Creek, a small central Texas community where everybody knew everybody else’s business, and gossip whirled around with the destructive speed of a brushfire whipped by the wind.

Lucia was divorced, thirty-seven years old, and had not had a man in her life during the seven years she’d lived and worked in Crystal Creek.

So, early in October when she needed to buy a pregnancy test kit, Lucia could hardly walk down the street and make her purchase at Wall’s Drugstore, which had been serving the locals in the same capacity for more than sixty years. Ralph Wall, the pharmacist, was one of the most garrulous men in the county, and also happened to be married to Gloria Wall, chairwoman of the school board.

As a result, Lucia had to wait the whole of an agonizing week until she could get away long enough to make the sixty-minute drive to Austin, buy a testing kit and bring it home to the privacy of her little apartment.

She lived on the third floor of a gracious old house owned by June Pollock, who worked as a cook at one of the local motels. The big house had fallen on some hard times during the hundred-odd years it had stood in Crystal Creek’s downtown area, but June had come into a tidy sum of money a few years earlier and done a lot of renovating. Now she rented a few suites to carefully chosen residents.

Lucia had lived for five years in this apartment where flowered paper covered the slanted walls, and live oaks and pecans rustled against the dormers. Though it was vastly different from the palatial estate she and her brother and their younger half sister had grown up in, Lucia loved her cozy little home. These high airy rooms were her sanctuary and retreat, a place where she could let down her guard and relax, away from the measuring eyes and sharp tongues of the community.

But on this mellow Sunday afternoon, her silent rooms felt more like a prison, and the air seemed heavy with menace.

She stood in the candy-striped bathroom with its antique claw-footed bathtub and pedestal sink, holding the little plastic wand in her hand and studying the instructions.

Two lines in the window indicated a positive test. One line meant you weren’t pregnant.

Lucia took a deep breath and looked at the wand. Her eyes blurred for a moment, then focused in horror on the two red lines.

She moaned aloud and leaned her forehead against the cool surface of the mirror. Then, with the careful precision that was an integral part of her nature, she took a second wand from the package and went through the whole test again.

Again the two red lines appeared clearly in the little window.

“Oh, God,” she murmured aloud.

After a moment she wrapped all the testing equipment in a plastic sack and stuffed it in the trash can under the sink.

A warm breeze was blowing from the south, off the gulf and across the rolling valleys of Texas Hill Country. At the bathroom window, the white muslin curtain billowed and drifted on the wind, brushing the leaves of a potted African violet on the windowsill.

Moving automatically, Lucia closed the window and touched the soil around the plant. It was dry, and she used a little copper pitcher from a nearby shelf to water the violet, being careful not to drip onto the sensitive furred leaves.

Then she wandered out into her bedroom and lay down on the old brass bedstead, gazing up at the ceiling. Finally she rolled herself up in her soft green-and-white quilt and began to cry soundlessly.

ON MONDAY MORNING Lucia was at school early, going through her normal end-of-month routines. She finalized the agenda for the upcoming staff meeting, recorded attendance statistics for the first two months of the school term, examined purchase requisitions for school supplies and made opening announcements on the intercom to the eight classes in her school.

She had just settled in to look over a stack of résumés for the vacant teaching position in seventh grade when one of the secretaries popped her head around the door.

“Ms. Osborne?”

“Yes, Leslie, what is it?” Lucia made a notation on one of the job applications.

“Gloria Wall is here to see you.”

Lucia glanced up sharply. Leslie Karlsen stood calmly in the doorway, her doll-like face impassive, but Lucia sensed a certain spitefulness in the young woman’s manner.

You’re in trouble now, Leslie seemed to be telling her employer smugly. Let’s just see how you deal with this, Ms. High and Mighty.…

Lucia pressed her fingers to her temples briefly, then squared her shoulders.

“Thank you, Leslie,” she said. “Would you show her in, please?”

Leslie, the younger of the school’s two secretaries, nodded without expression and turned in the doorway. She wore a red sweater and a very short red skirt, and her well-endowed body curved ripely beneath the tight garments. Lucia sighed, watching her leave.

Normally she would have said something about the inappropriate garb. Leslie’s seductive clothing tended to titillate the young adolescent boys in the school, and caused a good deal of unnecessary loitering and disturbance in the office area. At intervals Lucia had pointed this out, and her censure had made the young secretary even more sullen and resentful.

This morning Lucia didn’t have the energy for a conflict with Leslie Karlsen. Not when a much more serious confrontation was possibly waiting for her out in the front office.

Gloria Wall appeared in the doorway, looking pleasantly cheerful. The head of the school board was a plump woman with a soft, matronly appearance, an impression she liked to intensify by dressing in pastel colors and soft, flowered prints like the one she wore today.

But Lucia knew from experience that Gloria’s personality was far from warm and cuddly. In fact, the woman was hard as nails, and could be a shrewd, merciless opponent.

“Good mornin’, Lucia.” Her visitor sank onto one of the upholstered chairs, fanning herself with a pink vinyl handbag. “My, my,” she said. “Isn’t it awful hot for October? You’d think we might have some relief from the heat by now. This place is just stiflin’. I don’t know how those poor little mites can concentrate on their school-work, I truly don’t.”

“I can’t afford to run the air conditioners this late into the fall,” Lucia said evenly. “With all those budget cuts, it’s just too much of a luxury.”

Gloria’s eyes hardened, and Lucia realized with a sinking heart that she shouldn’t have opened their discussion on such a controversial note. The school’s budget cuts had been at the center of a bitter conflict since spring, and were still not resolved.

It was important to stay calm, she reminded herself, looking down at her desktop. Regardless of provocation, she had to stay polite and neutral, and let the woman have her say.

But in spite of herself, Lucia kept seeing those two red lines in the little plastic wand. Her thoughts clouded into a mist of panic, and she struggled to concentrate on what Gloria was telling her.

“We had an emergency meeting of the school board on Sunday afternoon,” Gloria said.

The woman’s plump face was defiantly flushed. A pair of eyeglasses on a gold chain heaved up and down on her flowered bosom.

Lucia tensed and gripped a pen in her hands. “That’s odd, I didn’t hear a thing about it. Isn’t it customary to invite the school principal to board meetings?”

“We called, but you weren’t home.” Gloria’s blue eyes glittered behind lashes heavy with mascara. “We even checked with June at the club. She said you’d gone to Austin for the day.”

Again Lucia saw those two red lines in the white plastic.

“Yes, I had to run some errands.” She took a deep breath and looked directly at her visitor, folding her hands on the desktop with deliberate composure. “So what happened at your secret board meeting, Gloria?”

“It wasn’t a secret. An’ I sure don’t like your implication that we—”

“All right,” Lucia said wearily. “Just go ahead with whatever you’ve come to tell me, all right?”

“We voted to amalgamate with the middle school in Holly Grove, and bus all the students over there.”

Lucia’s jaw dropped. “You’re planning to close our school?”

“Now, there’s no need to get all hot and bothered.” Gloria shifted in the chair and squinted at her eyeglasses, then blew on the lenses and rubbed them with the skirt of her dress. “We plan to hold a plebiscite in March, after we’ve had time to let everyone know the details. We won’t amalgamate until next fall, so you’ve got a whole year to get this place shut down and tend to the paperwork.”

“Tend to the paperwork,” Lucia echoed blankly. “You’ve got to be kidding.” Her anger began to rise. “Look, if you’re all doing this just to spite me, it’s certainly an unkind way to treat the children of this town. They deserve better from their school board.”

“Just to spite you?” Malevolence flashed briefly in the other woman’s eyes. “My, my, but you do take a lot on yourself, don’t you? Why does everything have to be about you?”

“Because I honestly think that’s your motivation in this, Gloria. What’s more, it always has been, ever since I came to Crystal Creek.”

Don’t do this, Lucia told herself. Don’t let her get to you.

But Gloria was staring at her angrily. Two red spots flared in her cheeks. “You think you’re so important,” she said. “Walking around with your head in the air like some kind of fashion model, looking down on everybody as if we’re a bunch of peasants. Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, would it?”

“I really don’t think we should bring this to the level of personal conflict.” Lucia struggled to retain her composure. “Not when the welfare of the student body is at stake.”

“The kids in this town got along fine before you ever came here.” Gloria heaved herself from her chair and marched toward the door. “And they’ll get along just fine after you’re gone.”

“The townspeople will never agree to give up their middle school,” Lucia said, with more confidence than she felt.

Gloria paused in the doorway, “When the people hear the school board’s side, they’re going to agree it’s the only way to cut costs. They’ll vote with us, just you wait and see.”

Then she was gone in a swirl of flowered cotton, leaving Lucia staring at the closed door.

THE REST OF THE MORNING passed in a blur of pain and confusion. Lucia went about her duties mechanically, avoiding Leslie’s speculative glances and the sympathetic gaze of Jean Mulder, the other secretary, who had always been kind to Lucia.

She spent her noon hour supervising in the cafeteria, a task she’d taken upon herself to give the teachers some much-needed preparation time, since their weekly spare periods had been swallowed up in the new round of budget cuts.

However, Lucia didn’t detest cafeteria supervision nearly as much as most of her teachers, probably because the students were a little frightened of her and tended to behave well in her presence. They sat quietly over their lunches, glancing at her surreptitiously as she worked at a table near the door. As soon as possible they collected their trash, dumped it and escaped outside to the playground.

After the lunch hour, Lucia returned to her office, closed the door and opened a brown paper sack on her desk, taking out an egg-salad sandwich and a banana. She ate without tasting the food, lost in her tumult of thoughts.

Uppermost in her mind was sorrow over the possible loss of the school, and guilt about her own part in the matter. Regardless of the chairwoman’s protestations, Lucia knew this action by the school board had its beginnings in personal animosity.

And those hard feelings, she thought gloomily, were mostly her own fault.

Somehow she’d offended Gloria Wall, simply by being what she was. Everything about Lucia seemed to anger the woman.

Of course she couldn’t change her physical self, but maybe if Lucia had been warmer and more willing to mingle with the community, perhaps the students of Crystal Creek wouldn’t be losing a school that had served the community for almost ninety years.

Lucia put the sandwich down on its waxed-paper wrapping and buried her face in her hands, trying to think calmly.

Somehow she had to launch a campaign to convince the townspeople that their middle school was vital, and that budget restraints were not a good enough reason to tear the heart out of a community. Furthermore, she had to do it before March, when Gloria said they were intending to hold their civic plebiscite.

But that brought another thought into her mind, and made her groan aloud in despair.

Because when March rolled around, she was going to be…

Lucia took a notepad from the desk and jotted some dates and numbers, then stared at them bleakly.

In March she would be five months pregnant.

“Oh, God,” she whispered aloud, staring at the dusty lilac bushes beyond the window. “What in the world am I going to do?”

She felt a sudden deep yearning for somebody to talk with, a friend to share the pain and help her deal with all this. But Lucia had nobody in her life who was that close to her.

Well, there was her half sister, Isabel, of course.

Isabel Delgado had recently dropped out of nowhere to live on the Gibson farm up the river. She was married to Dan Gibson, father of one of the students in this very school. Moreover, when Lucia had run into Dan’s family at the Longhorn the previous week, Bella had looked radiant, so much in love that her face and body had seemed almost incandescent. Bella and Dan had been married for about a month now, and their happiness showed.

The memory of her younger sister’s newfound contentment made Lucia feel both happy and wistful. It would be such a huge relief to talk with Bella and confide all her troubles. But Lucia had her reasons for avoiding all contact with her family for over ten years, and she didn’t want to reinstate those relationships now. Not even with sweet little Bella.

Sometimes she chatted with June Pollock, her quiet landlady, who hid a warm heart under a brusque manner. But their conversations were casual and superficial, just friendly exchanges about everyday things. The truth was, Lucia had never developed emotional closeness with anybody.

She pictured herself telling June the whole unhappy story.

I was so lonely, June. You couldn’t imagine how lonely I’ve been, and how much I want a man sometimes, just to hold me and be close to me. Until last month, do you know I hadn’t been with a man for seven years.…

She picked up the pen again and made some aimless doodles on the notepad.

It had happened at a school administration convention in Austin in September. He was based in Washington, working in the federal government on one of the education commissions, and was a guest speaker. By chance they’d been seated next to each other at the banquet, and enjoyed their conversation. Afterward they went up to the hotel’s rooftop bar and had a drink, laughed and talked about inconsequential things, all the while flirting and drawing dangerously closer to each other.

Lucia knew he was a career politician, not at all her style. And by the time they went down to her room together, she understood completely that their relationship was going to be a weekend fling and nothing more.

But after so many lonely years, she was prepared to accept that.

Desperately she craved the warmth of a man, the hard sweetness of his mouth and body, the feeling of being lost in his power.

In a way, the fleeting nature of their encounter had actually been appealing to her. Lucia didn’t want any entanglements like the kind that had been part of her long-ago marriage and messy divorce. Most especially, she didn’t want to get close to anybody because closeness always led to pain and loss.

All she wanted was a man to hold her for a while in his arms.

And the politician had been a satisfying lover for the two nights they were together. No doubt he’d been surprised by her passion, because she didn’t really look like the kind of woman who would be wild and responsive in bed.

Or maybe he wasn’t surprised at all, Lucia thought, her cheeks warming with shame. Perhaps those predatory men had the ability to see past a woman’s air of reserve, all the way into the banked fires and hunger in her eyes.

At the end of the weekend, when the cab was waiting to take him to the airport, he’d asked politely if he could call her when he was in Texas again, and she’d refused.

“We both knew the ground rules at the beginning,” she’d told him. “A weekend, nothing more. We’ll never see each other again, but it’s been nice all the same.”

How relieved he’d appeared at her dismissive words, standing in the doorway of the hotel room with his leather garment bag slung over his shoulder.…

Lucia stared down at the notepad.

They’d been so careful, and used a condom every time they made love. But obviously, they hadn’t been careful enough.

She wondered if she had a responsibility to contact that handsome politician and let him know about this child. He certainly didn’t want a relationship with a thirty-seven-year-old Texas school principal, let alone the complications of a baby. In this situation, he’d really been nothing more than a sperm donor.

The problem was Lucia’s alone, and all the decisions would have to be hers as well.

But still…

Through the window she saw a muddy pickup truck pull into the school parking lot. In the back were two bales of hay and an upended saddle, as well as a big brown-and-white spaniel whose long ears flapped in the breeze.

A man got out of the truck, said something to the dog and then strolled toward the school, checking his watch. He wore faded jeans, a white cotton shirt and a black felt Stetson, and walked with the lithe, confident stride of a born cowboy.

Absently, Lucia watched the man until he disappeared around the front of the school. Then she returned to her gloomy thoughts.

Again she longed for someone she could talk to, a trusted friend who would answer her panicky questions and give her sensible advice.

Lucia realized, of course, that it wasn’t necessary to carry this baby to term. She was still very early in her pregnancy, and the procedure was probably simple enough. She could drive over to Dallas for a couple of days and solve all her problems, and nobody in this town would ever have to know.

But Lucia couldn’t bring herself even to contemplate such an action.

Her own childhood had been so sad and lonely, filled with people who gave her money and material goods but nothing else. She’d been rejected as surely as any unwanted waif. The thought of doing the same thing to her own unborn baby was simply beyond her.

On the other hand, bearing this child was a prospect so daunting she could hardly even begin to imagine it. Lucia thought of Gloria Wall’s malicious eyes, and the sly, barely disguised triumph of people like Leslie Karlsen. The struggle to save her school while she was coping with a swollen body and the bewildering complexities of impending motherhood…

Motherhood.

Lucia touched her flat abdomen under the trim pleated trousers. For the first time it dawned on her that if she went through with this pregnancy, she was going to be somebody’s mother.

In rising panic, Lucia thought about her own mother, a woman so bitter and self-absorbed that she’d hardly noticed her family. After years of abusing prescription drugs, Marie Delgado had killed herself with a deliberate over-dose when Lucia was eight.

Nowadays she had only dim memories of her mother’s erratic moods, stormy tears and occasional rare moments of tenderness.

A couple of years later Pierce Delgado had brought home a new wife, a lovely young woman named Claire who gave birth to Isabel in the year following their lavish wedding ceremony. But soon after that, Claire had resorted to alcohol to help her deal with the stress of marriage to one of the wealthiest and most selfish men in Texas. It took Claire a lot longer to kill herself than it had taken Pierce’s first wife, almost twenty years of a sloppy, vodka-induced haze that finally led to liver cancer and a painful death.

How could you possibly be a mother when your own life had never supplied you with a personal example of the way a mother was supposed to behave? And how were you supposed to—

“Ms. Osborne?”

Lucia looked up blankly. “Yes, Jean?”

“Are you feeling all right, honey? You look a little pale.”

Jean Mulder was tall and thin, fifty-five years old, with a severe manner that concealed a warm, generous nature. For decades she’d been a surrogate mother to every student in the school, and many of them came back year after year to visit her.

Under the woman’s sympathetic gaze, Lucia felt her defenses begin to crumple dangerously. Tears stung behind her eyelids. She blinked rapidly, looking down at her desk. “I’m fine,” she said, struggling to control herself. “Just a touch of flu or something, I guess. Do you need me for something, Jean?”

“One of the applicants is here about that seventh-grade teaching position. He claims he has an appointment with you.”

Lucia paged through the papers on her desk. “What did he say his name was?”

“James Whitley.”

Lucia found the teacher’s résumé and forced herself to concentrate on it.

“Thanks, Jean,” she murmured. “To tell the truth, I’d forgotten all about the appointment with Mr. Whitley. Can you give me five minutes to look this over, and then send him in?”

“Sure thing.” Jean paused in the doorway. “You want me to make you a nice pot of herbal tea?”

“Thanks,” Lucia said, her voice unnaturally stiff because she was battling another embarrassing threat of tears. “That would be very nice. You can bring it after Mr. Whitley leaves, okay? Our meeting shouldn’t take very long.”

When she looked through the teacher’s application form, Lucia began to recall why she’d decided to give this man an interview.

One of her two seventh-grade teachers had quit without warning just into the new school year when her husband, an oil company employee, was abruptly transferred to Dallas. Lucia had sensed that the young woman was relieved to get out of her job, since the class was large and unruly.

They’d been coping for the past two weeks with a succession of substitute teachers, but desperately needed a qualified person to take the job on a permanent basis. However, not many good teachers were available on such short notice, especially in rural areas like Crystal Creek. Most of Lucia’s applications had been from people just out of college and looking for a first job, or teachers unable to find employment because of old career problems or gaps in their training.

But James Whitley was eminently well-qualified, and supplied glowing recommendations from other schools he’d worked in. The only problem was that his employment record was oddly erratic. He would stay at a particular school no more than a year or two, then go a few years without working at all before he popped up somewhere else in the educational system.

Still, without exception, the man’s references were impeccable. It seemed Whitley had no problem with student discipline, and did an outstanding job whenever he decided to work.

Maybe he had some kind of sideline that allowed him to teach only part-time. Lucia wasn’t particularly concerned, as long as he could start immediately and control those rowdy seventh-graders.

While she was frowning over the application, her door opened and she stared up in openmouthed astonishment at the man who stood there, hat in hand. The overhead lights gleamed on his curly auburn hair, and he had hazel eyes that crinkled warmly in his tanned face when he smiled down at her.

It was the tall cowboy who’d arrived a few minutes earlier in his muddy pickup truck.