his friends.
More the age of Cooper’s much younger brother. She’d seen Garrett briefly at his father’s funeral back in February. Elise made a snap decision, turned to follow, all the while knowing she was getting involved and that would only make her even more desirable to the school board that so desperately wanted to hire her.
If only Mike Hamm, her favorite minister and now apparently a member of the school board, hadn’t seen her résumé posted on a job-hunting website and called her with an offer. It was the only job available for five hundred miles. She knew this. But coming home felt like such a step back—from everything she’d accomplished in her current home of Two Mules, Arizona, and everything she’d hoped to achieve there in the next few years.
She’d just been starting to make headway with some of the local teens. Her work there was supposed to make up for her failures in the past. She couldn’t walk away now. Especially not to come back here—the site of those painful failures.
What she really couldn’t seem to do was stop following Cooper’s truck even as it veered from one side of the road to the other. It was an accident waiting to happen and she the only witness. Where was everyone?
The truck in front of her turned again, Elise on its tail. She’d be late for her interview, that was for sure, but clearly the teens in front of her needed a reality check.
The truck careened across the dirt road and into the remnants of Karl Wilcox’s cotton field. When she was a teen, Mr. Wilcox owned a shotgun, which he filled with buckshot and was quite willing to use on anyone who messed with his land. She doubted that had changed in the years since then.
Elise honked her horn, trying to get the teens to pull over. It took a good five minutes, time Elise spent with her cell phone aimed out the window taking a video. She knew a picture was worth a thousand words, especially when parents wanted denial more than truth. Finally Elise cornered them when a dirt road they’d turned on dead-ended. She stepped out of her vehicle and waited, noting that a rainbow had already formed above the Superstition Mountains that towered over the landscape.
A tall brown-haired boy stepped from the vehicle. Her breath caught. Cooper ten years ago.
“Garrett,” she said. “I just took a video of your little adventure with my cell phone.”
He blinked as recognition set in. “Does Cooper know you’re here?”
“No, but we can talk about that later. I’m on my way to speak with Principal Beecher about a job opening. That makes it very convenient to just follow you four to school. That’s where you were heading, right?”
She worded it carefully, hoping they’d realize that a Yes answer might mean fewer consequences. From where Elise stood, she could see relief on the girls’ faces. The boy standing by the red truck never changed his angry expression. As for Garrett, he merely nodded his head, lips pressed together, and then marched back to his truck.
“Get in,” he told his friends. After a deliberate few seconds making a point, they crawled in the front seat.
Later, slightly late and a little damp from the rain, Elise sat at a conference table and studied the three men sitting across from her. The principal of Apache Creek High, David Beecher, still looked annoyed. Not at her, but at the four seniors who’d showed up right behind her late to school and with an escort. They were now with the vice principal.
She hoped that on their own the teens owned up to their responsibility, not just about ditching school but about where they’d been and what they’d done. Wilcox’s cotton field was pretty much destroyed.
She hadn’t shared with the principal the lack of respect shown by the two boys when she’d mentioned showing her video to their families. Not without knowing more about the situation.
Of the four teens, she only knew the background of one, and she remembered him at age seven or eight, building a tree house in the backyard, a place where he and his friends could play their handheld electronics without being disturbed. He’d had a slight crush on her, and oh how big brother Cooper liked to tease. She wanted to believe that sweet kid was still there inside that surly teen.
“Tell me again what you saw,” Mike Hamm asked.
“I recognized the trunk and knew Cooper wasn’t driving. It was easy enough to figure out they weren’t on their way to school,” Elise said. “I followed, managed to get them to pull over, and suggested a tardy would be better than an absence.”
“Good thinking. I hope there’s someone like you around when my children get to high school.” Mike had two children, both under the age of three. He had a while before he needed to worry. She, however, knew what he was doing. He was letting her know how very much she was needed here.
She knew she was right when he leaned forward, hands folded in front of him, a sincere expression on his face. “Situations like these are why we petitioned for funding to hire a guidance counselor.”
“We have a school counselor,” Beecher said, “but quite honestly, she knows more about getting kids on track for college than on getting them back on track for life.”
“Miss Sadie’s still here?” Elise asked.
“For three more years.” The principal smiled as if he’d heard the threat before. Miss Sadie had been advising students of future opportunities since Elise’s mom had been a student.
“Once the funding came through for a school counselor, Mike found your résumé online and we read about what you’ve been doing up in Two Mules.” This came from an imposing man who sat on Mike’s left, and the only one Elise didn’t know from her years growing up in the area. Mike had introduced him as the new chief of police, Ethan Fisher.
The principal nodded before adding, “Three new teen programs in under a year.”
That I’m still developing, she thought but didn’t say.
“Your résumé is impressive,” Mike said. “But we didn’t think we were looking for a social worker. Then we started looking at the successes happening where schools employ one.”
“Of course, those schools are a lot bigger and have more tax dollars and such. We would need you to wear a couple of hats,” Principal Beecher said. “You’d not only be a social worker dealing with crisis intervention within the school walls but also working outside the school with families and the communities.”
In Two Mules she’d had to make time for academic emphasis. Apache Creek was dictating the emphasis. On the table before her was her dream job. But why did it have to happen now, when her work in Two Mules—the work that was supposed to make up for her past—was still unfinished?
Principal Beecher opened a manila folder and withdrew some papers. “We’ve changed the job description a bit since Mike spoke to you. And we were able to raise the pay so it matches what you make now.”
Almost as if they were bidden, her fingers slid across the table and took the papers. She still wanted to say no—but her justifications were melting away. Yes, she’d be two hours away from Two Mules, but she could live at the Lost Dutchman and save on rent. She’d easily be able to afford gas back and forth to visit often. Once a week, she could manage that. She’d find the time. That had been her mantra since Cindy died. To always make time for someone who needed her.
“Jasmine
