he sound hoarse?
“We all choose how we spend our lives.” She, in turn, was cold, unforgiving.
“Someone has to stop child molesters and rapists.”
“Just know that you do bad along with the good.”
He gestured toward the rows of empty desks and said scathingly, “Don’t you ever let down a student? Maybe not connect, because you don’t want to change how you present your material? Could it be you’re so sure everyone should appreciate Shakespeare, you ignore those kids who can’t read well enough. Or, hell, maybe you don’t listen, because you’re too busy or you don’t like that student anyway?” He stalked toward her, predator toward prey. “Fail her on a test, when she needed you to understand that her mom walked out last week and she’s cleaning house and doing the laundry and putting dinner on the table and taking care of her little brothers and crying when she should be sleeping? Maybe just failed to reach a kid, period, no matter how hard you tried? You’ve never done any of that?”
She winced inside. What teacher didn’t have regrets? Who was perfect? But she hadn’t chosen a profession where she destroyed more often than she built.
Chin high, face frozen, she asked, “Are you admitting that you ‘failed’ my family?”
That betraying muscle beneath his eye jerked, but he said quietly, “If I failed anyone, it was Lily Thalberg.”
Now Mariah did flinch. Sometimes she almost forgot Zofie’s small playmate, the child who had started so much when she whispered, “Zofie’s daddy.”
“You believed her.”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever question her identification of my husband? I mean, seriously question it?”
“Did I consider that she might be transferring the terror from her own daddy to someone else’s? Is that what you’re asking?”
“I…” She swallowed. “Yes. Or from her grand-daddy, or…”
“Or someone. Anyone but your husband.”
Her mouth worked. Put that way, she sounded childish. Blame anyone but Simon. “He didn’t…he couldn’t…”
Harshly, Detective McLean said, “And yet, you left him.”
“Yes.” Now she froze inside as well as out. “To my eternal shame.”
He let out a ragged breath. “Ms. Stavig…”
“No.” She straightened behind the desk. “It is far, far too late for recriminations.” Not for guilt. Never for guilt. “I shouldn’t have started this. I’m going to ask you to leave if this is what you came to talk about.”
He moved his shoulders as though to ease tension. “You know it isn’t.”
“Then tell me what you need to know.”
“So you can ask me to leave?”
“So that my students don’t still find you here when they arrive for class in—” she glanced at the clock “—twenty-five minutes.”
His gaze followed hers to the clock and he muttered an incredulous oath. “That’s not long enough.”
Although he would loom over her, Mariah pulled out her chair behind the large teacher’s desk and sat. “I suggest you take advantage of that time,” she said crisply.
Frustration and something else showed in his gray eyes. “All right,” he said abruptly. His tone took on an edge, a sneer. “Here’s a question, Ms. Stavig. Why do you think, when Tracy Mitchell decided to tell her story, she chose you of all teachers to hear it?”
CHAPTER THREE
MARIAH STAVIG’S FACE was gently rounded, far from classically beautiful. She lacked the dramatic cheekbones or lush mouth that were currently in vogue. Her extraordinary eyes, gold and brown with flecks of green, framed by thick dark lashes, more than compensated, in Connor’s opinion. She had delicate features, pale, creamy skin and thick, dark hair worn in a loose knot on her nape.
Her face of all others had haunted him for years.
Now she stared at him with the intense dislike he had seen in his dreams. “Precisely what does that mean?” she asked sharply.
Still dogged with frustration and the bone-deep knowledge of wrongdoing, because he had played a part in destroying her marriage, Connor said, “It was a question. Nothing more. Why you?”
“My students trust me,” she said stiffly.
He half sat on a student desk in front of hers, letting one leg swing. “Tracy Mitchell is a seventh-grader. Right? You’ve had her now for…what?” He pretended to think. “Seven, eight weeks? I gather she’s not a top-notch student. How many students come through here a day? Be honest. How well can you even know the girl in that length of time?”
“Not as well as I do some of my eighth-and ninth-graders, of course. But Tracy is…noticeable. She dresses and acts older than her age. She’s smart but not a good student. She tends to talk back, speak out of turn, exchange loud comments with friends at inopportune moments. But sometimes there’s also something a little…sad about her. Do I know her well?” Ms. Stavig tilted her head. “Not yet. Do I know why she’s the way she is? No, but I can guess, having talked to her mother several times.”
“Already?” He hoped he didn’t sound as surprised as he was. “She a real troublemaker?”
“No. Simply an underachiever. I find it best to ride herd on kids from the beginning.” Her mouth firmed. “Now tell me what you meant to imply. What possible bearing does Tracy’s choice of me as the teacher to tell have on anything?”
“I thought maybe rumor told her you had escaped marriage to a sexual molester. That she assumed you would be sympathetic and not question her motivations or the…details of her story.”
Emotions flashed across Mariah Stavig’s expressive face before she narrowed her eyes. “But, you see, most people at school didn’t know Simon. I have no reason whatsoever to think Tracy Mitchell was aware that my ex-husband was accused of sexual molestation. And if she did know, she would also know that I supported him when he said he was innocent.”
“Did you?”
She ignored the question, although anger flared in her eyes.
“In fact, she would know that I think this kind of accusation rather resembles a witch hunt. Too often, it’s all emotion and little truth. If she were smart, she would have chosen another teacher. When I realized what she wanted to talk to me about, I almost asked her to do so.”
“And yet,” he mused, “you did listen and you went to your principal.”
Her face became expressionless. “I am legally obligated to report Tracy’s story.”
“If you weren’t?” He leaned forward. “Would you have told her to forget it? Maybe suggested she just
