for her understanding expression seemed far too old and wise for one so young. But she said, “My mother called him Bobby, right up to the day she died.”
Dara wanted to wrap her in a hug—something she suspected her father didn’t do nearly often enough—but Angie had already turned her attention back to the artwork. She glanced at Angie’s younger brother, who shrugged again and in an equally matter-of-fact voice announced, “Don’t pay any attention to her. She says things like that all the time.” He raised one blond brow, looking amazingly like his father when he did. “Father says she does it to shock people.”
Father says? Dara forced a laugh and ruffled Bobby’s honey-blond hair. “Well,” she whispered, “it works. I’m shocked!”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a wry grin. “Pete’s right.”
“About what?”
The smile that lit his face was contagious, and for a moment, she almost forgot there were a dozen other children around her.
“You’re very pretty.”
Angie, who had been hunched over Mrs. King’s card, sat up straight and gave Dara a once-over. “Yes, yes,” she agreed. “You are rather pretty.” Furrowing her brow, she added, “Are you married?”
The enrollment forms clearly stated that Bobby Lucas was six years old and Angie was seven. Because they’d been born in the same calendar year—Angie in January, Bobby in December—the children had been in the same grade since preschool. But surely there had been a clerical error, Dara thought, a typo on their registration forms, because neither child behaved even remotely like first graders.
“Father says ladies can sometimes be sensitive to that question. Since you didn’t answer, it must mean you aren’t married.” Angie tilted her head slightly, as if considering all the possibilities. “Have you ever been married? I mean, you’re not divorced or anything, are you, because Father says divorce is a sin.”
Why would his children even be asking such a thing, let alone asking it frequently enough to require adult discussion on the subject? Dara could answer Angie’s questions—questions that would not have seemed overly personal or inappropriate if they hadn’t been asked in that eerily controlled voice—or she could divert the child’s attention. Her father may choose to speak to her like a miniature adult, Dara thought, frowning slightly, but here in my classroom, she’ll be treated like a seven-year-old!
“The card you’re making for Mrs. King is lovely,” she said in an upbeat, friendly voice. “I especially like the pretty house you’ve drawn there.”
“It’s like the one we lived in up in Pennsylvania, when my mother was alive.” She tucked in one comer of her mouth. “It was a very nice house.”
Angie took a deep breath, then said, “It happened when I was four.” She put the red crayon she’d been using back into the box, and withdrew a blue one. “It was cancer, you know, the kind that eats your blood.”
“Leukemia,” Bobby said. But unlike his sister’s nonchalant tone, the boy’s voice trembled slightly.
“Yes. Leukemia,” Angie agreed. “Father says we should try not to think about it, but when we do, we should never be sad because Mother is with Jesus in heaven, where she’ll never hurt ever again.”
It had been nearly a decade since Dara had taken the psychology courses that helped round out her education major, but Dara recognized repression when she saw—and heard—it. And though she’d been a full-grown adult when her own mother died two years earlier and lost her father just months ago, she understood the importance of mourning openly and honestly. Dara didn’t know how or why a loving father would talk his children out of grieving for their mother.
And she understood it on a completely different level: hadn’t she repressed her fears that her father might have stolen Pinnacle’s money?
She wouldn’t even suspect it, if it hadn’t been for Noah Lucas! It wasn’t hard to believe he could do such a coldhearted thing. Dara’s eyes and lips narrowed with anger toward the man who, without ever having met her father, had chosen to believe the row of numbers that said Jake was a thief rather than the daughter who believed in his innocence. That same harsh and judgmental behavior had his own flesh and blood moving through life like windup toys.
Dara had prayed before class began that the Lord would show her what to do, tell her what to say, to help her teach these children His word. These two, especially, needed to hear about His loving mercy now.
Dara slid an arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Oh, sweetie,” she said, leaning her forehead against Angie’s, “of course your mommy is in heaven with God and all His angels.” She pressed a soft kiss to the child’s temple. “But it’s okay to miss her sometimes.…”
Angie looked up from her picture and stared deep into Dara’s eyes. For a second there, Angie was every bit a seven-year-old girl as her lower lip trembled slightly and a flicker of sadness gleamed in her big dark eyes. Dara felt the fragile shoulders relax, as though a heavy burden had been lifted from them.
But then Angie blinked.
And just that fast, the frosty restraint was back, and she became a pint-size version of a full-grown adult again. It was more than a little frightening to have witnessed the transformation, and Dara shivered involuntarily, because she doubted if she could name one adult who was so self-contained.
Well, that wasn’t true. She could name one.…
“Can I get a drink of water?” Tina asked.
“Sure,” Dara said, smiling gently.
“Would you like to see the card I made for Mrs. King?” Pete wanted to know. “I drew baby Sarah on it.”
“I’ll be right there.” Reluctantly, Dara drew away from Angie. If the child noticed, she gave no clue. God bless her, Dara prayed.
Something told her that in the months ahead, she’d be petitioning the Lord often on behalf of the Lucas children.
“Sorry, Dara,” the principal said. “I’ve pulled every string I could get my fat little fingers on. There’s just no money left in the budget for you.”
Budget cuts, or had someone on the board heard that her father had been accused of embezzlement and decided it wasn’t good press to have a teacher like that working for the Howard County school system?
She took a deep breath. Stop assuming the worst, Dara, she scolded herself. It’s your own fault, after all, for asking to be assigned a job in your own district. If she’d taken the teaching job at Wilde Lake instead of Centennial High, she wouldn’t be low man on the totem pole now.
“It isn’t your fault, John,” she said, smiling halfheartedly.
“Who’d-a thunk seniority could be an ugly thing?”
“Better watch it,” she warned, wagging a finger under his nose. “If the kids hear you breaking the rules of grammar that way, they’ll—”
“They’ll what?” he teased. “Most of ‘em have been abusing the King’s English since right after they learned to say ‘Dada’!”
Dara
