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Patricia Johns
To my husband, who lies in bed with me at night, listening to me talk about
fictional characters. I love you.
Contents
GRACE BEVERLY TACKED the last finger painting to the corkboard, then stepped down off the footstool. She smoothed her hands over her hips and surveyed her work. This classroom wasn’t hers—not officially. She was only covering for the full-time preschool teacher’s maternity leave, and she had a little over two weeks left here. But she’d gotten attached to this classroom with the sand table, the reading carpet in the middle, the puppet theater in the corner...and the twenty-three little live wires she was teaching every day.
Grace had grown up in Eagle’s Rest, Colorado, and she’d come back for this temporary job. Teaching positions were hard to come by lately, and she hoped some experience on her résumé would help with that. In three weeks, she’d be covering another maternity leave in Denver, and she’d applied for multiple full-time positions for September, but there would be hundreds of applicants. She needed a full-time teaching position if she was going to have any kind of financial stability, but her chances were slim. Fingers crossed.
Grace picked up an errant hand puppet and returned it to the proper box. Then she pulled her fingers through her long chestnut waves. By the end of a day with twenty-three preschoolers, her feet ached in her high heels, but her heart was full.
A tap on the door drew her attention, and she turned as the school principal came into the room. Mrs. Mackel was middle-aged and had a kind smile. The principal had a little blonde girl at her side—a wisp of a thing with big blue eyes and small hands clutched in front of her.
“Hello, Miss Beverly,” Mrs. Mackel said with a smile. “We have a new student starting tomorrow, and she and her dad wanted to say hello.”
“Hi there,” Grace said with a smile. “I’m Miss Beverly, and it looks like I’m the lucky teacher, doesn’t it?”
A small smile tickled the corners of the little girl’s mouth. But those round blue eyes remained solemn and cautious.
“What’s your name?” Grace asked softly.
There
