Beside him, Temple recrossed his legs and leaned back on his palms. Zach stared out at the floor dotted with candles, a nameless constellation being formed one star at a time.
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” Zach said quietly.
Temple glanced at him in mild surprise, then looked back at the spiral. “No prob,” Temple replied. “I didn’t blame you.”
28
I managed to stay out of the house all day on Sunday, coming home late to find Russ’s office door closed and the light glowing dimly beneath it. More and more these days he ended his late nights with a nap on his office sofa. When I awoke Monday morning and found him at the breakfast table reading the Post over a bowl of Familia, I felt my hands clench into a spasm so hard that my fingernails left eight red crescents in my palms. He was like Rasputin, the mad monk of Russia. A fairy-tale foe who would not die.
I took a large mug of coffee and a blueberry muffin, and left for school.
I arrived late. Sandy Valera was working in my classroom, directing the early arrivals to the coatrack, the bathroom, the play table. She shot me a searching look when I dropped my scarf on my chair and plunked the coffee on a windowsill, so I said, “Car trouble.”
She nodded. I had not noticed the other woman in the classroom, kneeling beside a child and unraveling an absurdly long hand-knitted scarf from around his neck. When the woman rose Sandy said, “Judy, this is Rhianne Volker. She is considering Sylvania Waldorf for her children.”
Rhianne’s smile popped out immediately, then stayed stiffly in place. “Oh, Judy and I know each other,” she said.
I nodded.
“Well, now that you’re here, I’ll get back to my office,” said Sandy. As she brushed past me, Rhianne tucked her hands in the side pockets of her overalls and regarded me with a look even more searching than Sandy’s.
“Judy, I had no idea you taught here,” she said.
“Since Maggie was little.”
“Amazing. Small world. Small community, I suppose I should say, but surely you know that.” Her brows knitted beneath the close-fitting winter cap she still wore. “Surely.”
“It’s one of the things parents love about Sylvania,” I replied automatically.
“I’m sure. I’ve seen several familiar faces this morning.” She looked me up and down. “How is that prescription working out for you?”
“Fine,” I said. “So how old are your children?”
“Nine, six and four.” She turned to look over my romping students, then back toward me. “I have met all the other Lower School teachers but you this morning. A nice bunch.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “and very skilled.” But I remembered quite well that she had no children. She had told me herself. I felt a chill of fear, like a pearl of ice behind my ribs. It grew larger by the moment.
“One of my clients recommended this school to me,” she continued. “Vivienne Heath. Perhaps you know her.”
“I don’t think so,” I hedged. “How old is her son?”
She grinned. Her full mouth of teeth seemed to ooze poison. I realized my error as she took a step closer. With a curious tip of her head, she said, “He is only sixteen.”
I responded with a twitching shrug. “I only work with the young children.”
She replied, “That’s not what I’ve heard.”
Despite the blasting heat of the forge, Zach’s bare arms felt a chill as he moved around the workshop, gathering materials to work on his first blacksmithing project. The bottom of the long black apron flapped against his legs. Making a fireplace poker didn’t hold a lot of interest for him, but the opportunity to play with fire and red-hot metal cheered him. So did the fact that school would be over in an hour, heralding the beginning of Christmas break, and he’d be saying goodbye to this place until January. His classmates were all talking about the Wicker Man Festival that evening, and he felt glad to have been invited by Fairen; finally, it seemed, he was beginning to feel like part of the tribe. He missed New Hampshire less today than at any point since the move.
Putting on the gloves and mask, he turned toward the crackling forge and felt a tingle of anticipation. The instructor, his watchful gaze cast on a handful of students in various stages of metalwork, was being nice to allow them to fire up the forge so close to the end of school. Zach set the rod of metal with the tongs and thrust it into the fire, which spit and crackled, blindingly orange. With one hand still in the brace it was an awkward process, but the tools felt secure in his hands, and the fire was mesmerizing. An echo of Judy’s voice spoke in his mind: I do think fire can be beautiful in a terrifying sort of way.
“Sure you got it?” his teacher asked, hands hovering around his as Zach removed the rod from the flame.
“I’m sure.”
He placed it on the anvil and, with another student holding it in place, used his good hand to give the rod four strong whacks with the hammer. It was coming along respectably enough, for a one-handed first try. He geared up again for a second chance at the fire.
A draft blew toward him, and he looked up just in time to see Judy entering the room, a small figure in the cavernous space, her movements deliberate among the narrowly organized chaos. She made her way between the worktables, her arms crossed, rubbing her forearms as though cold. Her khaki jumper dress was like a lunch sack, but her long dark hair looked unnaturally smooth, combed precisely. She blinked at the heat of the forge and asked in a low voice, “Can I talk to you a minute?”
“Sure,” he said, his voice muffled by the mask. There was no point in play-acting as though he expected the conversation to take place right here. He lifted the mask and set it on the table, slipped off the gloves beside it. His instructor met his eye, but only by way of accounting for his safety; nice to see someone at this school paying attention to that, for once.
She stood beside the door that led outside, her hand on the push bar. It was brazen of her to corner him like this, long after the bazaar was over, with no conceivable excuse for pulling him out of class. He hadn’t spoken to her since their ill-conceived rendezvous the week before; and earlier that day he had, in the courtyard, succumbed to the urge to kiss Fairen, to the approving whoops of the few present to see it. It would not surprise him to learn that Judy had been spying on him. It had to be the most tedious part of sleeping with somebody’s mother: no matter what you did with her, she was still a mom, and the eyes on the back of her head seemed to have twice the range when she was creepily obsessed with your body.
He dropped the apron on a stool and followed her out the door, bracing himself against the rush of frigid air and a flurry of small icy snowflakes. She made her way toward the corner of the parking lot that bordered woods, but he stopped where the asphalt did and refused to step into the brush. Something felt off about her. He knew she felt hurt and possibly angry and, undoubtedly, full of anxiety, but he sensed a harder edge that made him cautious. Not that Judy posed a danger to him—she was barely over five feet tall, for Pete’s sake—but there was a bobcat energy to her that he didn’t care to incite.
She turned at the tree line, giving up on luring him further, and tucked her hands in her sleeves. She had looked relatively normal when she came into the workshop, but already her face was blotchy with tears. He felt taken aback by how foolhardy she was, out here where anyone could see them. He wasn’t going to entertain this very long. She could take a hit for it, but he had no intention of doing so.
“You’re done,” she accused.
He shrugged. “Yeah, I am.”