Montana Mornings (The Wildes of Birch Bay Book 3) Page 10

  She pushed the loose strands of hair back toward her braid and followed her sister to the living room. As Bree scooped out more ice cream, her behind now planted on the far end of the couch and the newspaper spread out on the coffee table in front of her, Erica lowered to the other end. She nudged her chin toward the paper. “What are you doing with that? I didn’t think millennials knew such things existed.”

  Bree gave her a mocking smirk. “I had a high school teacher once who was as old as you. She taught me all about these old-timey newspapers.”

  “Smart-ass.” Erica stole both the ice cream and spoon.

  “Look at that. My big sister said a bad word.”

  “I can say bad words.” She scooped out a bite of chocolate mint and eyed the paper, trying to figure out what Bree could have been looking at. “Most of the time I simply choose not to have a mouth as naughty as yours.”

  Bree snatched the spoon away before Erica could put it in her own mouth and began licking along the edge of the ice cream. “Naughty is good.” She grinned wickedly and licked again. “You should try it. You might like it.”

  “Give it a break, Bree.”

  “Fine.” Bree cleared off the bite and handed over the spoon, while Erica reached for the paper. It was open to the classifieds.

  “What are you looking for?”

  Bree shrugged. “Just checking out what kind of jobs are around here.”

  Erica heard the words, but none of them made sense. She lowered the paper to her lap. “Jobs?” Did that mean her sister might stick around for a while?

  “Yeah. What’s the big deal?”

  “For you?”

  “I do work occasionally, you know? It’s how I pay the bills.”

  What went unsaid was that Bree’s art didn’t yet cover all her expenses. Which reminded Erica that she’d never paid her sister back for her flight to Montana. She reached for her purse, thinking she might have a check tucked away in an inside pocket. “I totally forgot to pay you for the flight. How much was it?”

  “There is no way you’re paying me for my flight.”

  “Sure I am.” She found a zipper and tugged, and was rewarded with a wrinkled, but totally viable, check. “How much?”

  “Stop it!”

  The vehemence in Bree’s words had Erica looking up.

  “You’re not my mother, so put the check away.”

  “What are you talking about? I never said I was your mother.”

  “Yet you always try to act like it. You take charge. Even when you don’t have to.”

  Erica opened her mouth to argue, but Bree leaned forward and put a hand over it. “You’re twelve years older than me, but that doesn’t mean that you need to take care of me. Or of Annalise or Seth. We’re all adults. We can all handle our own lives.”

  Erica had been born right after her parents had graduated high school, then they’d gone to college, gotten jobs, and had waited to plan their second child for after they’d both settled into their teaching careers. Seth came along their second summer off from teaching, thus putting him six years behind Erica, while Annalise was eight years back.

  “I don’t mean to take over,” Erica began. What was she supposed to say? It had simply been natural to “boss” them a little. She’d been the older sister.

  “But you do. And you do it with a lot of people.”

  “I’m just trying to help.”

  “I know. And I love you for it. We all love you.” Bree squeezed Erica’s hands. “But, E. Honey. You’ve got to stop. We get to make our own mistakes. It’s time to worry about yourself for a while.”

  Erica didn’t know if she could stop.

  Or if she wanted to worry about herself.

  Concern for her siblings had been a major part of her entire life. What was she supposed to do if she didn’t have them to focus on?

  Same thing she’d done when she’d no longer been married, she supposed.

  Which had been nothing.

  The thought froze her. Why had she quit participating in things just because she’d gotten divorced? The last two years of her life flashed through her head, and she realized that she hadn’t experienced one activity outside of her norm since that moment at the high school football game. It was almost as if she’d been stuck in time. Had she seriously just laid down to die because she no longer had a husband?

  It certainly wasn’t as if JC had stood still.

  She may not have ever been one to stretch her wings overly wide, but she had left the house on occasion.

  She’d had friends—whom JC seemed to inherit in the divorce—she’d had hobbies. Her prized sunflowers had taken the blue ribbon at the county fair for years. She’d even been known to accompany her husband on a weekend trip on occasion, mostly to prove that she wasn’t a total stick in the mud, and had returned from a few of them having had so much fun that she’d declared she would totally try that particular activity again.

  But for the last two years, she’d gone to work, and then she’d come home.

  Bree leaned over and kissed Erica on the cheek as thoughts continued to roll. “Live a little, big sister. You finally got out of Silver Creek, now see what else you can do.”

  Erica nodded, her heart already breaking for what was to come at the same time that she silently agreed with Bree’s words. She had to change her ways.

  And Bree was about to leave. Erica had heard that finality in her sister’s tone before.

  Bree moved behind the couch and wheeled her suitcase around the end of it, and Erica stood. “You don’t have to go.”

  “I do. You know I never stay in one place too long.”

  But she’d just been looking at jobs. “I planned to cook dinner for you tonight. I brought home groceries. Stay until tomorrow at least. I’ll take you to the airport after school if you still want to go.”

  “I can’t. I’m already booked on a flight out tonight. I’ve got a car picking me up.”

  A hole formed in Erica’s chest. “Seriously? I wouldn’t have minded taking you.”

  “I know. But I’ve got this.” Bree wrapped Erica in a hard hug, and as they pulled apart, a car rolled to a stop outside the door as if it had been sitting around the corner merely waiting for a sign. Before stepping out, Bree swept her gaze over the interior of the space once more. “At least think about buying it?” she asked.

  Erica hugged her sister again. “I’ll think about it.” Then she forced herself to step away. She knew from experience she wouldn’t be able to change Bree’s mind. “I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too. But I need to go. You have Gabe nearby now. I don’t want to get in the way of that.”

  Erica let out a bark of laughter. “That’s why you’re leaving so soon? Trust me, there’s nothing to get in the way of there. He’s still not even talking to me.”

  “Yeah, but I watched the way he tried to freeze you out last night.” Bree grinned. “He failed, in case you were wondering. So expect a thaw sooner rather than later.”

  Chapter Seven

  Ms. Bird?”

  Erica looked up from her desk Thursday afternoon to find the school’s secretary—a midforties woman with a shoulder-length bob—standing at her door. The last bell of the day had rung thirty minutes earlier, and though most teachers had already departed the school grounds or were quickly heading that way, Erica had stayed behind to grade a set of spelling tests.

  “Yes?” Erica kept her pen poised over the paper she’d been working on, while Louann Michaels twisted her hands together in front of her.

  “Jenna Wilde is still here. She hasn’t gotten picked up yet.”

  Worry had Erica dropping the pen. She stood. “What do you mean? Where’s Hannah?” She grabbed her cell phone and headed for the door. “Where’s Jenna?”

  “We haven’t heard anything from the young lady who usually picks Jenna up, but we called Jenna’s aunt.” Mrs. Michaels stepped back as Erica reached her, and together they moved down the hall. “And Jenna is sitt
ing with the nurse right now.”

  Erica jerked around. “Is she hurt?”

  “No. Not at all. It’s just . . . well, the nurse and I need to leave. We’ve each got somewhere we have to be this afternoon, and Principal Rogers is at the superintendent’s office for a meeting. We talked to her aunt, but Dani was on the other side of the lake when we got hold of her. She’s heading back this way now. And we tried Hannah several more times . . .” Mrs. Michaels’s words drifted off, her worry for the younger woman clear.

  Erica walked faster, scrolling through her contacts as she went. She pressed “Send” the second she had Gabe’s number under her thumb. “Did you call her dad?”

  “He didn’t answer, either. I’m sure he’s at the football field. I thought about just taking Jenna over there on my way out, but she’s being quite insistent. She doesn’t want to go.”

  They reached the outer office door at the same time that Gabe’s phone kicked over to voice mail, and Erica pushed through the inner door. She found Jenna sitting in one of the two straight-backed chairs tucked in the corner. The second the little girl saw her, she looked the other way.

  “What’s going on, Jenna?” Erica sat in the empty chair.

  “Nothing. I told them I’m fine. I can wait here for Hannah by myself. They didn’t need to get you.”

  “Of course you’re fine. That’s not why Mrs. Michaels came to find me.” Erica nodded to Mrs. Michaels and the school nurse. “You can go ahead. I’ve got her.”

  “I hate to just leave.” Mrs. Michaels’s brow pinched.

  “No problem at all,” Erica assured her. “I’ll stay with Jenna until someone comes for her. She and I will be fine.”

  Jenna’s mouth turned down, but she didn’t voice an opinion, and the second the other two ladies disappeared, she edged closer to the other side of her chair. The move wrenched Erica’s heart, and she had to clasp her hands together to keep from reaching out to the little girl. The two of them had been doing better since Monday night’s cookout. In no way great, but definitely better. Jenna had even been the first to raise her hand with an answer earlier that day, and yesterday she’d asked what she could do to let it be her turn to lead the class to the lunchroom.

  Yet fear shrouded the girl at the moment. And because of that fear, she’d instantly retreated.

  But Erica refused to let fear define the moment.

  “I’m sure Miss Hannah just had car trouble or something,” Erica told the little girl. “Maybe she got behind a lot of traffic.”

  Jenna still didn’t look at her. “She has a phone.”

  “She does.” And what Erica didn’t voice was her fear that the college student might have been the one to cause any potential traffic snarl. Had she gotten involved in an accident on the way back from school? She drove an hour each way.

  “Then why hasn’t she called?” Jenna whispered.

  “I don’t know, Jenna, but I’m positive she would have if she could.” Erica stared down at her cell, trying to think if there was anything else she could do before Dani showed up, and when Jenna cut a look her way, Erica lifted the phone between them. “We could try your dad again. Or I could drive you over to the football field to see him. We could stay there until your aunt Dani shows up if you want to.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  Jenna didn’t clarify her reasoning, and Erica decided to let it drop. What she didn’t need was to lose ground with the little girl, so dragging her kicking and screaming out to her car wasn’t an option. And Erica got the distinct impression that if she tried, there would definitely be kicking and screaming.

  She sat farther back in her seat and tried to appear casual. “So then, we wait.”

  “Then we wait,” Jenna repeated remotely. She chewed the corner of her mouth and turned her head to stare straight ahead again instead of at Erica, and after a couple of minutes her feet began to slowly kick in and out.

  “Want to wait in my classroom?”

  Jenna peeked over at her. “What would we do in there?”

  “Well . . . I was grading that spelling test that you and the class took today when Mrs. Michaels came and got me. I could probably use some help with that.”

  Jenna sucked in a quick breath. “You’d let me grade papers?”

  “Sure. I can always use good help.” Erica stood and waited for Jenna to join her, and when the other girl climbed from her seat, Erica led them from the room. “You ever graded papers before?”

  “Never.” Jenna’s eyes had gone wide. “But Leslie got to grade some, one time. Her aunt is a teacher, and she let her help with a math test.”

  “Is that so?” Leslie was also in Erica’s classroom, and Erica had noticed that Leslie, Haley, and Jenna had become somewhat of a little pack during free time. “I’m sure Leslie’s aunt appreciated the help very much. Grading math papers is super important.”

  “Is it as important as grading spelling papers?”

  Erica hid a smile. “Almost.”

  Jenna suddenly developed some pep in her step, and she beat Erica to the room, pulling the door open for both of them.

  Once they were both settled at the desk, with Jenna in a chair sitting across from Erica, Erica sorted through the stack of papers as if making sure to pull out the most important one. As she landed on a sheet in the middle of the pile, she tugged it slowly out of the stack. “I know I’ll never get to this one tonight if I don’t have someone to help me.”

  A smile brightened Jenna’s face. “I promise I’ll do a good job.”

  She held out her hand, palms facing up, and when Erica handed over the sheet, a list of the answers, and a very special red pen for marking down the grade, she would have sworn that the meteor-size chip Jenna had been carrying around on her shoulders simply disappeared. Jenna spread everything out in front of her and got busy checking each letter carefully.

  Erica watched for several minutes, finding herself thankful for whatever slip had happened that kept Hannah from picking Jenna up—while at the same time, hoping Hannah was safe and sound.

  They worked silently for several minutes, Erica handing over another test paper when Jenna had finished with the first one, then out of the blue, Jenna said, “I’ve seen a prince before.”

  Erica peeked up, noting that Jenna remained concentrated on the page in front of her, one finger of her left hand moving along the letters of each word on the master list while on the right side she carefully checked each word, one letter at a time.

  “And where did you see a prince?” Erica asked. She, also, continued to work.

  “At Disneyland. When me and Daddy lived in California, he took me. We did lots of fun stuff. Aunt Dani and Uncle Ben took me to Disneyland one time, too. They came to visit, and Haley came with them. It was so much fun.” She ended her words with a sigh, as if she’d had the best time of her entire life.

  “And you saw a prince there?” Erica didn’t miss the comment about Gabe having more time for his daughter before they’d moved back home. “Does that also mean that you saw a princess?”

  A smile, unimpeded by sadness or hesitation of any kind, bloomed across Jenna’s mouth. She nodded, eyes still alternating from the master list to the test paper. “We saw all the princesses. I like Merida the best. Cinderella used to be my favorite, but that was when I was just a kid. Now I like Merida. Or”—she stumbled over her words, her head dipping at the same time—“I used to like Merida.”

  Erica lifted her pen off the page. “I like Merida, too,” she said carefully. She didn’t take her eyes off Jenna. “I like her red hair.”

  Jenna glanced up. Her eyes went to Erica’s hair. “But your hair is brown.”

  “I know.” Erica touched the tip of her braid. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t love Merida’s hair. Don’t you think her hair is pretty?”

  Jenna nodded, but the movement was small. Her mouth tightened, making it appear smaller than it was, and anxiety narrowed her gaze. Then she lowered her eyes and went back to grading the
paper.

  The last minute of conversation left Erica puzzled, but she was at a loss as to what had just transpired. She glanced at the clock in the back of the room, knowing that Dani would be there within minutes, and found herself wishing for more time. Then she followed Jenna’s lead, refocusing on the work in front of them, while her mind continued to whirl.

  It didn’t take long before Jenna looked back up. “My mom said it’s stupid to like Merida because of her hair. Because my hair will never be as pretty as hers. Do you think it’s stupid?”

  Erica’s insides pulled tight.

  She shook her head, careful to maintain an even keel as she mentally worked on a response. Dani had been right. Jenna’s mother obviously wouldn’t win mother of the year. “It’s never stupid to like something, Jenna. Not if you have your own reasons for liking it. I like Merida’s hair because it’s red and curly, and because it always gets just a little out of control. It makes me laugh when it drives her crazy, and that makes me like her even more.”

  Jenna stared at her. No smile, not a flicker of emotion. Then she added, “My mom has pretty hair.”

  Erica gulped. “I’m sure she does. But you do, too. Did you know that?”

  Jenna reached for the blonde locks captured high on her head. She pulled the tip of one pigtail in front of her and studied the strands as if she had no idea what it was. Then she lowered her hand back to the table. “Do you know where Miss Hannah is?”

  The subject change was abrupt. “I’m afraid not. But I’m sure your aunt Dani will try her best to find her.”

  “What about my dad? Is he lost, too?”

  Erica shook her head. No words came out for a moment. She simply couldn’t get her throat to open. Then she gently reminded Jenna that her dad was at football practice, where he went every day after school. “I know he would have answered the phone if he’d heard it. He may just be so busy he didn’t. Would you like me to take you over there?”

  Again, Jenna simply looked at her. “He’s always busy. And he hates my mother. I haven’t seen her in a long time, and I don’t even know if her hair is still pretty.”