AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The two of us sprang apart at once. It was a woman’s voice. I prayed that it was Mallory, coming by to pick something up from the classroom. Even Nina, though I doubted that she would have sounded so shocked. But when I turned and saw who had caught us in the act, my heart started to pound and my head spun wildly.
Mary. Mary Mackenzie. Joseph’s sister.
Joseph dived after her but she got to the door before he could get close to her. I clamped a hand over my mouth, my eyes wide. No. No, no, no, no. If she knew...
If she knew, it turned out, then it wouldn’t be long until the whole world did.
He slept next to me that night and had to go back out to the rig first thing the next morning. I tried to talk to him about what had happened but he shut down any conversation of it before I even got close. It drove me crazy – I needed to hear him say that he had seen her too, that the two of us could get through this, but he didn’t say a word. Not a thing. It was making my head hurt just to think about it.
He kissed me before he left, clasped my face in his hands.
"I’ll find some way to figure this out," he promised. I prayed that he would. I wasn’t sure I believed him. Wasn’t sure that I could.
I practically snuck back into work the next day, feeling like something was about to spring out from behind a door at me and catch me out at any moment. Turned out, I wasn’t too far off with that.
"Abigail, there’s a Ms. Mackenzie waiting for you in the office?" Nina told me as soon as I was through the door. Her face was tight, her lips pressed together in a visage of disapproval. "She came in this morning to speak with you."
I took a deep breath. I had met Rhona Mackenzie at parent-teacher stuff a few times, and she had always seemed uptight to me. I doubted that this revelation would have done much to improve her standing in that regard.
I got someone to watch my class for me for the next hour or so, and headed down to the meeting room to see what the hell she wanted with me. I knew that this was going to be intense, I knew that this was going to be tough. I could do it. I could do it, no matter what. I had no clue what Mary had told her mother about what she had seen of Joseph and I, but I doubted that anything would put her in a good mood about the whole situation.
Opening the door to the office, I tried my best to gather myself. But I could never have prepared myself for the onslaught that came pounding down on my head as soon as I stepped over the threshold.
"I can’t believe you’d dare to so much as show your face at this school!” She exclaimed as soon as she laid eyes on me. I quickly shut the door behind me, glancing around to make sure that nobody else had heard a word of what she was saying to me.
"Rhona, please-" I tried to stop her in her tracks before she could go any further, but my attempts to make things better only served to get her to blow her lid even faster.
"Don’t speak to me like that," she snapped back to me, pacing the small space of the office like an animal barely confined to a cage.
"My daughter told me what she saw between you and my son," she continued, her voice shaking as she tried to contain her rage. "She said she saw the two of you together. And I have no reason to think that she would lie about such a thing. I can’t think of any reason she would come up with something so sick and twisted about her own brother–"
"It’s true," I admitted, figuring that through was the only way out of this. "I can admit to that. But – but you have to listen to me here. It’s not what it looks like. We met outside of the school, I had no idea who he was..."
"There’s no way that you didn’t know who he was," she sneered, and the disdain in her voice was obvious. It made me shiver. She hated me, she really did hate me. I was a people-pleaser, and knowing that someone like this would hate me was painful for me to wrap my head around.
"I’ve heard of women like you," she continued, already too far gone for me to pull her back.
"Women like me?” I asked, fearful already at the thought of what that might have meant. She shook her head, glared at me.
"You see boys like that at your schools," she continued. "And you’re smart enough not to make the move then. But as soon as you get the chance, you get them because they’re younger and they don’t know any better and they’re not going to put up a fight against you."
My jaw dropped. Was she really accusing me of being some sort of predator? It took everything I had in me not to launch myself at her, and I was far from a violent person. I just couldn’t stand the thought that she would really believe that I had tried to force him into this.
"Rhona, your son came tome-"
"I’ll bet that’s what you’d have him believe," she continued, her face bright red from the exertion she was putting into the anger. "But I know better. A small town like this, you couldn’t have not known who he was. He was at this school when you were. You taught him-"
"I never taught him," I protested, wishing I had some way to prove my point in the here and now that she would believe. She shook her head and lifted her finger, ordering me without words to keep my mouth shut.
"I don’t want to hear another word from you," she told me. "I had to speak to you in person to see if it was true, but it’s obvious that my daughter didn’t make this up. I’m going to get you fired. I don’t want anyone else falling victim to whatever your twisted little games are-"
"I’m not playing any games," I pleaded with her, in desperation. "I didn’t know who he was, Rhona. I wanted to call it off, but then he-"
"But then he was the one who pushed for it, was he?" She demanded. "I’ll bet that’s what you’d have him believe, for sure, but I’m not so naïve."
She took a deep breath, gathering herself, a mother bear coming out to protect her cubs. I wished I could tell her that they didn’t need protecting, that I wasn’t predating on her son. We were just together. I loved him. I hadn’t been the one to hold back about the truth of where we had first seen each other, he had. But she would find some way to twist that into my lies and his truth, and there was no way I was going to give her any more ammo than I already had.
"You need to leave," I told her. It was the best I could do; at least I could take some time for myself, get my head around this, think of some way to explain this all away and pray that I could get through this misunderstanding.
