Deny, deny, deny.
“Why…” Rose blotted her cheeks. “Why do you mention Martin?”
Keisha’s dramatic eye-roll was magnificent up close. “Come on, Ms. Owens. I’ve been teaching for over thirty years. I know when two teachers are indulging in some extracurricular activities.”
If that had been the extent of it, Rose wouldn’t have been stemming yet more tears with a balled-up tissue. “Martin isn’t just an extracurricular activity.”
“No.” Keisha laid a gentle, consoling hand on her arm. “No, I imagine he’s not. And I don’t think anyone else knows it’s him, if that’s worrying you.”
Rose didn’t move from beneath that hand, allowing the comforting gesture to blunt the biting edge of her grief, if only for a moment. Especially since fifteen years of working together had taught her that Keisha didn’t gossip or ridicule her colleagues, so whatever the other woman had witnessed before, whatever she saw or heard today, would go no further than this room.
Please let someone love you.
“I appreciate the offer to listen.” After blowing her nose, she offered her supervisor a weak smile. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea, though.”
“Then find someone you trust and talk to them. Because, honey”—she shook her head, lips pressed together in sympathy—“you look like your world just collapsed beneath you.”
It had. That world had only been created over a single school year, but it was the warmest, safest home Rose had ever known.
She tested out the words. Found them true. “I trust you.”
Keisha’s eyebrows flew to her hairline.
“I just think there are some things you’d rather not know about members of your department.” Rose took one last tissue and pushed the box back toward Keisha. “But maybe…”
In the face of Rose’s grief, her department head had offered sympathy, not pity.
Keisha hadn’t asked a single intrusive question. She’d only pledged her support.
Nothing about her expression indicated anything but sincere worry. Rose couldn’t find a hint of glee or prurient curiosity.
And Rose should have been able to predict all that after fifteen years spent working alongside a good woman. Why she hadn’t was something to ponder that night.
“Maybe,” she began again, haltingly, “we can go get dinner one night soon.”
At that, Keisha’s brows caught a ride on the International Space Station. But she overcame her shock long enough to give Rose’s arm another consoling pat. “I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
Later that night,Rose peeked through her classroom blinds to watch Martin walk slowly across the parking lot, his steps heavy. Once he’d driven away, she locked up behind her and left too.
She should go home and fix something simple but delicious. Shakshuka, maybe.
But she didn’t want to go home. Didn’t want to eat at the table where Martin had pulled her into his lap and they’d completed the crossword together. Didn’t want to read in the chaise where he’d coaxed her legs open and nuzzled her so sweetly, she’d cried when she came, then sobbed when he fucked her deep into the cushions and made her come again.
Above all, she didn’t want to smell him on her sheets, even as she refused to wash those sheets. It wasn’t the scent of sex that hurt so much. It was him. Martin. Clean and piney and dear.
Instead, she drove to Annette and Alfred’s mansion along the Hanover River. When she got close, she saw lights blazing through their endless windows and exhaled in relief. Then tensed again upon remembering how they instructed the butler to make the house look welcoming whether they were home or not.
But when she rapped on the enormous front door with their ornate wrought-iron knocker, the butler immediately opened that door, ushered her into the front parlor, and told her to await the imminent arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Buckham.
While she lingered, unsure why she’d come but loath to go home, a cluster of photos on the eighteenth-century Chippendale table caught her attention.
When she’d married Barton, Annette and Alfred’s only child, they’d littered the house with impeccably framed pictures of the newlyweds. At first, she’d found it odd and a bit ostentatious. Then endearing, as the sincerity of their excitement about having a daughter-in-law became unmistakable. Then sad, when the joy in those photos no longer existed in the actual marriage, and she knew her in-laws would have to replace the contents of those frames sooner rather than later.
She hadn’t visited them at their home in years. Maybe a decade.
Whose photos they now considered precious enough to display, she no longer knew.
