Since she didn’t appear to be sitting anytime soon, he stood too. “Do what?”
“Communicate that way with students.” With a sigh, she scrubbed her face with her hands and leaned heavily against his desk. “Accept and handle their emotions so skillfully. Become soft when they need softness and offer structure when they don’t.”
Her arms dropped limply to her sides. “I’m all structure, no softness. Always the stick, never the carrot. With students, with colleagues. With everyone.”
Last fall, he’d glanced through her doorway. Seen her dappled by the setting sun through her classroom windows, head bent close with a senior as they painstakingly crafted a college application essay. Heard the happy shouts in the hallway months later, as that same student announced her early-admission acceptance into UVA.
Last May, he’d stood unseen outside the school’s bus entrance and watched Candy usher her students to the AP test. Her expression fierce, she’d informed them they should hold their heads high, because they were the best-prepared and hardest-working English Literature and Composition students in the country. She’d demanded their best efforts on the test,or else, because she wanted to see them rewarded for all their work.
“That said,” she’d added, her voice ringing with authority, “my pride in your efforts and accomplishments does not depend on the score you may receive. You’ve labored and persevered for an entire school year. Less than four hours in a school cafeteria can’t alter that.”
The kids had stared at her, all nervous fiddling stilled.
Then, as the bus driver honked impatiently, Candy raised an imperative forefinger. “You should not be intimidated by this test.” She looked them in the eye, every one of them. “You aremystudents. This test should be intimidated byyou.”
Their shoulders had straightened, feet braced wide as if for battle.
“Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war!” she’d roared, and her students had laughed and whooped and climbed onto the bus, looking as confident and steady as any group of test-bound kids he’d ever witnessed.
He’d pictured Candy in a toga then, laurels crowning her dark head, one shoulder exposed, her long arms bare and pale and strong. A distaff Julius Caesar, bursting with power and command. He’d immediately tried to dismiss the image, yet it had burned behind his eyelids for days.
Before she could turn back toward the school, he’d slunk away and hidden from her. Hidden from himself.
For over a year, he’d been repressing thoughts of one woman to keep the memory of another sacrosanct. But thoughts of Candy were the heads of a Hydra. Cut off one, and two more sprang forth. Sometimes in unexpected places and without warning.
At the faculty meeting last week, for instance, he’d arrived early. And to his shock, Rose Owens—accompanied by her devoted fiancé and fellow history teacher, Martin Krause—had settled herself in the seat beside his.
“You know,” she’d said, adjusting the pristine cuffs of her satiny black blouse, “you should ask Candy about her AP pass rates. They’re astounding.”
Despite his confusion, he’d nodded. “Okay.”
He didn’t teach AP, and he didn’t consider Candy’s test results his business. But he also wasn’t going to argue with Rose, who—quite frankly—scared him a little.
Her amber-brown eyes had locked onto his. “Too many people confuse surface and substance. They see only what’s evident at first glance. Good historians, though, are trained to look harder. Dig deeper. Search for context and contradictions and alternative points of view. Some important tales can be told in a single look, a single sentence. Most can’t.”
Martin had been gaping at his fiancé, brows raised high, but he hadn’t intervened.
Sitting back in his chair, Griff considered her. Evaluated her motivations. Fought his own desperate curiosity, his insatiable, maddening hunger for anything that would make Candy’s subtext more easily decipherable.
Finally, he’d set his elbows on the table and turned his left ear toward Rose. “Tell me the rest of the tale, then.”
So she had, at least until others joined their table.
That tale wasn’t yet complete, he knew. But it was burgeoning, swelling with footnotes and the sort of context he couldn’t have supplied on his own.
And he wasn’t letting Candy’s distorted view of herself stand unchallenged.
Before saying anything else, he closed his classroom door. For a variety of reasons, this conversation required privacy.
As he returned to his desk, he slanted her a stern look. “Your students adore you.”
“No.” Her fingers twisted together, but that obstinate chin jutted forward. “They fear me.”
“Is that so?” He cocked his head. “Did you sleep through the speeches at graduation, Albright? Because I distinctly remember the valedictorian, salutatorian,andclass president mentioning you by name.”
She rolled her eyes, a gesture she rarely indulged. “To say I terrified them.”
“Yes, that.” Moving until he was directly in front of her, he waited until she made eye contact again. “But they said it while they were laughing. And two of them also thanked you for all your help and dedication and said they learned more in your class than anywhere else.”
