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“What happened? I still don’t understand,” she said as she pulled a chair close to Maizy’s desk.
Maizy explained quietly and watched the confusion grow in Jan’s eyes. “There are three of them? That really happens? I thought it was just rumors and gossip.”
Remembering the grainy image of her three men embracing her after she accepted their ring, she smiled and said, “No. It’s very real and I know I can’t do without them.”
“This is bullshit,” Jan muttered. “You’re not going to fight it?”
“I can’t see a way of doing that without dragging Divine and all the people I love through the mud. I don’t want reporters hounding my friends and the people they love because I want to keep this job.”
“But you love this job.”
“I’ll still teach. I know I will.”
“The kids will be back soon so I’ll leave you to finish that letter,” Jan said as she put the chair back in place. She turned at the door and added, “I know I’ve been wrapped up in my own bitter world, otherwise I might’ve noticed the changes in you. You’ve seemed so much happier lately and I’m glad if those three men are the reason. If you need me for anything, you have my number. This place won’t be the same without you.”
“Thanks, Jan.”
She typed up her letter of resignation, keeping one eye on the clock. When two copies of it were printed and signed, she sealed them inside envelopes and slipped them into Mrs. Dumphrey’s and Mr. Ambrose’s mailboxes.
The kids returned and she struggled through the last session of the afternoon and helped them prepare to go home. The next two weeks would be spent counting down as the days slipped away until she was no longer the one introducing them to the wonderful world of learning. She knew they’d still progress and she would miss them, but she didn’t need them the way she needed Cody, Heath, and Spencer.
Her umbrella wasn’t much use when she left at four o’clock, with the wind blowing the cold rain sideways. In her Bug, she took out her phone and sent two text messages.
To Cody, she typed, “I tendered my resignation today.” She knew he would let Heath and Spencer know.
It probably wasn’t a good idea to communicate with Roberta when she was upset but she did so anyway. She typed the message and hit send. “It’s one thing to voice your discontent over my choices, sis. It’s another thing to betray me.”
Cody replied within a minute. “Where are you? We’ll come to you.”
Her phone chirped with more incoming messages while she replied to him. “I’m in my car about to head home. Don’t you need to get ready for work?”
“We’ll see you at your house in a few minutes.”
She typed the first words of a reply to him, telling him that he didn’t have to do that, but then she chuckled and backspaced. He thought they did and it wasn’t really up for debate. She was about to check the rest of the recent incoming messages when one more message arrived from him.
“Please take it slow on the wet roads, angel. I love you.”
She glanced hurriedly at the other messages.
One from Spencer, who worried about her. “Are you all right?”
One from Heath, who was intuitive as ever. “It finally happened didn’t it?”
Knowing she would see them in a few minutes, she didn’t bother replying. She’d intended to go home, take a long bath, and lick her wounds for a bit but the thought of them coming to her like that made her lose interest in solitude.
There was also a message from Roberta. “Whoa! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Did you tell anyone about my engagement to the guys, and take a picture of us at the wedding before we knew you were standing there?”
The lack of reply from Roberta was pretty damning as she drove home in the rain.
She took the wet roads slow and easy just so she could tell the truth when Cody asked her, and she knew he would ask her. Despite the upheaval of the last couple of hours she was still able to smile when she saw the bears—comfort personified—waiting on her porch with the rain blowing all around them.
In the house, after they’d all had a chance to kiss her and hug her, Cody turned her to face him. “Did you have any trouble on the roads? I pictured your car hydroplaning into a ditch the whole time we waited for you.”
