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“I don’t know.” He squinted against the sun as he faced her. “She wouldn’t say.”
“But she admitted to fighting?”
“No, she didn’t. But her clothes were dirty like she’d been rolling on the ground, she had a scratch on her arm and she’d been crying.”
Meredith tried to clear her mind, her inner self. Her own problems were minor, if Kelsey was in trouble. She’d sensed something the other night and ignored it. And this afternoon she couldn’t get through her own muck to find the little girl. Frustrated, she asked Mark, “How did she explain the state she was in?”
“Said she fell on the playground on the way to Josie’s.”
“Wouldn’t Josie’s mother have cleaned her up?”
“That’s what I asked. She said they played at school until it was almost time for me to come pick her up.”
“Do they do that often?”
“Often enough.”
So it could be true.
But Meredith knew it wasn’t.
MARK WOULDN’T LET Meredith help with dinner. He was making his specialty—a boxed meal, for which all he had to do was add hamburger and water—and there weren’t enough jobs for two. She couldn’t help with the table, either, because it was Kelsey’s job and he didn’t think it was healthy for the girl not to follow through on her responsibility.
She insisted on helping with the dishes and by then he’d run out of excuses. She was too close, the situation too intimately domestic without Susan there. Meredith might be a friend, but she was also an employee. He was her boss. They should have gone out to eat.
As soon as Kelsey went to her room to do her homework, Mark got down to business. “The hearing is set for twenty days from today,” he said. “That’s Tuesday, May 9. It’s the soonest possible date according to Oklahoma statutes.”
She dried her hands and hung the kitchen towel on the rack Mark had installed inside the cupboard door. Kelsey had picked out that particular towel, and it had butterflies all over it.
“I intend to spend most of the next couple of weeks contacting individual parents and board members, making sure that anyone who doesn’t know about you and your work has an opportunity to do so. It would help if you’d give me a list of all the parents you can think of to whom you’ve given nonacademic advice over the years.”
She nodded.
“Susan said something a few weeks back about your track record—wanting to know the number of times you’d advised parents according to your hunches and ultimately been proven correct. I think she’s on to something. A chart like that would be solid proof of your ability to figure out the truth in some difficult situations.”
“Makes you feel good, doesn’t it, Mark?” she asked him, her eyes clouded as she reached for her bag. “The idea of having that proof in your hand before you stand up for me?”
And just like that she’d pissed him off again. The woman was intent on making his life hell. “Do you want to beat this thing or not?”
“Of course I do,” she acknowledged. And as
he watched her deflate, he wished he hadn’t caused her pain.
“Do you think you could collect any information to refute Barnett’s experts from the other day?”
“I’m sure I can. My spare bedroom is full of it.”
“Twenty days isn’t very long.”
“I’ll be ready,” she said calmly. Mark couldn’t figure out how she did it—remaining steadfast in the midst of so much turmoil. He made his decisions based on fact, on what he could prove, and he often doubted himself. Had he been in her shoes, he might be tempted to cut his losses.
“You’re really okay with all of this, then?”
“No.” She glanced up surprised, her bag over her shoulder. “I have no idea how I’m going to get through the next three weeks.”
He wasn’t certain, but he thought her lower lip trembled.
“I’m going in to tell Kelsey goodbye,” she said.
