“They can’t cut the program.” His voice revealed the fierce protectiveness she’d come to count on, one that sometimes got in the way, truth be told.
“Closed session meeting last night sealed it.” Her coffee burned its way down her esophagus.
“Is that even legal? To schedule a school board meeting on the night of your spring concert?”
“I don’t know if it was legal, but I’m convinced it was intentional. The whole community showed up at the concert, not the meeting. It’s a wonder they had a quorum for the vote. Not that a small thing like regulations could stop a wrecking ball like Evelyn Schindler.”
“That’s one—”
“Watch your language.”
“—driven school board president.”
Lucy’s sigh started at her toes and worked its way upward. “A skilled manipulator of thought.”
“Or lack of it.”
She almost smiled at his assessment. Would have, if it hadn’t been such a tragedy. “When I think of what they were plotting while my students were singing their hearts out . . .”
“I wasn’t the only grown man shedding—what do you call it?—tender tears. Your students’ music moved us. In a good way. Your best concert ever, LucyMyLight.”
Strains of the concert’s high points replayed in her bulging brain, soothing and aching at the same time. “My last ever, Charlie. My last ever.”
The day the music died.
Chapter 2
2
Want to go for a walk?” Charlie sounded like a new dad trying to figure out how to make his toddler stop crying.
“No.”
“Retail therapy?”
Lucy considered aiming her mouthful of coffee just slightly his direction. She swallowed. “Retail therapy? Where did you even learn that term?”
“Live . . . with Kelly and Michael.”
“You watch too much daytime TV.”
“Nothing else to do. I only watch while I’m loading the dishwasher.”
In a second-fragment, she flew through an image of his typical day since taking early retirement from the paper mill a year ago. Retiring. The word sat like lethargic rocks in her stomach. Some cultural advances should never have become a staple of the American dream, in her opinion. Like red donkeys versus blue elephants—or was it the other way around?—she and Charlie might forever disagree on that point. He’d been on a countdown toward retirement since his first day at the mill thirty-five years ago. She’d resisted all discussion of stepping away from the passion that secondarily happened to provide her a paycheck—steering young people toward an appreciation for music. I love you, but worms are not a passion, Charlie.
He disappeared from the kitchen for a minute and returned with a bottle of ibuprofen. Like announcing a cure for cancer, he plopped the bottle on the table in front of her. “You’d probably appreciate a couple of these, huh?”
He’s a good man. He’s such a good man. I should be grateful to have a husband who doesn’t try to stuff chocolate in my mouth as a cure-all for this.
“I know,” Charlie said, opening the bottle, dumping two green capsules into his palm, and extending them toward her. “What you really need is chocolate.”
Boom.
“We’ll go out to Bernie’s for broasted chicken, and then we’ll split the chocolate volcano for dessert. With vanilla bean ice cream. And whipped cream.”
He looked so hopeful this would be the peace offering she’d embrace. Fix-It Man strikes again. Rescues brokenhearted damsel and gets his favorite meal in one fell swoop.
“LucyMyLight?”
She pushed out her diaphragm as if preparing for a high note. Hold. Hold. Exhale. “I think I’ll go take a shower. If you want to bring home chicken from Bernie’s, that’s fine. I don’t feel like being out in public right now, though. Okay?”
“Rumors are flying, huh?”
She hadn’t thought of that. But yes, they probably were. The budget conscious would cheer the school board’s decision. All the smart people would be in an uproar. Did she just think that completely judgmental thought? Yes, she did. Today wasn’t the day to work on a better attitude. Today was the day to spend an inordinate amount of time in the shower, the music in the bathroom cranked full blast, like the water, and later succumb to a chocolate coma. She’d beat back chocolate guilt with a fire poker if necessary. Two. One in each hand.
***
“Help has arrived,” Charlie announced, rustling thin plastic and thunking around the kitchen.
Lucy sat on the front edge of the couch, planted her palms on her thighs, and tried to stand. Her second attempt succeeded. Halfhearted effort accomplishes nothing. She had a poster in the music room that confirmed it.
Charlie looked up from where he’d laid out their supper on the granite island. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“It’s that bad, huh? I haven’t seen that sad-looking sweatshirt since the stretch when Sam wasn’t sleeping through the night.”
“You mean the eighties?”
“Stubborn son of yours.”
“Ours.” She paused. “Mostly yours.” She picked at the loose, crispy skin on a chicken thigh. “Did you bring—?”
“Yes.” Charlie smiled.
“Mashed potatoes?”
Crestfallen. There was a word for the expression his face made. “No. I thought . . . under the circumstances . . . you’d want fries with that.”
With silent apologies to all the hardworking people whose job it is to ask, “Want fries with that?” Lucy let her mind drift to the suffocating smell of overused cooking oil embedded in the fabric of her color-defying sweatshirt. Not that a burger joint would let her wear her own clothes to a new job. She’d be assigned a uniform. Something in a shade not even close to complimenting her skin tones.
“Lucy? Are fries going to be okay? I really don’t want to go back.” He sliced along the chicken’s sternum and pulled off a hunk of white meat.
She leaned her elbows on the table. “You’re too good to me.”
“Well, yes. That’s a given.” He winked.
“That you would even consider going back for mashed potatoes . . .” She thought the hot shower had pelted all the tears out of her. But no. They had friends.
“Hey, hey, hey, Luce. I’m not that wonderful.” Charlie moved to stand behind her chair and started a boxing manager’s version of shoulder massage. The pressure he applied showed it was to relieve his own tension, not hers. Bless him.
She sniffed back tears and patted his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll be okay. Just not right now.”
“You’ll find another job.” His imitation of Perky Life Coach fell flat, like two-week-old amorphous road kill.
“It wasn’t a job. It was my life’s work.”
The RIF letter had probably eaten through her purse like acid by now. She loved that purse. Chicken, she did not love. Not tonight. She’d lost her taste for chocolate, too. That couldn’t last long without dire consequences.
She’d been riffed. The term stabbed like a cross between fired and assassinated.