“Would you like to tell me why you’re here?”
He flashed a smile that cut straight through her exhaustion. “I’m his neighbor. I think he’s a great kid, maybe even a brilliant kid. But I know he’s not lifting a finger at school. I’d like to help any way I can. He should be college bound.”
She pondered this; she pondered him. She pondered how tired she was and how slowly her brain was processing information.
He seemed to sense the latter. “Long day? You’re clearly wiped.”
“I came in at six, and I’ve been running ever since. I’m not surprised it shows.” She sat back because she was too tired not to. “We ought to do this another time. It sounds important.”
“How about tonight over pizza?”
She stared at him. The invitation had come straight out of left field and still, somehow, seemed exactly right.
He held up his hands, as if to say the request was completely innocent. “Nothing fancy. Pizza, beer if you drink it. And some brainstorming. You don’t have to reveal a thing about how he’s doing. Just help me come up with some way to prop him up a little.” He hesitated and his eyes flicked to her left hand. She wore no wedding ring—hadn’t since a year after Samantha’s father’s death—and he seemed to note that with a glance.
“Of course, the weather’s awful, and somebody’s probably expecting you at home,” he said. “I’m being presumptuous.”
“That’s not it.”
“I hate to see this kid ruin his life.”
She was too tired to be tactful, and too thrown off balance. “Why do you care?”
“I’m new here, but there’s a little place in Weaverville, not that far from my house, that makes everything from scratch. I can tell you the whole story while we eat. Outside this building you’ll feel more like listening.”
He seemed to understand exactly how she was feeling, and he didn’t even know her. For a moment that, coupled with her visceral reaction to Lucas Ramsey, seemed like enough reason to say no. But Dawson’s future was too important to play games with.
“Nobody’s expecting you?” she asked, since he’d brought up the subject.
“I’m more or less a stranger here. I live alone. There’s a stray cat I feed, but he comes by late.”
She thought about the ground they’d covered in a few sentences. Her exhaustion had drifted away, and something like anticipation was filling the void.
“Tell me where, and I’ll meet you there,” she said at last. “Six, seven?”
He got to his feet. “Six. I think you need the pizza transfusion sooner than later. And if this storm continues, you’ll want to get home early.”
She couldn’t help herself. She smiled.
He smiled, too; then he told her where to meet him. In a moment he was gone.
She got up and stretched, aware she was already looking forward to dinner. If she went home now she would have just enough time to shower and change and maybe close her eyes for a few minutes before it was time to go. She decided to skim the top papers on her desk and put them in her briefcase. After pizza tonight she would sift through them so the rest of the stack wouldn’t be so unmanageable tomorrow.
She got her briefcase and began to scoop, then she stopped. Under the first pile she saw the bracelet that Edna had admired on Friday afternoon. It was right where her granddaughter had left it, only an avalanche of white had covered it. Sighing, she went to her doorway. Marianne was getting ready to leave for the day.
“Did a student stop by today looking for a bracelet she left in my office?”
Marianne shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
Georgia thought maybe the attendance or instructional secretaries had intercepted the request. If either of them had checked her desk, they wouldn’t have seen it without disturbing her papers, and who would risk doing that?
“Well, if somebody comes looking tomorrow, I have it,” she said. “We can send it to lost and found if nobody claims it by week’s end.” Lost and found was a jumbled cardboard box in the gym office, and she was hesitant to relegate it there quite yet.
Georgia went back to her desk and picked up the bracelet to drop it in her drawer for safekeeping. It was, as she’d told her granddaughter, a charm bracelet, and not an inexpensive one. It was heavy with charms—gold, not less expensive sterling silver—and the chain was delicate but sturdy, finely crafted.
She gazed at the bracelet thinking about the girl who had lost it and how upset she must feel. She tried to remember who had been in her office the day it had appeared, but she was too tired.
As Edna had said, there were a mixture of charms. Animals. A cat, a horse and something more stylized. She held it closer. The head of a scowling bulldog, but not just any bulldog. This dog wore a familiar cap with the letter G emblazoned on it.
The mascot of the University of Georgia.
For a moment she stood perfectly still, then she reminded herself this was simply a student’s bracelet. Perhaps the owner had a boyfriend at UGA, maybe a brother or sister, or perhaps she was simply hoping the university was her destination after high school.
She opened her drawer to drop it in, but stopped when she noticed an envelope with her name on it right where the bracelet had rested. The envelope must have been under the bracelet all along, or, at least, it might have been. She couldn’t be certain Edna had replaced the bracelet exactly where she had found it.
Frowning, she opened the envelope and took out several sheets of yellowed newspaper folded four times to fit inside. There was no note, nothing included with them. She carefully unfolded the paper and read the headline of the article on top.
Sweatshirt Baby’s Life Still Touch-and-Go.
She stared at the paper a moment, then she refolded it without leafing through the other sheets and carefully placed them inside the envelope again.
She didn’t have to read the top article to know exactly what it would say. No one knew better than she did. Georgia herself had lived the story.
Chapter Seven
ON MONDAY AFTERNOON at the Goddess House, rain fell in great silver sheets that washed the porch floor. The rain would have saturated the glider cushions if Cristy hadn’t dragged them inside an hour before when the wind had picked up. A gloomy morning had changed to sullen, and now, in the late afternoon, to hostile. Through the window she could see trees bending under punishing winds. Even though the sun didn’t officially set until sometime after six, there was no sign the sun remembered.
When it had become clear the storm might be significant, she had hunted for candles and flashlights, since losing power seemed like a good possibility. She had found both, plus an oil lantern filled and ready in case of emergencies. A larger problem was what to do with herself.
Even with electricity the day had inched along like molasses in January. Yesterday she had inventoried the cupboards and refrigerator. Samantha had made sure she knew all the food was to be eaten, and there were a variety of canned and packaged foods as well as fresh vegetables and fruits, frozen hamburger and chicken.
Samantha had left cash, as well. While living and working in Berle, Cristy had saved what she could, but every bit of it was gone now, spent for necessities at the prison canteen, along with the extravagant forty cents a day she had earned working in the kitchen. She didn’t want to use Samantha’s money, but she knew she would have to dip into it until she found some way of earning her own. If nothing else, she had to have gas to make