“Someone higher up, you mean?”
“Well…”
“I’m the headmaster,” he said, flatly. “I’m afraid it’s up to me.”
Headmaster? Oh perfect—she’d really blown it then. “Okay. Well, I came here for an interview, like anyone else off the street, so pretend I’m a stranger.” She drew herself up. “Now, are you going to interview me or not?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw for a moment, before he said, “Sure. If that’s what you want.” He jotted her name on the back of a telephone book on the desk and drew a line under it, then looked at her, obviously trying not to smile. “Tell me how long you’ve been driving school buses now, Grace.”
Heat rose in her cheeks. He wasn’t going to make this easy. “The job description clearly said that no experience was necessary.”
“Maybe not necessary, but it helps. More qualified drivers will have the edge there.” He made a note of it. “You have a commercial driver’s license?”
She heard a single minor piano chord ring ominously in her brain. “Oh, come on, Luke, what do you think?”
He leaned back in his chair and gave her a lazy look that would once have made her toes curl, but now just ticked her off. “I think you’re applying for a job driving a bus, so you must have at least some vague notion of what that job entails.”
She tried to stay calm. “I think it entails starting the engine and driving from place to place picking up children and bringing them to school, which is pretty much what we, in my old neighborhood, called ‘car pooling.’ How different can it be?”
“For one thing, you need a commercial driver’s license in order to do it here.”
“I can get one, right?”
He gave a half shrug that said wrong. “Have you learned your way around an engine since I last saw you?” he asked. By now his face wore the same bored expectation of a negative response that an airline clerk had asking if you’d packed your own suitcase.
This was no time to give up, Grace reminded herself, however tempting that might be. “I can learn.”
He released the pencil, letting it clatter to the desk. Then he leaned back, took a deep breath and let it out slowly, not unlike a hissing bus tire that had just run over the sharp shards of her broken heart. “Grace, I ask you this in all seriousness—do you have any idea what’s involved in taking this job?”
She straightened in her seat and smoothed her jacket, instantly regretting the prissy gesture. As a prospective bus driver, she should have brought a toothpick to chew on or something. “Not entirely.”
“For the license test, you’ll need to know the bus’s engine inside-out. They’re going to pop the hood and have you identify and locate every part of the engine, then they’re going to have you get down on your knees and identify the parts from underneath.” He counted his points triumphantly on his fingers. “Then they’re going to ask you what happens if any of those parts fail or wear out, and they’re going to ask you how to fix them.” He gave a small but meaningful shake of his head. “If you pass all that, then you get to take the driving test.”
It did sound daunting, but not as daunting as another registered letter from the IRS. “And you’re saying you don’t think I can do that?”
“I can’t see it, no.” Clearly he was harboring his old hostility toward her. “Point is,” he went on, “I’m expecting to hire someone who already has.”
“What if you can’t hire someone who already has?” she asked. “What if no one like that applies?”
“They will.”
“When do you need a driver?”
“For summer school. In four weeks.”
“Four weeks!” She threw up her hands. “And you’re only looking to hire someone now?”
“You’re not helping your case.”
“I’m trying to help yours. And mine.” She could tell she was getting nowhere with him. She remembered a chocolate bar for Jimmy that she’d put in her purse earlier, and made a mental note to inhale it the second this miserable meeting ended. “Look, maybe I should talk with someone else about the job, since you obviously can’t be objective about me.”
“As a matter of fact, I’m in the unique position of understanding just how wrong you are for this position.” He sighed and softened his voice. “Grace, you’d be miserable. Why are you even here?”
“Because I need work,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “And this is the only possibility in town.”
“But it’s not a possibility.”
“It is.” She knew she sounded desperate, but she didn’t care. She was desperate! “You can teach me whatever it is I need to know, and I can take the test and do the job so quietly you won’t even have to think about it again. I might be the best damn bus driver you ever had.”
“And you might hate it and quit after two days.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“Well, you’ve already said you’re leaving town next year. I’m not hiring a lifeguard for the summer, I need a bus driver. I need someone who’s going to take the job, do it well and keep it for more than a single school year.” His gaze grew penetrating. “This is nothing personal.”
“Yes, it is!” She jabbed a finger in the air at him. “Personal is exactly what it is. You’re obviously holding something against me from a hundred years ago—”
“Not true.”
“—but if you think it’s easy for me to sit here and beg you for a job, you’re mistaken. If I can get past our history enough to work together, surely you can.”
“We don’t have a history.”
“Of course we have a history! We’ve known each other for eighteen years.” A small hurt flared in her, like a match lit on a windy night. How could he act as if they were total strangers? Maybe they hadn’t always gotten along, but once or twice in their past Grace had gotten the feeling that they had connected on a very deep level.
One instance in particular came to mind.
But now it was as if he was so eager to distance himself from her that he would even go so far as to distance himself from the facts. So she decided to remind him of those facts. “We went to high school together, Luke. You were my husband’s best friend, for Pete’s sake. That’s history.”
“That,” he agreed, “is history.”
She hesitated, unsure as to whether he was agreeing with her about the whole concept or if he was making the point that his friendship with Michael was history, as in kaput.
Because she knew that.
She remembered when it had happened.
Before she could think of something to say, Luke spoke again. “It’s irrelevant whether we have a history or not, because this is about qualifications. And you don’t have them. At least not the right ones.”
“I’ll bet I have better qualifications than most people you interview for this job,” she argued. “Have most of your applicants taken the Red Cross CPR course for infants and children? Can most of your applicants arbitrate an argument between two ten-year-olds? Can any of your other applicants tell the difference between the Robo-Crusier-Insect-Man and the Auto-Alien Transformer?”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “You think being able to make that distinction will come in handy?”
Her gaze was