Sarah And The Sheriff

“Fine, last I heard.” Sarah felt a little guilty that she didn’t know more. That she hadn’t made a more concerted effort to visit Genna herself. After all, they were coworkers and had been since Sarah began teaching at Weaver Elementary nearly six years ago. Genna was a friend of her mother’s. Her aunts!

“What was she doing skiing at her age, anyway? It’s no wonder she broke some bones.”

“Anyone can have a skiing accident, even someone who’s barely twenty-five,” Sarah said pointedly.

Dee grinned impishly and rolled her eyes. But Sarah was spared her comment when the bell rang, sharp and shrill.

“To the salt mine,” Dee said, heading for the classroom door. “Want to head over to Classic Charms one night this week? See if Tara’s got anything new in?”

Sarah nodded. The children outside had scattered like leaves on the wind when the bell rang, and now she could hear footsteps ringing on the tile floor in the corridor. “Sure.”

Classic Charms was the newest shop to open its doors in Weaver, though it had eschewed the new shopping center area for a location right on Main Street.

Dee swiveled, deftly avoiding a collision with the first trio of kids bolting into Sarah’s classroom.

Sarah began passing out the workbooks she’d corrected over the weekend as the tables slowly filled. She had seventeen kids in her class this year.

Correction.

Eighteen, now.

They sat two to a table, usually, though she had enough room for them to all sit separately if need be. Some years were like that. This year though, had so far been peaceful.

“Thanks, Miz Clay.” Bright-eyed Chrissy Tanner beamed up at her as she accepted her workbook. “Are we having science today?”

“It’s Monday, isn’t it?” she asked lightly and continued passing through the room. Her attention, though, kept straying to the door.

Sooner or later, Eli would be there. Her gaze flicked to the wide-faced clock affixed high on the wall and noted he’d have three minutes before he’d be tardy. Not that she’d enforce that rule with a brand-new student on his very first day. She wasn’t that much a stickler for the rules.

The thought struck her as incredibly ironic.

The last workbook delivered, she walked back through the tables, heading to the front of the classroom where she picked up her chalk and finished writing out the day’s lesson plan on the blackboard. The sound of chatter and laughter and scraping chairs filled the room.

It was familiar and normal.

Ordinarily those sounds, this classroom, felt safe to Sarah.

But not today.

Would he bring Eli?

Between her fingers, the chalk snapped into pieces. Squelching an impatient sound, she picked them off the floor, and rapidly finished writing as the final bell rang.

No Eli Scalise.

As she’d done every morning at the beginning of the school day, she moved across the room and closed the door. Regardless of her feelings about her new student and his presence—or lack of it—she had a class to teach.

She turned back to her students, raising her voice enough to get everyone’s attention. “How many of you saw the double-rainbow yesterday?”

A bunch of hands shot up into the air.

And the lessons of the day began.

“Why do I gotta go to school?”

“Because.”

Eli sighed mightily. “But you said we were going to go back to California.”

“Not for months yet.”

“So?”

Max Scalise pulled open the passenger door of the SUV he’d been assigned by Sawyer Clay, the sheriff. They were already late, thanks to a conference call he’d had to take about a recent case of his. “In.”

His son, Eli, made a face, but tossed his brown-bag lunch and dark blue backpack inside before climbing up on the seat.

“Fasten the belt.”

The request earned Max another pulled face. He shut the door and headed around to the driver’s side. As he went, his eyes automatically scanned the area around them.

But there was nothing out of the ordinary. Just bare-branched trees. Winter-dry lawns not quite covered by snow. A few houses lined neatly along the street, all of them closed up tight against the chill. Only one of them had smoke coming from the chimney—his mother’s house that they’d just left.

Genna was as comfortably situated as she could get in the family room, where Max had lit the fire in the fireplace as she’d requested. She had her heavy cast propped on pillows, a stack of magazines, a pot of her favorite tea, the television remote and a cordless phone.

Outside the houses, though, there were no particular signs of life.

His breath puffed out around his head in white rings and cold air snuck beneath the collar of his dark brown departmental jacket.

God, he hated the cold.

He climbed in the truck.

“I could’a stayed in California with Grandma Helene,” Eli continued the minute Max’s rear hit the seat.

“What’s wrong with your grandmother here?” He made a U-turn and headed down the short hop to Main Street.

Eli hunched his shoulders. The coat he wore was a little too big for him. Max had picked up the cold-weather gear on their way to the airport. There hadn’t been a lot of time for fine fitting. “Nuthin’,” his son muttered. “But she always visited us out there. How come we gotta come here this time?”

“You happen to notice that big old cast on Grandma’s leg?” Max drove past the station house and turned once again, onto the street leading to the school. It took all of three minutes, maybe, given the significant distance.

The closer they got to the brick building that hadn’t changed a helluva lot since the days when Max had run the halls, the more morose Eli became. If his boy slouched any more in his seat, he’d hang himself on the seatbelt.

“Look at the bright side,” Max said. “You won’t be bored.”

Eli’s eyes—as dark blue as Jennifer’s had been—rolled. “Rather be bored back home than bored in there.” He jerked his chin toward the building.

Max pulled into the parking lot and stopped near the main entrance. “Don’t roll your eyes.” Donna, the school secretary, had told him when he’d faxed in the registration forms from California that the office was just inside the main front doors. A different location than he’d remembered from his days there.