Winning the Teacher's Heart

“No, she was a year ahead of me.” One more thing that had put her out of his reach. Jared pictured Becca as she’d looked the first time he’d seen her, at the beginning of his freshman year. Her waist-length hair. Her bright friendly smile. Her hair was shorter now, but the smile was the same.

“That’s right,” his grandmother said. “She came to Schroon Lake Central from Lakeside Christian Academy the year Harry became principal.” Her eyes went soft when she mentioned her husband of three years.

Jared reached for his tea. With a kindergarten-through-twelfth-grade student body of less than three hundred, any new student at Schroon Lake Central School stuck out. But Becca had even more so—at least for him. He’d told his buddy he’d be taking her to the homecoming dance. His friend’s derisive laugh had made him more determined—until his father had gone and ruined everything before he’d even gotten to meet her. He gulped the rest of his drink.

“Becca and I taught together for a couple of years before I retired. I think both Josh and Connor had her for history at least one year. Which reminds me. Do you know if Connor has made up his mind yet? I think Becca would be perfect.”

Connor and Becca? He gripped the empty glass. “Isn’t he a little young for her?”

His grandmother’s lips twitched. “I don’t see what Connor’s age has to do with hiring Becca to be the substitute head teacher at The Kids’ Place, the church day-care center, for the summer. She could use the money.”

“Nothing.” He studied a small chip in his sandwich plate, most likely courtesy of him or one of his brothers or cousins. Gram had been feeding them sandwiches on the same plates since they were kids. “My mind was elsewhere.”

The twitch turned into a knowing smile. Except Gram didn’t really know anything about it. Becca Norton was an adolescent dream he had no intention of pursuing as an adult. They had been too different then and were too different now.

“Would you like a piece of strawberry-rhubarb pie?” She stood and turned to the counter behind her chair. “I baked one this morning. I remember it was always your favorite.”

Jared pursed his lips, irritated that Gram’s smile bothered him.

“It’s not that big of a decision,” she said making as if to place the pie back on the counter.

“Sorry, Gram. I’d love a piece of your pie.” He lifted his empty plate toward her, and she cut and placed a large slice on it.

“Something’s bothering you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I’m fine.” He bit into a forkful of pie. “This is great.”

“You haven’t said anything about what the lawyer said this morning. I assume it was about Bert Miller’s will.”

Jared chewed the pie, savoring the combination of sweet and tart. “He left Connor a trust for the church, paid off Josh’s student loans and gave me that land he owned west of the lake.”

His grandmother’s eyes widened. “Did you know?”

“Not about Josh and Connor.”

“But about the land?” she pressed.

He tapped his fork on the side of the plate before setting it down. “He sent me a letter a couple of months ago.”

“Oh.”

“He used to do that, send me a letter every so often.”

Gram tilted her head and studied him. “Bert always did like you boys.” She hesitated as if weighing her next words. “Said you were the sons he never had.”

“He was with Dad that night...you know...he told me in one of his letters.”

“I know.”

Jared jerked his head up. From what Bert had said in his letter, he’d gotten the idea that fact wasn’t common knowledge.

“Your father told your grandfather one night when he’d been drinking.”

Jared stifled a snort. That could have been about any night.

“Your grandfather told me your dad and Bert had been best friends since kindergarten. Until then.”

Gram was the only grandmother he remembered. But she hadn’t married his widowed grandfather until after Jared had been born. She’d always been able to talk about Dad with a lot more detachment than he or either of his brothers could.

He pushed away from the table. “I should get going.” Now that Gram wanted to talk about Dad, Jared wasn’t sure he did anymore.

“JJ.” His grandmother reached across the table and touched his hand.

He pulled away from her touch at the use of his childhood nickname, short for Jared Junior. “Don’t call me that. Please.” He softened his tone.

“You’re not your father.”

Jared released his pent up breath. “I know, but I did enough stupid things before I left Paradox Lake, and some after, to make people think I am.”

“Honey, you weren’t the first or the last teenager in Paradox Lake to be stopped driving while impaired.”

“I’m the only son of the town drunk who was, after knocking over the Sheriff’s mailbox and running down his front fence.”

“You paid back Sheriff Norton for all the damages to his property.”

“After which he strongly recommended I take myself elsewhere as soon as I finished high school.”

“He was harsher on you than he might have been on someone else. There was bad blood between him and your father. But now you’re back. And I, for one, am glad you are.”

“Yep, I’m back.” And there wasn’t anyone or anything that could make him leave again. At least not before he cleaned up the Donnelly family name and made amends to his brothers for bailing on them and his mother.

* * *

Becca kept an eye on Brendon and Ari from the kitchen window that overlooked the backyard as she put away the groceries she’d picked up in Ticonderoga. Her son was racing his bike around Ari and the jungle gym her father had built for them before he and her mother had moved to North Carolina. Probably pretending he was Jared. He and motocross racing were all Brendon had talked about on the drive home from Edna Stowe’s house.

She closed the cupboard and walked out to the deck to call the kids in to get their things ready to go to their other grandparents’ for the night.

“Hey, Mom, watch.” Brendon rode his bike up a small rise behind the jungle gym and sped down, yanking on the bike’s handle bars and doing a wheelie for several feet across the yard. She stifled a screech as he circled around and laid the bike down on the grass in front of the deck steps.

“What do you think?” He beamed.

What she thought was she was likely to be completely gray by the time she was thirty-five. “Impressive,” she said.

“Do you think if I asked Dad, he would buy me a dirt bike for my birthday?”

Becca closed her eyes and breathed in and out. If her ex-husband knew how much that thought terrorized her, he probably would and count the cost as child support. She’d never shared it with Matt, but her parents had instilled a fear of motorcycles in her when she was a child after a close friend of theirs had died in a bike accident.

“I think you should wait a few more years on that one.” Brendon was only nine going on ten.