My Three Girls

With ease, Brady extracted the youngest girl from the trio and lifted her up.

“Oooh!” Ollie exclaimed with a delighted smile.

“Let go of her!” Karen jumped up, trying to grab Ollie. “You’re not taking her anywhere.”

“It’s late,” Miss Ritchie said. “Your uncle is just taking Ollie to bed.”

Karen stopped jumping, uncertain. “Bed? Here?”

“Yes. Where you should have been hours ago.”

“So does that mean we’re not going with him?”

Brady tried not to feel stung by the relief in Karen’s tone.

“For now. It’s too late for you to go with your uncle. Your mom may make it back by tomorrow. So it’s probably better for you to be here tonight.”

Karen looked relieved and then turned to Brady with her arms open. “Give her to me. We can put ourselves to bed,” she said. After he complied, Jean held on to the back of Karen’s shirt, and the trio made their way down the hall. Ollie looked back over her sister’s shoulder at him.

“G’night.” She gave him a small wave with her fingers.

“Good night. I’ll see you in the morning,” he promised.

Karen turned in front of a bedroom door. “That’s okay. We’ll be fine. You don’t have to come back.” With that announcement, she and her sisters went into the room, Miss Ritchie behind them.

While he waited, he called dispatch and let them know the situation was taken care of, but that he would be at the residence for a while gathering information. He looked at his watch. He only had two hours left on this shift. The call complete, he took a more careful look at the small house. He studied the walls that were filled with a variety of construction-paper artwork. Lopsided snowmen shared equal space with tissue-paper mosaics. In the corner, there was a neat stack of egg and milk cartons. There was also a full box of cans stripped of their labels. He wouldn’t have to be told that a teacher lived in this house.

He heard a sound behind him and turned to find the schoolteacher standing in the doorway. Her hands were behind her back and she stared at him with those dark eyes of hers. There was a pain in them that he couldn’t understand and, for some reason, wanted to. He’d noticed there was no ring on her finger and remembered that the girls called her “Miss Ritchie.” Why was such a young woman holed up in such an isolated place?

She seemed to be waiting for him to say something, so he cleared his throat. “Well, thank you.” It didn’t hurt to start with a thank-you.

“I can’t keep the girls.” The words were surprising in their bluntness.

Before he could discover what had motivated her to say them, Brady had to know what had happened to Bev. “Do you mind going through how the girls happened to be in your care in the first place?”

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked, obviously realizing this wasn’t going to be a quick process.

“Yes,” Brady answered easily. The task would give her something to do. Then she might relax enough to give him the kind of information he needed.

Brady watched her measure the coffee and put it into a filter, her movements careful and precise. He tried not to smile when she pulled from the cupboard the smallest coffeemaker he’d ever seen. He could down that much coffee at break fast alone. She obviously wasn’t addicted. She glanced up and their eyes met just for a split second. Brady swallowed hard. For a complete stranger, this schoolteacher had the oddest way of looking right through him.

She hurriedly plugged the coffeemaker into the wall before walking from behind the counter. “Why don’t you sit down,” she offered as she pointed to the table that separated the kitchen from the living room. “The coffee will only take a few minutes.”

Brady sat, and she joined him, placing her forearms on the wooden table. She looked ready to answer questions.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” He made his voice as friendly and conversational as he could. The tone worked, because he could sense that she relaxed a little once she realized he wasn’t going to grill her.

She said, her words stark, “Their mother came by after school today and told me she didn’t have a baby-sitter. She had to attend a conference this weekend and asked me to look after the girls. I told her no.”

“Is that something you did often for Bev?”

She shook her head. “Never. I don’t baby-sit my students. I have them from seven forty-five to two-thirty. That’s all. No other parent has ever asked me to.”

“But you have the children.” He sat straighter. He could see a thin shield of defensiveness creep over her.

“Yes.”

“So why don’t you tell me how you came to take care of the children?”

The question was straightforward enough, but the schoolteacher took a long time to answer. “I found them.”

Brady felt a chill run down his spine. “Where?”

“Sitting on the picnic table.” Her arm gestured in the general direction of the schoolhouse. “I didn’t finish working until nearly nine o’clock.”

“On a Friday?” he asked skeptically.

She flushed. “I have a lot of work to do. I’m not just the teacher. I’m the principal, too. I’ve got a ton of forms to fill out.”

“No offense,” he apologized hastily. “I just thought an attractive woman like yourself would have plans on a Friday night.”

Her lips twisted into a wry smile. “There’s not a lot of action around here after hours. What man in his right mind would drive an hour for a date with a woman who spends her day talking to children?”

Brady would consider it. If those eyes asked him, he’d consider doing almost anything for her.

“The children were sitting out there, waiting for me,” she continued. “Thank goodness, it’s a fairly warm night and that it was me. There’s not a lot of traffic, but those girls were unsupervised for several hours. Anything could have happened to them.”

DANA CLOSED HER EYES as the realization struck her. Anything. Anything could have happened to them and she wouldn’t have known. Some stranger could have abducted them while they waited for her. Guilt pulsed through her.

“That isn’t your fault,” the deputy said.

She lifted her eyes to his as she felt slapped by terrible images from the evening news. There was no censure in his face, just empathy.

He continued on in that deep, rumbling voice. “Anything else?”

She didn’t want to like talking to him. She didn’t want to like the fact that this strange man at her kitchen table made her more comfortable than anyone else she’d met since coming to teach here.

She started to feel sick. She’d been awake too long and she desperately needed sleep, but she was so keyed up that she knew she wouldn’t be able to. She swallowed, pressing her hands together so hard she saw the veins pop out on her forearms. She told herself to relax, but then jumped out of her chair to pour the coffee.

“Cream or sugar?” she asked.

“No.”

“That’s easy,” Dana commented. She held out the cup.

He wrapped his large hand around it and her hand as well. The cup nearly disappeared in his palm and her fingers felt engulfed by his. Dana couldn’t stop looking at his hand, the unyielding, tanned skin and the prominent veins that traveled up his forearm to disappear in the dark hair. She tugged her hand away and sat down, pushing the chair back a foot or two to give herself some breathing room. Suddenly, it was very hot in the house.

“Any idea whether she would go north or south?” His eyes were fixed on her forearms. A small crease appeared between his eyebrows, but his expression remained pleasant.