“It’s been twelve years,” Aurora said, meeting Vivi Ann’s gaze head-on.
As if she didn’t know exactly how long it had been since Dallas’s arrest. There were still nights she couldn’t sleep and days when she beat herself up over signing those divorce papers. Sometimes, in the still of the night, she wondered if he’d been testing her; if he’d wanted her to prove her love by refusing to give up. “Can we talk about something else, please?”
“Sure.” Aurora paid the check and they walked out together, into the sunlit day. “Thanks for meeting me for lunch.”
“Are you kidding? I love playing hooky. Next time I’ll dress up.”
“You? Ha.”
“I know how you hate to be seen with a woman wearing fifteen-year-old jeans.”
“It’s a small town. My choices are limited. If I weren’t with you, I might have to join the Women’s Auxiliary again and hear how stupid I was to let Richard go. Like I was supposed to not care that he was screwing his nurse.”
Vivi Ann linked arms with her sister. It had been four years since Aurora’s acrimonious divorce, but no one knew better than Vivi Ann how long some wounds could take to heal. She knew Aurora felt foolish for failing to see her husband’s infidelity. “How are you doing? Really?”
“Some days are better than others.”
“I know that song,” Vivi Ann said. She, of all people, knew that a thing could be talked about only so much. Then, finally, you had to let it go. Everything that needed to be said about Aurora’s divorce had been. So she said, “How’s work?”
“I love it. I should have taken a job a long time ago. Selling jewelry might not be curing cancer, but it keeps me out of the house.”
Vivi Ann was just about to say more when her cell phone rang. Reaching into her purse, she pulled it out, flipped it open, and answered.
“Vivi? This is Lori Lewis, from the middle school. Noah is in the principal’s office.”
“I’ll be right there.” Vivi Ann snapped the phone shut with a curse. “It’s Noah,” she said. “He’s in trouble at school.”
“Again? You want me to come with you?”
“No, thanks.” Vivi Ann gave Aurora a quick hug and then hurried over to her new truck. Jumping in, she drove three blocks and parked on the street.
At the secretary’s desk, she smiled tightly. “Hey, Lori.”
“Hi, Vivi,” Lori said, leading her toward the principal’s door. Opening it, she said, “Noah is in with Harding now.”
“Thanks,” Vivi Ann said, stepping past the secretary.
Harding rose at her entrance. He was a big man, with a paunch that strained the buttons of his short-sleeved white dress shirt. Baggy brown polyester pants rode beneath his protruding belly, held in place by taut suspenders. His fleshy face, folded by distress into basset hound lines, was showing signs of emergent beard growth. “Hello, Vivi Ann,” he said. “I’m sorry we had to pull you away from the farm. I know how busy you are these days.”
She nodded in affirmation and glanced over to the corner, where her almost fourteen-year-old son sat slumped, one booted foot stretched forward. A column of jet-black hair fell across his face, obscured one green eye—the only trait he’d inherited from her. Otherwise, he was the spitting image of his father.
When she got closer, he tucked the hair behind his ear and she saw the black eye it had shielded, and the cut along his jaw. “Oh, Noah . . .”
He crossed his arms and stared out the window.
“He got in another fight at lunch. Erik, Jr.; Brian; and some other boys. Tad had to go to the doctor’s for an X-ray,” Harding said.
The lunch bell rang and the floor beneath them shook with movement. Raised voices bled through the walls.
Harding pressed the intercom, said, “Send Rhonda in, please.” Then he looked at Noah. “Young man, you’ve run out of rope with me. This is the third time you’ve been involved in a fight this year.”
“So it’s a crime to get beaten up around here, is that it?”
“I have several students who say you started it.”
“Big surprise,” Noah said bitterly, but Vivi Ann knew him well enough to see the hurt beneath his anger.
Harding sighed. “If it was up to me, I’d suspend him, but Mrs. Ivers seems to think he deserves one last chance. And since there’s only two weeks of school left, I’m going to agree with her.” He looked at Vivi Ann. “But you need to get a tighter leash on this boy, Vivi Ann. Before he hurts someone like his—”