Kiss Me Hello (2 page)

“I knew you’d escape.” Marie said. “They won’t RIF fourth-years.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Sara said. “I forgot to check the mail.”

With every year of added seniority, she hoped to escape the RIF. But as the lower rungs were chopped off, every year the ax reached higher up the ladder.

Marie stirred cream into her coffee. “I knew the cuts would be brutal, but I hoped…”

Charlotte and Frank came in, laughing over some kids’ antics out in the hall. Both went silent when they saw Marie’s face.

“She got a final notice,” Sara said.

“It doesn’t mean you’re out.” Frank pulled out a chair. “There’s the August rehire. They always lay off more than they need to, just to cover their butts.”

Charlotte slammed the freezer door. “I’m quitting.” She popped her Lean Cuisine into the microwave. “It’s not worth it.”

“You’ve got ten years’ seniority, Charlotte,” Sara said. “You’re safe.”

“I don’t care. I can’t stand it anymore. They’re not getting rid of any kids, are they? We need more teachers, not fewer. How big do you think our classes will be next year?

“I’m up past midnight all the time as it is grading papers,” Frank said. “I swear I’m going to make everything multiple choice.”

“But what will you do, Charlotte?” Sara said. It was amazing to her someone could decide, just like that, to change her life. Even if she desperately wanted to. Even if she’d felt frozen in the wrong life for a long time.

“I’m going to be a stay-at-home mom,” Charlotte said. “We want another baby, and John just made partner. We can afford for me to quit.”

Great work if you can get it,
Sara thought. The old pain returned. She and Bram had been married four years and hadn’t had their first child yet. That is, if you didn’t count the miscarriage.

“All the years of college and student teaching,” Marie said. “You finally get a job and…”

“You think it’s going to be like
Little House on the Prairie
,” Frank said.

The room went silent, and the women stared at Frank. Then they all burst out laughing at the thought of the big, athletic guy loving the Little House books.

“Frank’s right,” Sara said. “For me, it was
Anne of Green Gables
. The school at Avonlea.”

“Children who listen and do the homework and parents who always have your back,” Marie said dreamily.

They didn’t talk much through the rest of the lunch break. Sara kept thinking about the weird chill she’d felt in class—and Aunt Amelia’s lover. When the warning buzzer blasted, they all winced and Frank said, “There was never a bell like that at Avonlea.”

Charlotte snorted. “Another beastly thing I won’t miss.”

“I once rang a fantastic bell,” Sara said. “An old brass thing I found it in my aunt’s barn.” Turtledove Hill was in the air today. She hadn’t thought of that bell in years either.

She couldn’t actually remember the sound of it, only that it was beautiful—and how ringing it had made Aunt Amelia so angry. Yes, Sara had been snooping where she shouldn’t, but what was the harm? Did it justify banishment from the only place that ever touched her heart—her soul?

It sounded melodramatic, but Turtledove Hill called to Sara as much as Thornfield Hall ever called to Jane Eyre. She’d tried to reconnect with her aunt during college, even invited herself for a visit, but the old lady wasn’t having it.
Don’t come here.
Sara could still hear the voice on the telephone.
Don’t ever come here.

The door swung open and the next group of teachers came in for lunch. Sara cleared off her place and headed back to her classroom. She couldn’t shake off the anxious feeling, the sense of impending doom. It was crazy, but she knew something was wrong at Turtledove Hill. Something had happened to Aunt Amelia.

SINCE SARA’S HUSBAND WAS
RIF’d last year, he’d been waiting on tables at a steakhouse at The Fountains. From the beginning their marriage had been difficult, and this last year hadn’t helped. With Sara working days and Bram working nights, everything they did together was at odd hours. Like today, meeting for dinner at four o’clock before his shift started.

She parked at the restaurant next door to where Bram worked. As she turned off the car, her phone buzzed with a text from him. There was also a voicemail from an area code she didn’t recognize. It must have come in while she was at school and had the sound turned off.

Babe
, Bram’s text said,
I will b erl get table, kiss kiss
. She smiled and logged on to her voicemail.

“Hi. I hope this is Sara Lyndon,” said a cheerful unfamiliar voice. Sara stayed in the car to listen. “My name is Bonnie Norquist. I know your great aunt, Amelia Lyndon. Amelia had a fall this morning.”

Sara froze. Her premonition had been right.

“She’s fine!” The message went on. “Oh, my god! I should have said that first.”

You think?

“Anyway, she broke her ankle pretty bad. Dr. Kasaty admitted her to rehab. I’m calling because you’re listed as next of kin on the paperwork. You might want to give the rehab facility a call.”

Sara played back the message and wrote down the number the woman left. Her ears burned as she punched it in.
You might want to give the rehab a call.
As if she hadn’t tried to talk to Aunt Amelia so many times over the years!

Someone answered, “Pelican Chase Rehab.” The receptionist put the call through to Aunt Amelia’s room.

“I’ll be fine, dear.” Aunt Amelia didn’t sound fine. She sounded tired and weak. “I just need therapy on my leg. Bonnie’s made all the arrangements.”

“Who is Bonnie?” Sara felt like a jealous child. “I’m your flesh and blood. Your closest relative.” Technically that was true; her father, Amelia’s nephew, was in Texas with Sara’s little sister and his new wife. “I’m coming to see you.”

There was a pause.

“Aunt Amelia?”

A longer pause.

“Are you there?”

“All right, dear.” There was a world of meaning in that
all right.
As if a decision had been made, more than mere agreement. There was defeat…and acceptance. “But wait until I’m out of this place. Then you come to Turtledove Hill, Sara, and we’ll have a long talk. It’s time.”

It’s time.

Something in Sara broke loose, something deep inside. It broke loose and burst forth and flooded into the light of day from a place long hidden.

- 2 -
Wake Up

Fourteen years earlier

S
ARA LYNDON WAITED WHILE
an old pickup truck loaded with farm workers drove by on Highway 1. Behind her, rolling vineyards went on forever. She must have walked over a mile from her great aunt’s house, the most wonderful house in the world. She was still steaming because Dad sent her outside before she could see anything but the kitchen.

She was steaming about other stuff too. Like the fact that her parents made her come with them today. They said she couldn’t be trusted at home by herself—all because she’d watched that movie last night.

She dashed across the two-lane highway as a red Lexus convertible came around the bend driving way too fast. The car swerved to miss the truck and spun in a half circle, tires squealing. It finally and stopped only yards away from Sara. Her feet wouldn’t move, but her heart pounded like crazy.

The Lexus driver looked like Kristin Scott Thomas, an actress in the movie Sara wasn’t supposed to see.
Sheesh
. She was fourteen, but they still treated her like a baby.

“Asshole!” The driver screamed at the truck. Her wild eyes contorted like a cartoon villain’s. Sara laughed and gasped in shock simultaneously, making a little hiccup sound. The driver didn’t see or hear. She pulled the car back onto the highway, leaned on the horn, and roared away toward Pelican Chase.

Maybe she didn’t look like Kristin Scott Thomas after all.

The truck rolled on as if nothing had happened and made a slow turn onto Turtledove Hill Road. The workers in the back of the truck were laughing about the Lexus driver, and one at the back caught Sara’s eye. He made an exaggerated
whew!
gesture and draped his muscled arm casually over the tailgate.

He was eighteen or nineteen with dark eyes, curly black hair, and a smile that sent a zing through Sara’s gut. She returned his smile just as the truck turned onto a side road and dipped out of sight. With butterflies in her stomach, she jogged another hundred feet or so to the ocean cliffs.

The village of Pelican Chase lay on a peninsula to the north. Below her, waves pounded over the rocks in a small bay. A sandy beach stretched to the south, but the way down looked too dangerous. So much for the plan to explore the beach and collect shells.

The breeze off the ocean blasted her face and whipped through her hair. She breathed the biting salty air deep into her lungs and began to relax listening to the surf. Her aunt was so lucky to live near the ocean.

A seagull screamed by, and she jumped and fell backwards into a bush. The bird swooped down and out past the breaking waves to join its flock fishing in the water. All seagulls, nothing more exotic. No pelicans.

Sara sat down and crossed her legs and picked bits of broken twigs out of her sweater. The horizon was a flat line, Pacific Ocean below and blue sky above. This would make a great thinking spot. If she had her backpack, she’d have a snack and read for a while. Or write in her diary. But she’d left the backpack and diary at home, and her book was in her purse at Aunt Amelia’s.

She closed her eyes and pictured the guy in the truck. He’d been flirting with her—and she liked it. She committed his face to memory so she could write about him later. And the Kristin Scott Thomas woman.

The English Patient
was so great. As usual, Mom and Dad didn’t know what they were talking about. The Millers next door had HBO, and the movie came on last night while Sara was babysitting after the kids were in bed. She meant to change the channel when the trashy parts started, but before she knew it the whole thing was over.

She honestly didn’t know what was so horrible about the movie, but Mom practically popped a vein this morning when Sara mentioned watching it. Her parents were such prudes. No objection to the cruelty and torture and death. It was the adultery they hated. The sex.

Another car drove by on the highway, and Sara looked back at Aunt Amelia’s house in the distance. It looked like it was in a painting. Turtledove Hill had a few chickens, but it wasn’t a real farm. There were no cows, no corn, no strawberries or onions or cabbages. There was a barn, though. Maybe her aunt had horses.

North and east of the house and barn, thousands of grapevines filled a couple hundred acres, rows and rows everywhere except for the eucalyptus grove at the bottom of the hill between the highway and the house.

With a shock, Sara understood that Aunt Amelia must be rich.

The house sat halfway up a hill, a big rambling two-story thing with lots of windows and angles and a veranda that stretched across most of the front. There was a widow’s walk above the second floor and a small third story that only looked big enough to be one room.

She wondered where the house got its name. There didn’t seem to be any turtledoves at Turtledove Hill any more than there were pelicans in Pelican Chase.

Sara got to her feet and brushed off her jeans. It was Mom and Dad’s fault if she’d gone too far. They were the ones who told her to “go play.”
But stay away from the vineyards,
Mom had said.
That’s where the ghosts are.
She said it with that smile that meant “just joking, kiddo.” Sara hated that. And it wasn’t a smile. It was a smirk.

Going down to the beach was out of the question, and she didn’t care about the vineyards, ghosts or not. A bunch of bare sticks on trellises couldn’t be more boring. On the other hand, Aunt Amelia’s barn looked interesting.

Sara ran across the highway and down Turtledove Hill Road and took a shortcut through the eucalyptus grove. It was colder there where the trees blocked the sun. Geese flew overhead in a V, and their honky-honks mixed with the wind in the leaves. Nature’s music. It made Sara feel alive.

She came to a pond made where a fallen tree had dammed up a stream. Early flowers bloomed all around, pink hyacinths, blue crocus. Hundreds of snowdrops made a frilly white collar around the water. A slab of slate jutted out over the pool. Mom would love it here. She’d been so nervous since she got pregnant. So overprotective. This place would calm her down.