banked anger that scared her, as well as about his kindness, his ready ear, his intelligence and patience.
“I really thought…” She couldn’t finish.
“He was the one?” her mother asked softly.
Fiona nodded.
“Maybe he is. Maybe you need to be patient.”
“I think…” She bit down hard on her lip, tasting blood.
“I hurt his pride, Mom. I doubt he can forgive me that.”
“Just…leave the door open. Somehow, let him know
it is open. That’s my advice, for what it’s worth. Now—”
her tone changed, although her expression stayed kind
“—what do you say we sit down to eat?”
On the first day back to school, Erin asked Fiona
shyly if she’d seen Mr. Fallon over the break. Several
of the students knew that he and she had been e-mailing
back and forth.
“Yes, I went up there for a few days,” she admitted.
“He kept my room for me.” So, okay, she hadn’t used
it. That wasn’t the kind of thing you told a teenager.
“Wasn’t that sweet?”
“That’s so cool! I wish I could have gone with you
instead of…” She stopped.
“Instead of?”
“Oh, my parents mostly worked. I know they had to,
but it was boring.” She shrugged. “That’s okay. I had to
work on college applications anyway.”
They talked about those, and about the recommendation Fiona was going to write for her. Then Erin left with her customary poise. Recognizing loneliness when
she saw it, Fiona was sad watching her go.
Over the next few weeks, Fiona kept thinking about
her mother’s advice. Would allowing herself to hope
that she and John could somehow reconnect keep her
from moving on? If she wanted to leave the door open,
what would she use to prop it ajar? A note? An e-mail?
Maybe because of her dad’s infidelity and her parents’
troubles, of which she’d been all too aware, Fiona prided
herself on her ability to accept life as it came. In this case,
she had a choice: she could marry a man who would
never really talk to her and live in an isolated lodge doing
laundry, changing beds and serving guests. Or she could
walk away from him, choose the career she loved, the
graduate degree that meant something to her, the relationships she had with students, friends and her mother. She’d already made her choice the day she’d driven away from
Thunder Mountain Lodge. Now all she had to do was put
the sense of loss behind her.
In the middle of January, however, she did send an
e-mail.
John…
Even her fingers hesitated.
If you ever want to talk, you know how to reach me.
Resisting tears, she typed, Love, Fiona, and hit Send.
Her heart pounded when she checked her e-mail the
next day, and the day after that. She felt that same hope
every time she went online that week, and even into the
next week. But John never replied, and she finally gave
up expecting him to.
In mid-March, two things happened on the same day.
The first was that she got asked out on a date. Chad
Scammell had arrived at Willamette Prep as a new vice
principal the previous fall after having taught math in the
public schools. Around her age, he’d been friendly from
the start, and she’d reciprocated. She offered insight into
the different culture in a high-end private school, while
he was available to talk about kids who worried her.
He’d wandered by her classroom during her
grading/lunch period that day, as he often did, and sat
on a front row desk chatting while she ate the sandwich
and sliced apple she’d packed.
She was starting to think that the students would be
returning soon when he said, “I keep worrying about
things like sexual harassment, so I want you to know
that if you say no, I’ll listen.”
Huh? Fiona blinked in bewilderment.
“I wondered if you’d consider having dinner with
me sometime.”
Now she understood. No wonder he worried about
how she would take the invitation. They weren’t just
colleagues; he was technically her superior in the
school hierarchy.
Have dinner with him?
Fiona hadn’t thought of him as a potential date, but