I raise my hand to show off one of my fingers, but he grabs it, his fist engulfing my entire hand.
“Tsk. Tsk, hopeless.”
Glaring up at him, I say, “Get on with what you have to say, Theo, before I lose my temper, and end up kicking you.”
“So violent,” he says, his voice like gravel. Then he sobers. “Look, I know you don’t always have those walls up. My son talks about you a lot—well, a lot, considering we hardly talk, but still. I’ve heard about how good of a principal you are. The kids like you, and that’s a hard thing to accomplish with teenagers. You have to earn their respect, and they know better than anyone when someone is being fake. So what’s the difference? Why can you be so open with them but closed off with everyone else?’
The question catches me off-guard because I don’t know how to explain to him that it’s easier with kids because I want to be the adult in their life that I didn’t have in mine. So I take the easy way out instead. “I don’t know.”
He must have been expecting that answer because he steps closerinto my body, forcing me to look up at him, and says, “Now tell the truth.”
“Because I’ve been the kid who needed an adult who cared. Someone warm and kind.” The confession is pulled from beneath clenched teeth, but once it’s out, it’s like I can’t stop. I keep talking, even though my brain is screaming at me to stop. “I don’t have a lot of warmth in me, Theo, but I have enough for those kids.”
He starts to open his mouth when his name is called from the direction of Hayes’s front porch.
“Theo. Yoohoo. Theo.”
We both turn to find Ethel standing on the top step, waving her hand and staring at Theo with hunger in her eye.
I couldn’t stop the snort that escaped me even if I tried.
Theo turns back to me, sheer terror on his face.
“You have to save me.”
His words only cause me to laugh harder, the sound causing my head to tilt back and warmth to spread into my limbs.
Despite the fear still on his face caused by the eighty-year-old woman drooling over him, Theo smiles at the sound of my laughter.
“There it is,” he says, watching me as if he somehow sees another side of me.
I scrunch my brows. “What?”
He smiles. “The warmth you weren’t sure you had.”
Chapter 21
Lily
My phone has been vibrating in my back pocket since Theo and I walked up the sidewalk to where Ethel awaited us. Theo took my hand in his the moment we started walking toward her and practically used me as a human shield until we were out of view.
That was almost an hour ago, and the phone keeps ringing. The pounding of my heart is deafening, and I wonder if I’m the only one who can hear it.
I’m supposed to be working on being more personable, and yet I can’t concentrate on that when the woman who made me the way I am keeps calling. She’s been calling for weeks, and I haven’t answered once. You’d think she’d take the hint, but that would mean she’d have to think about someone else for once in her life.
This is not the only time I’ve gone no contact with her. I did it once before, but I eventually gave in—and it led to my ruin. I won’t be so naive as to do it again this time because I realized I was a crutch, and my mother would never learn to walk if I continued to let her use me. And truth be told, I was crumbling under her weight. If we had continued down that path, we both would have crumbled. There was only one safety vest, and I’d taken it for me.
But each time my phone rang the last couple of weeks, I felt mycontrol start to crumble, leaving cracks.
The phone call ends, and I sigh a breath of relief. But then it picks back up again, and I nearly cry.
“Are you alright, sugar?” Della Rae Richards stands before me, a pristine picture of a Southern woman in a wide-brimmed hat and clean pressed clothes. She’s Campbell’s mother and another member of the Benton Birdies.
I’d been trying to think of something to say to her—something to show her I’m not the ice block she thinks I am—but so far, I’ve come up with nothing.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say with a smile that undoubtedly confirms her suspicions of me. “I was thinking about the checklist Abigail and I made last week for the summer festival. I’ll send that to you this week once it’s finalized.”
Della Rae waved her hand, a sour look pursing her lips. “Today isn’t for work, Lily. We do enough of that during the week. Today’s for family.”
