“I was already doing the best job I can think of. The thing I was probably born to do. I loved every minute of teaching kindergarten. Then it was taken away from me and I couldn’t even finish the school year with my little class. Right now, it’s hard for me to imagine doing anything else.”
“How does that make you feel?” Leah said.
“Really sad,” Ellen said. “And I miss all my kids.”
“You’re mourning,” Leah nodded. “Mourning the loss of your old life, your old job, and the kids. I can tell that you really care about them. Since you are mourning right now, we’ll take a different approach to thinking about your next job. Now, tell me about your best day on the job and why you miss it. There may be other jobs with similar aspects. And it will be good for you to talk about the things you miss to help you through the mourning process.”
Ellen knew this was typical psychological talk, with Leah having a goal of moving her toward a new job, but she had to admit it would feel good to talk about it. She really hadn’t and this was her session time so she might as well get something out of it. She took a deep breath and began.
* * *
After talking to Leah,Ellen did feel a lot better. She liked the way Leah would pause sometimes as if thinking before she spoke. Or while she waited for Ellen to formulate an answer to one of her questions. She didn’t hurry Ellen but allowed her to speak and to think.
Some of the women thought Leah took too long. Red had no patience and had complained to a few of the other women that some Indians were too damn slow. But Ellen liked Leah. So, she’d walked away from that conversation and headed to her room to get away from Red’s negativity and to have privacy. Red got on her nerves like fingernails screeching down a chalkboard.
Leah had a quiet, understanding way about her that Ellen found comforting. It was probably part of what made her such a good counselor.
Pondering what Leah had told her, Ellen walked to the stables. She would go see the horses and find out more about the riding lessons they’d all be taking. Maybe at the stables it would be easier to take her mind off her classroom kids.
She couldn’t help but worry about them.
Would little Brian be repeating kindergarten again this year, as she and his parents had discussed at the last parent teacher meeting? He was one of those boys who had a birthday right before the cutoff date for entering kindergarten and was the youngest and smallest in the class.
This was manageable in her class, as she would never let a child pick on another child, but she’d seen the difficulties he’d had in the school yard before school and likely on his walk to school.
His parents couldn’t drive him to school, and he lived too close for one of the buses to pick him up. Because both his parents had to leave early for work, he would have been home alone before walking to school, with a timer set to go off at the time he was supposed to start heading for the school. Older, bigger boys on that same walk would pick on him. There were no teachers or school yard monitors to see.
One look at his tear-streaked face had been enough to tell Ellen something was wrong. When she’d gotten to the bottom of the issue, Mr. Snyder, the white-haired janitor, had taken to walking the perimeter watching for Brian to come into sight. Then he’d greet Brian by asking if he’d tackled any more bears in the woods on his way to school.
Mr. Snyder didn’t move as fast as he used to. They would hire another assistant for him soon. The assistant would be trained and then take over the job when Mr. Snyder retired.
But it would not be Rigby Mortimer, the first one they’d hired. Thank God.
She hoped they’d run a thorough background check on the next guy. She’d told Mr. Glover, the principal, that she recommended a home visit from social services to vet the next one. If anyone had done that with Mortimer, they would have seen all the photos of her he’d tacked up around all four of his living room walls. He’d been stalking her for years, ever since college.
She’d had no idea.
Love obsession the policewoman called it. Ellen had gotten a crash course on stalkers, the hard way, and she had the scars to prove it.
Rigby Mortimer had freaked out when she wouldn’t go willingly with him. The look in his eyes had scared her to the bone. Those eyes were the ones she saw in her nightmares. If she closed her eyes now, she might see them again.
Forcing her thoughts away from Mortimer with a hard redirect and back to Brian, she wished thoughts of her stalker would stay out of her head and stop creeping in.
Brian.She closed her eyes briefly and pictured the sweet little boy.
If Brian was in her kindergarten classroom again next year, he would have a new kindergarten teacher. Ellen would never know how things went for him.
I’ll never know how my students are. This is one of the hardest things about being on the run, in hiding.
It was natural to mourn. Leah said so and Ellen knew it to be true.
The fact was she’d probably never see her last kindergarten class again or learn what had happened with little Brian. Trying not to be sad about that, she turned her attention to the horses as she reached the barn. Maybe she was sad but that was better than the direction thinking about Mortimer took her.
* * *
Travis watchedhis son Scotty as he slept in the passenger seat of his Dodge truck.
Scotty and Travis were both nervous about the move to Montana, which would be their first new home together. They’d both be far away from grandma, who though she could no longer lift Scotty onto her lap, or bend down to tie his shoes, had been the only constant in Scotty’s life since his mom had moved in with her mother. The cancer had made him and his mom close and his grandma made three. But now Grandma Betty was going to have a knee replacement and a hip replacement. She’d put it off, if possible, saying Scotty needed her.
