Closing her eyes, she pressed a hand to her pounding heart and tried to stop shaking. When she’d returned to Whiterock she’d believed the past would remain in the past, that it could be forgotten. Cain had never tried to contact her. There wasn’t even a hint that anyone knew about her terrible mistake. Until recently, she’d thought she was safe.
Tempted to call Cain, she glanced at the phone. But she didn’t move toward it. She’d tried to make herself get in touch with him before and always chickened out. She owed him an apology for what she’d done. He’d been a seventeen-year-old boy, desperate for love and attention and she’d—
Too embarrassed to think about it, she cringed, imagining her behavior exposed to the entire town. She’d been nominated for Teacher of the Year last term, for crying out loud. If the truth came out, she’d look like the biggest hypocrite on earth.
She could already see the headlines: Teacher of the Year Hides Dark Secret. She’d be publicly humiliated, fired from the school district, possibly imprisoned, maybe even forced to register as a sex offender. And if Cain hadn’t been too hurt before, he’d be hurt now. It would jeopardize his relationship with Marshall, a man he loved more than any other, by giving Marshall reason to finally side with John.
After setting her books and papers on the counter, Karen sank into her most comfortable chair. Lizzie and Pepe Le Pew, her cats, welcomed her home, brushing up against her legs, but Karen was too numb, too dazed to pet them. What was she going to do? She had a terrible feeling the notes wouldn’t stop, that eventually the sender, whoever it was, would reveal her shame.
She had to put an end to this—but how? Whoever was leaving these messages gave no clue to his or her identity. Karen had no way of determining the author, so she couldn’t even contact him or her to plead her case.
Slowly, she unfolded the paper to see what had been written this time. True to form, the note was produced on a computer and was unsigned. The first two had been very brief: I know how Cain became teacher’s pet… and Do you miss Cain, Ms. Stevens? Do you dream about him coming over after school to cut your grass?
This one was a little longer but even more painful to read: Do you still fantasize about Cain? Or is he too old these days? Maybe what you really want are the boys in your class. You’d better be careful or I’ll expose you. Just watch me.
That someone would think she’d victimize her students made her physically ill. She wasn’t like that and didn’t understand how she’d ever made such a terrible mistake. But at least it had only happened once. She wanted to believe it wouldn’t have happened at all had she really been interested in John. Fifteen years her senior, he’d seemed too old for her, too staid. He’d been through two marriages and had a family of nearly grown children, while she’d never even been engaged. When she became so hopelessly infatuated with Cain, she’d been reliving her own high school years, but she knew he’d never returned her interest.
That was the most pathetic part. Maybe she could attempt to justify her actions if they’d fallen in love, if Cain had pursued the relationship. But, after that one time in her bed, he was the one who’d told her no. Repeatedly. And that had only made her want him more.
The difficulty of trying to reconcile how she could be both a caring teacher who loved her vocation and a predator who’d lured one of her students into a sexual relationship was the reason she’d left Whiterock. She’d only returned after John had found her on MySpace and started e-mailing her again. He hadn’t gotten together with anyone else in the years she’d been gone, said he missed her and wanted to try again, and she’d begun to realize how much she missed him.
Now she was back, hoping to get it right. Instead, the mistake she’d tried to forget was back, too.
She folded the note into a small triangle. She needed to get up the nerve to ask her neighbors if they’d seen someone approach her house today. In the past, she’d been too frightened to question them, in case they kept an eye out in future and picked up what was left behind. But maybe that was a risk she’d have to take.
The doorbell rang, and Karen’s heart jumped into her throat. It was 4:00 p.m. John was early.
Getting to her feet, she rushed to her bedroom and hid the note in her underwear drawer. She’d burn it later, like the others. For now, she had to calm down and appear as normal as possible. And that wasn’t easy, because she’d fallen in love with John. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.
How ironic…
“Karen?” John was knocking again.
Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and opened the door. “Hi.”
He offered her a sheepish smile. “Did you get my message?”
He’d called to tell her he was sorry about Sunday. He was always short-tempered when Cain was around, but he’d been especially irritable at the diner. For different reasons, the stress of having Cain so close had made them both touchy.
“I did. I’m sorry, too.” Neither of them had meant the things they’d said, but she knew they’d probably argue about the same subject again. Robert wasn’t a problem that was going to disappear. Apparently, neither was Cain.
“You have to understand that it’s hard to hear you criticize my children,” he said.
And he had to understand that Cain wasn’t the bad guy he wanted him to be. John was trying to justify the fact that he’d never been able to love Cain. But after abusing her position as Cain’s teacher, Karen felt obligated to make it up to him, and that included trying to show John the extent to which prejudice tainted his feelings about his stepson.
She didn’t mention that right now, however. After finding a third note on her doorstep, she didn’t want to risk another argument. She needed to feel John’s arms around her. “I know. I’m sorry,” she said and slipped into his embrace.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” he said when she clung to him longer than usual.
She dashed a hand across her cheeks to wipe away the tears that’d begun to stream down her face. “Nothing.”
His eyebrows drew together. “Bad day at school?”
“No. Not that. I just…I don’t like it when we fight.”
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “I don’t like it either, babe. As a matter of fact, I think it’s time we stopped letting other people cause problems between us.”
Did that mean he was finally going to do something about Robert? She doubted it. More likely he’d suggest a truce: If she didn’t say anything bad about Robert, he wouldn’t say anything about Cain. He’d once asked her why they couldn’t simply pretend the two men didn’t exist, and she’d tried to explain that they didn’t live in a vacuum. By virtue of Cain and Robert’s connection to John, they were also connected to her. But she was too rattled to be so pragmatic at this particular moment. She wanted to be the dreamer for a change.