Nightwork, page 23
That popped his eyes open. “You can’t make me write that crap and nobody else.”
“Write it or don’t. Don’t? Find another class, because I’m in charge of this one. You made a statement, now you’ll back it up or retract it, in a five-hundred-word essay. You’re one student in a class of twenty-four, Kirby, and you’ve wasted enough of everyone’s time complaining. I’ll add this.”
He paused, waiting for the mutters, snickers, shuffling to quiet down.
“A lot of the required reading books might seem out of step, at least on the surface. And not all of them are going to interest some of you, maybe most. So, with that in mind, every four weeks we’re doing a free read. You read what you want, and turn in a report on it.”
“Deadpool!” somebody shouted out.
“Graphic novels accepted.”
The kid—Ethan, Booth remembered—stared in shock. “No joke?”
“In this class we respect the written word. We may not agree with the writer, we may not enjoy the story or characters, but we respect the written word, and we’re free to express our opinions on a book—positive or negative. Now, back to Scout.”
He got through the first day, then the second. He held auditions with the help of the music and choral instructor, and got through those—with some very pleasant surprises.
Vocally, he had some strong voices to work with. On the acting side, a few with actual talent, and more with potential.
And a lot of energy.
He sweated over casting because he remembered what it was like—when he’d still been able—to try out for a high school play, then wait for the posting of the cast, the crew, the understudies.
A week flowed into two, and two weeks into a month crowded with lesson plans, rehearsals, club meetings—he had a total of five for the Shakespeare—staff meetings, grading papers.
He’d known, of course, teaching involved a lot more than teaching, but now he experienced it.
He took time to install a security system, and a secondary one on the bedroom upstairs he used to store his tools and wardrobe and the rest of his nightwork business.
Though he felt a twinge now and then, and a genuine yearning more than once to stand in a darkened house that belonged to someone else, he stuck to the rules of his sabbatical for the remainder of the school year.
He attended graduation, as some of his students wore cap and gown, and decided it served as a kind of graduation for himself, too.
He’d opened some doors, he’d handled more than a few problems, and he’d directed a pretty damn good play. More, he’d enjoyed it all.
Now, with summer vacation around the corner, and some actual time off, he’d do more kayaking on his river, spend a lazy morning or evening now and again sitting on his deck or patio. He’d read for pleasure, maybe have a barbecue for the other teachers and staff.
And if he took a trip to the wealthy DC suburbs and their lovely old homes filled with lovely things over the long summer? A man had to keep his hand in.
* * *
He’d planned for a year, possibly two, as Sebastian Booth, high school teacher, avid kayaker, theater enthusiast, and Shakespeare buff.
He liked himself in the role and enjoyed, more than he’d imagined, lighting a spark in a student.
He attended his second graduation and then his third. With his third, he watched Kirby—initial antagonist turned solid B student—cross the stage in cap and gown.
It made him proud, of the boy, and of himself for finding the key to Kirby’s particular lock.
On that third summer, he weighed the pros and cons—stay or go.
The pros came easy. He liked his house, the area, the people, the work. And all of that snuggled into a spot just remote enough to keep LaPorte sniffing elsewhere. In fact, it seemed next to impossible LaPorte would continue to waste time and resources in pursuit of a single thief.
But the next to impossible carried weight.
He felt comfortable in Sebastian Booth’s skin, and that ranked high. The fact he could see himself remaining in that skin for the long haul straddled the pro/con fence.
Ranking high on the cons? However comfortable the skin, it didn’t allow him to forge serious personal relationships. He had far too many reasons to avoid that basic human need.
Friendships? All good. The occasional and mutually agreed casual sex, no problem. But he couldn’t risk real intimacy or a lasting connection.
Then again, he didn’t see how that changed if he bailed out and picked it all up somewhere else as someone else.
Here, he had the change of seasons, and he’d seen them all now. The burgeoning banquet of spring, the sticky hot summer, the heartbreaking colors of autumn, and the quiet blanket of winter.
Whenever he went, wherever he went, he needed to find somewhere that gave him the same sense of peace and purpose.
As summer dragged her sweaty feet toward her finish line, he found himself back in the classroom. He looked out at the fresh new faces, the bored eyes, the eager ones.
“Good morning, I’m Sebastian Booth, and this is Language Arts. We’ll be exploring various genres of literature, your critical thinking and writing skills. We’ll start discussions on the first assigned book, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, next week. You can find it in the school library, the town library, at Books on Main, and possibly on a shelf in your own home.”
He noted who wrote it all down, who stared out the window or up at the ceiling. And the pair who sat just across from each other who texted back and forth.
“I can make you read those texts out loud to the whole class before I take the phones,” he said casually, “or you can put the phones away.”
Phones vanished into pockets.
“Good choice.”
He decided staying, for maybe just one more year, also made a good choice.
He fell into a routine that took him straight into winter break. Classwork, prep work, club meetings. Auditions, then rehearsals for Four Weddings and a Funeral, the senior class play, the various skits and monologues for his theater students. Add the in-depth discussions and debates on As You Like It in his now twelve-member Shakespeare Club.
Building sets, building minds.
He had a tree in the window, lights glowing on the eaves of his front porch roof, and a double batch of iced and decorated sugar cookies in a tin to take to Lorna’s—Principal Downey’s—holiday bash.
He left the house in a festive mood, only more lifted by the brisk air and a killer full moon. He looked forward to socializing with fellow teachers, friends, and others who made up Lorna’s wide circle.
He tended to spend most evenings at home, but he never missed Lorna’s holiday party, and hosted an annual summer barbecue himself.
He’d drop in for a pizza in town, had become a regular at Books on Main—though he backed off the urging to lead a book club, or just join. Until the depths of winter, he could be seen most weekends kayaking on the river.
He’d seriously considered getting a dog, but managed to fall back on what he determined was common sense and let it go.
Cars already crammed the drive and the street in front of Lorna and her husband Jacob’s house.
They didn’t stint on decorations. The entire two stories with attached garage winked in lights, as did the big maple that shaded the front yard. Elves scattered under it, and Santa rode his sleigh behind Rudolph on the rooftop.
Christmas might be over, and the world heading fast toward a new year. But here, Christmas lived and lived bright.
He didn’t have to knock or ring the bell. An invitation to Lorna’s meant: Come on in.
So he did, into lights and Christmas carols. People crowded into the living room and straight back to the kitchen with its long peninsula loaded with food.
Knowing the routine, he greeted and was greeted as he made his way back to the den to ditch his coat, then into the kitchen to put the cookies out on the already crowded dessert table.
Tracey, decked out in Christmas red, came up to kiss his cheek.
They’d dated a little, slept together twice, but both agreed friendship worked better for them.
He’d gone to her wedding the previous spring.
“Merry and happy. You brought those damn cookies, didn’t you?”
“Guilty.”
“My hips expand just thinking about them.” She grabbed one anyway.
“You look amazing, as always.”
“I feel amazing. I sealed a deal on the rental about a mile from you. Six-month lease, dead of winter. And to a celebrity.”
“Whoa. Tell me it’s Jennifer Lawrence. She owns my heart.”
That earned an elbow poke and laugh. “I wish. But she’s your kind of celebrity. You have to come meet her.” She started scanning the crowd. “Her godmother moved here a few years ago, after a divorce, to get out of Dodge, so to speak. She’s an old friend of Lorna’s. And our celeb’s here to spend some time with the godmother while she researches the area. And here she is! How’s it going? Sebastian, I’ve got someone you have to meet.”
He turned, and the world dropped away.
She’d drawn her hair back with two little braids over her ears so the rest fell, sun-drenched autumn leaves, down her back.
Those eyes, that witchy green, stared straight into his. He saw shock register.
“Miranda Emerson, bestselling novelist, Sebastian Booth. Sebastian’s busy instilling a love for books and theater at Westbend High.”
“Sebastian,” she said, very slowly, very deliberately.
She could destroy everything with a word, and he couldn’t blame her. A word, and he’d get out, grab his go bag, and be gone.
It didn’t seem to matter. Nothing did. But he reached out a hand, took hers. “It’s nice to meet you. I really like your work.”
“Do you?”
He wondered if only he heard that edge. “I do. I’m halfway through Counterpoint.”
“Sebastian almost single-handedly keeps Books on Main in business. And it turns out the two of you are neighbors, or will be when you move in.”
“Neighbors.” Not an edge this time, he thought, but a kind of stunned laugh.
“Sebastian’s house is about half a mile from yours, on the river. Oh, I see Marcy Babcock’s cornered my Nick again. She’s always wanting to sue somebody. Let me go save him.”
He waited a beat, then said her name, just her name. “Miranda.”
“Don’t. I’m not going to make a scene and embarrass my godmother or Lorna. Not here, not now.”
She walked away, and her scent lingered.
He couldn’t just slip out, not without generating a lot of questions. Instead he poured himself a half glass of wine. He could stay out of her way for an hour. He didn’t think his system could take more than an hour.
He gravitated toward a group, slid into it. Blended while everything inside him twisted and churned.
He’d have to leave, no question of that. How he left depended on Miranda. If she’d give him time, he’d create an emergency, list the house with Tracey, give Lorna a little time to replace him, or line up subs.
If she didn’t, he’d pack up what he needed, say goodbye to Sebastian Booth, and disappear.
Maybe head west this time. Maybe freaking Alaska would be far enough away that fate couldn’t put her in front of him again.
Couldn’t put her where she stirred up all those old feelings. The ones he’d tried to lock away. Now she’d cracked the combination just by being. Those feelings were the only thing that hadn’t changed in a dozen years.
He was still in love with her.
He talked, even laughed. He hugged Lorna and gave Jacob the man-version thereof. He nursed that half glass of wine for the full hour. He spotted her a couple times—that hair spilling down the back of a forest-green dress.
She met his eyes once, when she sat with Andy and Carolyn Stipper, the owners of the bookstore. And that look nearly dropped him to his knees.
He retrieved his coat, then slipped out the back like a—well, like a thief.
He drove home on autopilot, the festive mood shattered, and then just sat in his car. Put his head back, closed his eyes as everything she’d released swam through him.
His life—the life here he admitted now he’d wanted to keep, to build, to belong to, that was done. And he accepted that.
But how could he accept he’d never have a real life—anywhere, under any name—because he couldn’t have her?
What kind of world was it that demanded he feel this, all of this, for the one woman out of his reach?
“Reality,” he muttered as he slammed out of the car. “It’s just fucking reality.
He’d nearly made it to the door when he spotted the headlights. His world shook one more time as the car pulled in behind his.
She hadn’t wasted time.
He waited while she walked, the heels of her boots clicking on the slate. He started to speak without a clue what to say. And her fist plowed, with considerable force, into his gut.
She knocked the wind out of him. He had to suck it back in, ease it out again.
“I deserved that.”
“You deserve a fist in the face, you absolute prick, but giving you a black eye would bring on too many questions.”
“You’re right, both counts. It’s cold. Do you want to come in?”
“No, but I will.”
He unlocked the door, reset the alarm once inside. “Let me take your coat.”
“Don’t touch me.” She swung off the coat herself as she crossed the living room to toss it over a chair.
“Okay. Can I get you a drink, or—”
“Oh, please.”
She looked like a warrior, ready for a battle she’d surely win. He saw pieces of the girl he’d known and loved, but the woman had a toughness she hadn’t. She had a vibrating confidence and a lot of righteous fury.
“Sebastian Booth? What kind of bullshit is that? And you’re teaching? Do you even have a degree? What the hell is your name?”
“Here and now, it’s Sebastian Booth. Don’t make me quote Shakespeare on names. I’m not going to tell you because it’s better for both of us.”
“You’re a liar, and don’t think I’m going to buy into your lies the way I did when I was twenty. Answer my questions, or I go straight to Lorna and your little game here’s done.”
“It’s not a game, not the way you mean. But I’ll go. I’ll leave. If you could give me a few days, I’ll—”
Fury had the roses in her cheeks blooming hot.
“Take off like before? Leave Lorna in the lurch, desert the kids she claims you teach so creatively? Just like you.” She whirled away, whirled back. “Will your mythical aunt have another car accident?”
“She not mythical. She didn’t have an accident, but she’s not mythical.”
“Anyone who’d lie about his mother dying of cancer would lie about anything.”
“Stop.” His voice whipped out on that, and he found some of his own temper simmering. “I was nine the first time my mother had cancer, the first time she went through the tests, through all the treatments and sicked up her guts from them. Think whatever you want about me, you’re entitled. But don’t diminish what she went through. She wasn’t even thirty the first time, and she didn’t live to see forty.”
“Then why all the lies, Booth? You broke my goddamn heart, and made me ashamed of what I’d felt for you, what I did with you. You cheapened everything. You cheapened me.”
“I meant to. I didn’t know any other way. There was someone who wanted me to do something, who didn’t give me a choice. To get it done, and get out, I had to go, just go. And I thought—I believed—making you hate me was better for you.”
“That’s not good enough, not even close. I cried buckets over you. You hurt me, Booth, the way no one ever had, or has again. ‘Someone’? ‘Something’? Not good enough. You’re standing here in a house a high school teacher shouldn’t be able to afford, you’re using another name, and, according to Lorna, you graduated from Northwestern, which is another lie, and fraud. You were in North Carolina.
“So who and what and why.”
She perched on the arm of a chair—didn’t sit, he thought, as that was too casual, too friendly. She perched there, gestured to him.
“I get some truth or I swear to God, I will punch you in the face on my way to a serious conversation with Lorna.”
He saw something he hadn’t wanted to. Under the fury in those eyes lived hurt.
He was done here, he reminded himself. He could give her some truth first.
“His name’s LaPorte, and he wanted me to steal a bronze sculpture. Bella Donna—it was worth several million then. Probably double that now since the theft.”
She cocked her head, arched that eyebrow. “Why in the hell would somebody want or expect you to steal a statue?”
“Because that’s what I do. I steal things.” He sat now, partly because it took a weight off to just say it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
She clearly didn’t believe him. Rather than shock at his revelation, she showed derision.
“So at about the age of twenty, you’re forced by this LaPorte to steal a valuable piece of art. Successfully, I assume?”
“I’m good at what I do.”
“Right.” She pushed up. “I guess we’re done here.”
“Look it up. Take out your phone, Google it. Bella Donna, bronze, artist Julietta Castletti, stolen from the Hobart, a private museum in Baltimore. Just a few weeks after I left.”
She took out her phone, and while she keyed in the details, he continued. “I took it to him at his place in Lake Charles, Louisiana—Christmas Day. Then I changed my name—and my look again. That’s something else I’m good at. And I chartered a plane to Paris. I needed to keep away from him because he’d just do the same thing again, and again. It’s a power trip for him.”
She looked up from her phone. “Just because you know some details about this art theft doesn’t mean you took it, or that anything you’re telling me is the truth.”
“For Christ’s sake.” He pushed up, moved toward the fireplace, brushing by her on the way. “I’m going to light the fire. What time is it?”
