A Child's Wish

“Every one of them. She steps outside her position, she apologizes and life goes on. Until it happens again. She’s a damn good teacher, Suze, I’d hate to lose her, but she butted heads with a powerful man this time and I don’t know how long I can keep explaining things away.”

“I mean about the kids, Mark,” Susan said, her voice filled with compassion—whether for him or her friend, he wasn’t sure. Knowing Susan, it was probably a bit of both. “How often has she been wrong about the kids?”

In a way, he resented her generosity. Meredith Foster deserved anger tonight, not compassion.

“She’s good with the kids, no one’s arguing about that.”

Susan straightened up on the edge of the couch, facing him. “How many times have her predictions turned out to be true?”

“I honestly couldn’t tell you,” he said. “The point is irrelevant. Anyone can guess and be right fifty percent of the time.”

“I’d bet my retirement fund that her percentage is closer to eighty or ninety than fifty.”

He highly doubted it—but he couldn’t prove either of them right without a hell of a lot more work than he had time for. Meredith Foster was stepping outside the boundaries of her position and she could cost both of them their jobs. If she’d wanted to psychoanalyze, she should have gone into psychology.

“What about Amber McDonald?”

“Who?” He opened an eye to glance at Susan. Other than her current choice of topic, she was good company. He was glad she was there.

“That little girl two years ago. She was being sexually abused by a family friend and no one suspected anything until Meredith came forward.”

She was Amber Walker now. Her mother had remarried and moved the child to a different state. Last he’d heard, she’d joined Girl Scouts and was starting to socialize a bit.

“Amber must have told her something,” he said.

“Testimony revealed that she’d been threatened and manipulated so completely that she couldn’t even tell the police, her mother or counselors about it—not even after the guy was arrested.”

He’d forgotten that. It had been a minute detail compared to the anguish everyone—including Mark—had experienced over the incident. That event had branded within him a fierce need to protect his daughter. He’d carefully screened the four teenage girls who were permitted to sit with Kelsey. And at no time, under any circumstances, were these girls to have anyone over when they were in his home. If there was an emergency, the police were to be called. Followed by him.

“Meredith felt it, Mark,” Susan said, her brow creased. “I know it’s hard to grasp, this gift of hers, but that doesn’t make it any less real.”

He stared at her, not sure what to say. He’d suspected that Susan put credence in Meredith Foster’s fantasies, but she’d never before actually come out and said so. They’d managed to avoid conversation on the subject until now.

He respected her right to believe whatever she believed. She just wasn’t going to convince him. It wasn’t logical.

“Has she ever known stuff about you without first being told?” he asked. He was somewhat curious to hear the answer, but he also hoped to show her the hole in her theory. Meredith and Susan had been friends since they were fifteen years old—having met at a church youth function and found common ground in their non-traditional lives.

“All the time.”

Mark’s eyes opened wide at her response. Susan was a medical doctor, for God’s sake. A scientist.

“Ten minutes after Bud died, Meredith was at my door. I was still in shock, hadn’t called anyone yet, and there she was.”

“You said she stopped by often during the last days of your husband’s fight with leukemia.”

“She did. But she always called first to see if Bud was awake. She didn’t want to impinge on what little time we had left together.”

“So maybe she was in the area.”

Susan shook her head. “She knew, Mark. She didn’t knock, she just used the extra key, came in and found me on the bed beside him sobbing….”

Mark’s throat tightened as Susan’s eyes filled with tears. He could see her need to believe—he hurt for the anguish she’d been through, and cared enough to let the rest go.

Pulling her against him he held her while she cried, rubbing her back, wanting to do whatever he could to ease a grief that he understood would be with her always. Three and a half years had passed since Barbie had walked out on him and Kelsey, and the ache still throbbed as intensely as ever during the dark hours.

“THESE ARE BAD MEN.”

Kelsey Shepherd leaned over on the stained couch to whisper to her mother. Two scary-looking old guys had come in from the garage door and they were putting something in the refrigerator. Kelsey thought they were gross.