Without Mercy (Mercy 1)

Analise’s smooth forehead puckered. “I don’t know anything about it. While I was there, a boy tried to leave, but one of the TAs convinced him to return.”

“TAs?”

“They’re like grad students who stay on and work at the academy. Each ‘pod’—that’s the group you’re assigned to when you enroll—has a teacher for a leader and at least one TA to help the teacher and kind of, oh, you know, connect with the members of the pod. Bridge the generation gap, I guess. TAs are people you can talk to, people who have endured what you’ve gone through and are a lot closer to your age, so it’s easier to confide in them.”

“And they report back to the teachers.”

“No … not really. Eli was my TA and look, I ended up marrying him.” She smiled proudly.

Jules didn’t share her enthusiasm. In her opinion, Eli Blackwood was a sanctimonious know-it-all who seemed to quietly control his wife. There was something snaky about him, something that bothered her. Analise seemed to adore him; he seemed to quietly bully her. But she wasn’t going to bring it up now. Instead she asked, “Wasn’t getting involved with your TA frowned upon?”

“Oh, yeah. We didn’t actually get together, well, not openly, until I got back here and he finished his term.”

“How did that go over?”

For the first time, Analise looked away and appeared more than a little anxious. “Not great,” she admitted. “Since Eli was, well, ‘chosen,’ for lack of a better word, to be one of the special TAs, it was expected that he’d stay there until he was out of college.”

“Special?”

Analise shrugged. “Students showing the most promise, I guess, are pulled into an elite program. The school has an online program they worked out with a local university in southern Oregon. Eli actually fulfilled that requirement, but he decided to do his graduate work here, in Seattle.” She bit at the corner of her mouth. “That didn’t fly so well,” she admitted. She was fingering Chloe’s gold curls as she spoke, but she seemed far away, in another world.

Jules asked, “So what were the ramifications of his leaving?”

“Nothing. We got married as soon as I finished nursing school, and we adopted Bentley from a bulldog rescue shelter, bought this house, and had Chloe.”

“And you have nothing bad to say about Blue Rock.”

“Nothing,” she said quickly. Almost too quickly. Then she added, “Do you think maybe you’re tilting at windmills, Jules? I know you and Shaylee were tight when she was growing up, but you’ve both changed, and Shay might not be the sweet little innocent she once was.”

“I don’t think she’s innocent or naive,” Jules admitted. “Not anymore. But it’s tough out there for kids.”

“I know, and you’ve always felt that it was kind of you and her against the world.”

“Sometimes.”

“And, come on, you and I aren’t that old; it was tough for us, too.”

Chloe squirmed on Analise’s lap. “Uh-oh, someone’s getting sleepy,” she said, and though the kid looked anything but ready to go down for a nap, Jules got the hint.

“I’d better go anyway.” She stood, then grabbed her coat and scarf from the hall tree by the front door. “Oh, wait. Was there a teacher named Maris Howell on the staff when you were there?”

Analise was hauling Chloe to her feet. “I don’t think so.”

“She taught social studies, I think.”

Analise shook her head. “I was there eight years ago, Jules, but the name isn’t familiar. Why?”

“She was let go. Some scandal with a student.”

“Really?” Analise pulled a face. “Was she fired?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Teachers and students—taboo at Blue Rock.”

“Taboo anywhere, but sometimes it still happens.”

Jules slung her scarf around her neck. “I thought you might know what happened, who the student was.”