Edna and I could not agree and Dan simply refused to discuss the issue any further. He called Birk and set the meeting for the following Tuesday. The six days between were a special torture for me. Aside from the sheer mechanics of avoiding Edna, and even Dan, my waking hours were filled with sou...
I leaned back against the lounger. ‘But what does he think is wrong with her? Why does he think she’s doing that?’ ‘He said he found her delightful. Very articulate.’ ‘Daddy, she was purposely trying to be delightful. You know Mama.’ ‘Well, then,’ he said with a smile, ‘things can’t be too bad, c...
My discomfort, however, was inconsequential compared with Ladbrooke’s. She sat at the table, drinking water out of my coffee mug and looking as if she had just survived a war. It was almost 5:30, but I didn’t have any of the necessary preparation work done for the next day, so I took a couple of ...
It was the same as at Garson Gayer. After days and weeks and months of silence, Kevin suddenly decided to talk again to the hospital staff. It must have been hard to do, the way he did it, because everyone had become so accustomed to his silence. It created a terrible furor for the first few days...
Laura said. “Fifteen months had passed since I’d last been home, so I was surprised by how much she’d grown. She’d always had Marilyn’s body type, but what had been willowy on Marilyn was lanky on Tiffany. She was twelve now and nearly as tall as I was. “We enjoyed a splendid first day together. ...
Both his mother and his grandfather attended. Yet again, however, Drake’s father was absent. Thus far, none of us had met the man. This was my first meeting with Lucia and Mason Sloane since that afternoon at the preschool in Quentin. I was dreading it simply because I had made absolutely no prog...
This angered me. When I hung out the attendance slip, I underlined Venus’s name and wrote “AGAIN!” in big red letters, hoping it would spur someone in the office into checking on what was going on. However, with the other children there, at that point I was unable to look into the matter myself. ...
Like so many of her visits, this one was completely unexpected. She was wearing an unusual combination of calfskin vest and long, dangly rhinestone earrings that gave her the sort of tarty cowgirl appearance only Arkie seemed to be able to carry off and still not hurt her professional image. “How...
Summer turned to autumn. New children came. New relationships formed. My work went on. Then, in October, luck caught up with me. Through a series of flukes, I found out that Mr. Renstad was back in Marysville at the state hospital detox center. I attempted to talk to him by telephone, but was uns...
To the Egyptians when they fouled up, He sent plagues. To me, He sent Ariadne Boom. Ariadne Boom was not your ordinary person. We all knew about her. A short, wide, gray-haired grandmother with an undisclosed age and a Ph.D., Ariadne Boom had been in the employ of the state Office of Public Instr...