A Heart of Gold

Chapter 29

Karen stands in the doorway.  She was leaving Jane's office, hand on the knob ready to pull it closed, but leaned back in to make one last comment.  I hear just the tail end of it,  "...it's disgusting, really," she says with raised eyebrows.  "Completely inappropriate in a school setting."

I watch her walk past me and I feel like a porcupine with all of my quills standing erect.  Harry puts a warm hand on my back and tries to steer me to face him because he knows now I am the one who is unhinged.

The car ride here was a loud one.  Fueled by the information we pooled from Jeff and Jane, we were both in overdrive.  Harry's night-time security guard clears away things that people sometimes leave outside his house- mementos on the sidewalk or notes tucked into the iron scrollwork on the front gate.  This morning he gave one particular note he found to Jeff, who described it to Harry as a "cheesy-ass blackmail note" from a "sick bastard."  And Jane told me that someone delivered a "sloppy but threatening" note demanding a ridiculous amount of money in exchange for the compromising photos to her at school.  So in a panic, we threw our things into our bags and jumped in his car, shouting out rants and questions and theories to each other all the way to school.

Neither of us could imagine anyone from school blackmailing Harry.  Jane had asked me earlier if he had upset anyone while he's been here or if he's made any enemies and I told her that that was ridiculous.  But I hadn't thought about mine.

I swing Jane's door wide without knocking and she is not startled by my entrance.  She holds up her hand to stop the questions that are ready to fly out of my mouth.  "I asked her to come in, Lynn.  I told you, I'm doing some investigating of my own about this situation.  I've been interviewing and asking for insight... looking for a motive." 

"And what did she have to say?"

She drops her pen and rubs her temples.  "Oh, complaints." she mumbles.

"Complaints?" I choke out.  Harry pulls me back as I lean over her desk.

She lifts up several pages of her yellow legal pad, one at a time, with pursed lips.  They flutter back down as she lets them go with a sigh.  "A myriad of complaints, actually," she says with a wry smile. She gives the pad a little shove and me an eye roll.

The gesture feels flippant and I clench my fists at my sides, feeling my quills stiffen. 

"About what?!" I wail. 

We've got extortion to deal with and she is going to complain about me ?  I bust my ass around here while she leaves as soon as the bell rings.  I try to be patient with her, even encouraging- I listened to her cry about her husband leaving for heaven's sake. 

Jane leans forward to pick up the pad.  She reaches for her glasses and shoots me a tiny smirk and, again, I am taken aback by her lack of respect for the situation.  How can she find humor in this?

With her glasses perched on the bridge of her nose she skims her pages, "Hmm... let's see."  Drawing her finger down the page she murmurs, "... came here many times, blah blah... during school hours, brought flowers..." She flicks to the next, "watched Harry play with Sebastian... after-school care," she holds her finger in the air, "Oh, here is a good one!  Let me quote," and she gives me a grin, " 'Those two have been beyond—' " and before she can finish I'm out the door.

I dash from the office leaving Harry behind.  Cheerful kid art hanging on the walls is just a blur of color to me as I storm past.  Like the blood pulsing through my veins, my mother's advice about taking the high road whooshes around my brain.  But my anger is louder. 

They both call after me but I am too far gone.

I want to grab Karen by the shoulders and scream at her about how Harry has grown to love these kids more in these few months than she has in all her years of teaching.  How he is a better role model for them than she will ever be.  How his heart is a thousand times bigger than her stupid new car that she's always so worried about in the parking lot outside.  I imagine flinging all of my sharp quills at her and watching them tear holes in her clothes.