Page 5 of Between Hope & Tragedy

I didn’t respond. I didn’t even look at her anymore, instead I turned my attention to my father and gave him a tight smile. I guess it would be as good a time as any to ask him something that had been weighing on my mind since I left the wake earlier.

I wasn’t sure how to word it, or how to even bring it up, but the curiosity in me was piquing at an all-time high and I needed to know.

“Hey Dad?” I asked timidly.

“Yes honey?”

“Does Mr. Spears still teach over at Rockford High?”

“No. He hasn’t been a teacher in about, oh, I’d say five years. Does that sound about right, Rita? Yeah, five years. Why do you ask?”

“I was just thinking of going to see him,” I replied quietly.

“He always was your favorite teacher,” he said warmly. “You’ll be happy to know that three years after you left, he actually got promoted to principal. He’s still at Rockford, just not as a teacher.”

Let’s see. If I’m twenty-eight and he was thirty-eight at the time, he would be ... Fifty-two? Yeah. Fifty-two.

“I’m sure he’d be quite happy to see you, Zay. He loves seeing his old students,” Dad said pleasantly.

“Hm,” I mumbled.

I was curious as to what he would look like. He had been so damn handsome when I’d looked at him through childish eyes, so it made me wonder if he would look the same to me through adult eyes. Did he still have the same dark brown hair, or had it grayed some? Were his kind brown eyes as warm as ever, or had they grown as cold as they were after I had given birth? I didn’t know, but I decided that tomorrow, after the burial, I would gofind out. I didn’t have anything to lose or gain from it, and I was honestly curious to see if he would speak to me.

As I drove back to my hotel, I thought of how uneventful dinner was. I felt like I had been eating in a monastery, surrounded by monks who had taken a vow of silence. The only sounds in the dining room were the occasional throat clearing, the sipping of wine, silver-wear on the plates, and my mumbled “thank you” when it was over.

I sighed when I reached the red light a few blocks away, and put a hand against my forehead. Of the two, Dad seemed to be the one that genuinely liked having me in the house. Mom, I kind of understood. We had just gotten back from viewing her father in a casket, so I didn’t expect a parade of glitter and rainbows.

I glanced at the time on the dashboard. It was six-thirty-one, which meant I had gotten out of there faster than I thought I would. I was happy about that. I didn’t want to sit in that house any longer than I had to, making small talk with the two people who had damaged me the most.

An angry car honk behind me shook me from my thoughts. I put my foot gently on the gas and took a left turn, catching every green light on the way back. Once I parked, I had an idea. It was a slim to no chance, but I thought I would give it a try anyway.

I walked through the lobby doors and went up to the counter, drumming my fingers along the wooden top while waiting for someone to notice me.

“Good evening! How can I help you?” the young girl with the bright, bleached smile asked.

“I need a phone book please,” I replied quietly.

“Sure thing!” she said as she bounced away from the counter. I glanced up at the huge, flatscreen television that sat on the wall behind where she had been standing and watched the news. A few minutes later, she came back, her smile wide as ever as she handed it over to me.

“Thanks.”

I held the phone book tightly against my chest as I walked down the hallway toward the elevators. I punched the button to call one of them down and waited. A moment later, I heard a ding as the doors to the elevator across from me opened. I entered, glanced at the numbers and pushed number five. Then I leaned back against the elevator wall, waiting while it slowly climbed to my designated floor.

I waited impatiently for the slow doors to open before I walked out and turned right. My room was all the way at the end of the hall and was the largest one on the floor, because I had requested it.

I fished around in my purse until I found the room card and slid it in quickly. The door unlocked quietly and I cast a glance down the hallway before I walked in, locking it firmly behind me.

With a sigh, I dropped my purse by the door and went over to the lush, king-sized bed that sat against the wall in the middle of the room and sat down. I bit my lip and wondered if what I was about to do was a good idea, if the information presented itself, but I decided I didn’t care and opened the book, flipping until I found the administration phone number for the school.

Here goes nothing,I thought as I leaned back and grabbed the phone from where it sat on the bedside table and began to punch in the numbers. My hands were shaking, so I wrapped one around the phone cord, waiting as the phone rang once, twice, three times.

I had given up and was halfway to hanging up the phone when someone picked up.

“Rockford High, this is Principal Spears,” the deep voice said.

I panicked. I hadn’t expected him to be the one to answer. Hell, I hadn’t expected anyone to still be there at all since it was damn near seven at night.

“Hey, stranger,” I chirped.

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