Page 1 of Promises We Meant to Keep

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“My stomach’s in knots!” Kamryn winced as she held the phone tightly between her ear and shoulder. There was only so much gossiping she could manage without bringing the conversation with her best friend back around to the fact that she was starting her first day at Windermere Prep.

“Take deep breaths, Kam.” Greer’s voice was calm, nearly on the edge of patronizing, but not quite there. Yet, at least.

Kamryn knew she was being annoying, because she’d voiced her anxiety and her nerves more times in the last hour than she could count. And here she was, saying it again. “I know. I know. Iamtaking deep breaths. I promise!”

She finished shoving a few notebooks into her satchel, and damn if she would admit her hands trembled. She hadn’t been back on this campus since she’d graduated. But she’d wanted to come back, desperately for years, and now she was finally here. The move had been quick—so unexpected—and she’d only just arrived the day before, so finding a clean pair of slacks and her bag for work was harder than she’d expected it to be when she’d woken up early that morning.

“You’ve got this. I’m not sure why you’d want to go back to your high school, but you’ve been adamant for years that youwanted to.” Greer was again speaking her own language to calm Kamryn down.

“I have! I loved this place growing up.” Kamryn pocketed her keys as she shut the door behind her. Students would be arriving in the next few days, ready to move into the dormitories where she’d be the new house parent. Everything was so new as much as it was the same. “It’s just weird, you know? Everything looks like I remember it, almost, but it’s different at the exact same time.”

“Hmmm.” Greer always made that particular sound when she was deep in thought. Kamryn missed her dearly. She wished they lived closer, but her move out to Windermere added another hour to the trip. And with the time constraints on Kamryn with the new job, it was going to be impossible to get together any time soon.

“I’ve got to go.” Kamryn wished she could stay on the phone longer. Talking to Greer eased the tension in her chest. It always did. But she had to start her day. Hell, she had to start her first day at her new job, and not toss her cookies in the meantime—which she somehow managed to do every first day at school.

Today would be different though, right?

The long walk to the administration building seemed fast. The nerves running through Kamryn’s body were nearly too much and overloaded any good sense she had. Not that she had much of that to begin with. She wasn’t just coming back to Windermere as a teacher, she was coming back as the Head of School, an emergency and definitely temporary placement until the actual Head of School was out of the hospital and recovered.

It was temporary. At least she kept telling herself that. Because if she got her hopes up, then she’d be devastated at the end of the semester when things didn’t work out right. When the board told her she didn’t have enough experience or shewasn’t mature enough or she wasn’t ready for the responsibility. Certainly they would tell her that.

Because what else would they say?

Not “job well done.”

Not “keep going into the next semester.”

Not “keep this job for the foreseeable future and then we’ll talk about tenure.”

Or better yet, “here’s tenure! You don’t even have to try to get it!”

Pushing the dreams aside, Kamryn followed the sidewalk to the administration building. She wasn’t bringing in all of her books and personal effects yet. Not since this was supposed to be only one or two semesters while Dr. Waddy recuperated from his stroke. She would just use what she had and make do like she always did.

She’d been a scrappy kid when she needed to be, so what difference would being an adult make now? Except those damn nerves were still running rampant in her stomach. She really needed to get those under control.

Kamryn dropped her satchel on the desk after she let herself in with the key that groundskeeping had given her yesterday. She pulled out her laptop and her notebook and then stared at the desk before putting anything down. Everything was basically how it had been left weeks before when Dr. Waddy had collapsed on it. Pencils and pens strewn about, papers with random things she probably should read and figure out so she knew what was happening and when, and a computer that she still didn’t have access to.

What the hell had she been thinking? She wasn’t ready for this job. She’d applied on a whim since it had been the only open position that she somewhat qualified for, and when the board chair had called her for an immediate interview, she’d been scared shitless and beyond surprised.

But it had happened.

And here she was.

Moved into the dormitories since it was the only available housing, and she wasn’t going to make Dr. Waddy and his wife move out in the middle of a medical crisis—a place she’d never truly anticipated living again, even though it was her dream.

She just had to not screw this up and then maybe they would offer her a permanent position—even if it wasn’t Head of School.

The knock on her door startled her, but it was a welcome distraction from what she was facing on the desk in front of her.

“Dr. Ogden, the staff is ready for you in the conference room.”

“Right.” Was her voice shaking? Shit, she really did have to get that under control. Slow, deep breaths. That’s what Greer had told her. She could do this. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“If you don’t mind, I can clean up in here while you’re debriefing everyone.”

“Yeah, uh… okay.” That sounded like a really good idea. Mrs. Caldera, the long-serving secretary, was going to be a godsend for certain. Kamryn remembered her from when she was a student, and the woman had to be close to retirement, but thank all things holy that this wasn’t the year she was gone and Kamryn wasn’t stuck with a first-year administrative assistant while also dealing with the consequences of the former Head of School having a stroke.

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