“If you do, I’ll just remind you again,” Lila said.
“You just like to say his name,” Katie said, and laughed at the look on her friend’s face.
“Shut up and eat your pie,” Lila said.
Chapter Four
Saturday morning, Katie received an email from the school she’d applied to in Borden’s Gap, Tennessee. They wanted to interview her and sent a choice of three different times from which she was to choose.
Katie quickly responded, choosing a time on the following Monday. She received acknowledgment and confirmation that they would send her a link.
Happy that she still had irons in the fire, she did her usual Saturday morning cleaning in the apartment, then changed clothes and left to run errands.
About an hour later, she was walking down the concourse in Cottonwood Mall with her purse on her shoulder and carrying a couple of sacks. She was thinking about stopping off at the food court to get something to eat when Mark and Megan Roman walked straight out in front of her from a shop she was passing.
They had to stop to keep from running into her, and it was obvious they were as startled as Katie felt, but she never halted her stride, looking past them as if they weren’t there, and kept heading for the food court with them a few yards behind her.
She was irked, even though they had as much right to be there as she did. Moving away would certainly put an end to this.
When she got to the food court, she went straight to Hot Dog on a Stick and ordered one of those and a lemonade to go with it. As soon as she got her food, she turned around to look for a place to sit and saw a little girl and her family waving her over. It was Trinity, one of her students. She started weaving her way through the tables.
“Sit here, Miss Katie! Sit here!” Trinity cried.
Her parents grinned. “We’d love to have you if you’re not already meeting someone else,” her mother said.
“I’d love to sit with you. Thank you,” Katie said. She took an empty chair from another table and pulled it up.
“I love those!” Trinity said, pointing to Katie’s food.
“So do I, and the lemonade, too! Have to have the lemonade to go with it,” Katie said, and took a little bite, testing to make sure the corn dog wasn’t too hot to eat. “Ooh, I think this needs to cool a bit. So tell me, Trinity. What have you been doing since school is out?”
The little blond was so excited to be eating with her teacher that she couldn’t remember, and looked straight at her mother.
“What have we been doing, Mama?”
Katie giggled when Trinity’s mother rolled her eyes. “Well, we’re going to start swimming lessons soon, and then next month we’re all going to Iowa to visit grandparents.”
“Yes, that!” Trinity said. “What are you going to do this summer, Miss Katie?”
“It’s hard to say right now,” Katie said. She picked up the corn dog, dunked it in a little cup of mustard, and took a big bite.
She ate while the little girl talked around every bite in her mouth, until her mother finally stopped her.
“Trin, darling. We don’t talk with our mouth full. You need to chew and swallow first, okay?”
She nodded, did as she was told, and then took another bite and started talking again.
Katie laughed. “It takes a while for rules to sink in.”
She didn’t know that Mark and Megan were, once again, having a meal and listening to Katie’s animated voice and the bubble of her laughter carrying across the food court, and she wouldn’t have cared if she had.
But Megan didn’t like it, and Mark was getting tired of his wife’s jealousy.
“She’s ruining our day,” Megan muttered.
Mark dunked a fry in ketchup and popped it in his mouth.
“She who?” he asked.
“Your old girlfriend.”
“My old fiancée, and she’s not bothering us.”
Megan sniffed. “She bothers me.”
“I don’t suppose she’s overly fond of you, either, but she’s not making a fuss about it. Do you want some more iced tea? I can get you a refill if—”
Megan shrugged.
Mark waited, and when she said nothing, he just kept eating.
Finally, Megan snapped, “I thought you were going to get me a refill on my tea.”
“And I thought you would say those words if you wanted one,” Mark said, then stood, picked up her cup, and went back to get it refilled.
Megan frowned. Mark was a good man, and she loved him. But when it came to Katie McGrath, he bowed up like an old rooster and defied everything she said.
She thought she’d done something, taking him from the woman he was going to marry, but she was beginning to wonder if she was the one who’d been used.
Mark came back with her drink.
She flashed him a sweet smile, and then leaned over and kissed his cheek as he sat down.
“I’m sorry I was such a baby. You are the best.”
Mark gave her a quick wink. “It’s okay, honey. I’ll bet you’re getting tired. I need to get you home. You can relax in the pool while I finish up a quick job for your dad.”
She pouted. “You have to work on Saturday?”
“I work when Daddy says,” he reminded her.
And when they got up later to leave, they both realized that sometime during their squabble, Katie McGrath had departed from the food court and was already on her way home.
Megan was fine with the fact.
Mark was still living with guilt at what he’d done. And he already knew that while he’d chosen Megan and the money over Katie and love, somewhere down the years he would likely live to regret it.
***
Katie was antsy all weekend. Another job she’d applied for had been filled and she was online making sure she didn’t miss any new postings. Then she went to bed stressed about finding a new position and started dreaming about walking her students to the lunchroom. Part of her knew she was dreaming but she couldn’t pull herself out of it, and when Coach Lincoln ran up beside her, she kept trying to tell him to get down but she couldn’t get it said fast enough, and so again she watched him die and woke up screaming.
Within moments, someone was knocking at her door and calling out her name.
“Oh lord,” Katie groaned, then threw on a robe and stumbled to the door. She looked through the peephole, then opened the door on the chain. It was her neighbor from across the hall.