Acceptance, The (28 page)
Authors: Bernadette Marie
Tags: #Bernadette Marie, #Keller Family, #5 Prince Publishing, #Contemporary Romance, #bestselling author
“We’ll talk about it. Later.” Right now she needed to sleep for a few hours. Things would look better in the morning. They had to.
He gave a derisive snort. “I have a stack of
signed
parent complaints demanding your transfer.”
Silence pressed down on her. How had he managed that? Her shoulders sagged. It didn’t matter how he’d done it. If he
had
managed to convince enough parents to request her transfer, she was finished here.
* * *
The parents’ signatures were real, and Kat really had to transfer to a different school.
Why the board had decided to send her back to Craigmont hadn’t been explained.
The whole point of her taking this job in Mills Creek was to provide a secure future for Lacey, even if that meant simply setting an example of how to grow up and take responsibility for herself. Not that Kat’d had much chance to do that—but in the last while, she was feeling her way through making her own decisions. Too many choices had been stolen from her, ever since Lacey came along and turned their family’s world upside down.
She’d given up everything for Lacey. She’d even given up Evan.
Now her choice to be a voice in her community had ended up with her losing her place here. All she wanted to do was go home and lick her wounds, but other than this little house, far away from everyone she loved, she didn’t have a home anymore. And now she had to go back to Craigmont, opening up wounds that had barely begun to scab over.
She picked up her phone to call Lacey, and all she got was voice mail. As usual. She sighed and left her usual message. “Love you, kiddo. Call me.”
She looked around her at the utilitarian cabin. Just one picture on the wall—an enlargement of Lacey’s baby portrait, with sixteen-year-old Kat looking defiant as she held her infant sister. Her mom had argued against it, but that had been one of the few battles Kat had won back then. She was part of Lacey’s family, too, and somehow that picture had felt like proof it was true.
It hadn’t done much to keep them from growing further and further apart over the years.
Sinking into her one chair and propping her feet on a box she still hadn’t unpacked, as though she’d instinctively known she wouldn’t be staying here long enough to put down roots, she called Peg Kelly, who knew everything about her and liked her anyway.
Defeat welled in her throat. “Can I stay with you for a few days?”
“Hmmph. It’s about time.”
Peg’s dramatically fake tone of insult was what it took to finally make Kat thaw on the inside. She explained about the forged signature and the board’s backlash. “It’ll be good, right? To make a fresh start. I just can’t understand why they picked Craigmont out of all the communities in the province.”
“About that,” Peg said.
The more she thought about it, the madder she got.
“And can you believe the kid who wrecked that machine forged his father’s signature, and
I
’m the one who has to leave? I’m
so
sick of people making arbitrary decisions about what’s right and what’s wrong, and my life going into a tailspin every time it happens.”
“Oh boy.”
Kat sat up straight, with her feet flat on the floor. She knew that tone too well. “Oh boy, what?”
She had the unsettling image of the week before Lacey was born, when Kat and her mother and Peg were in Peg’s house, deciding about Lacey’s future, and the other two women had decided what was best without considering Kat’s opinion. “Peg, oh boy, what?”
“Um… about your job situation. I may have said something to someone…”
Her stomach dropped. Not again, please, not again. “Who, Peg? Who is meddling with my life this time?”
“Climb down from the ceiling, would you?” An edge to Peg’s voice said Kat had crossed a line. “I heard there was a job posting for vice-principal at Craigmont High School a while back, so I mentioned it to the superintendent when he called—in case you’re ready to come home. And then later I called the principal of Craigmont High and set up a tentative meeting so you wouldn’t have to arrange everything at the last minute. You don’t have to go, but I wanted you to have the choice.”
Kat slumped back in the chair and buried her face in her hands. Vice-principal. Not principal. “Thank you, Peg,” she said quietly.
Could going home to Craigmont be a fresh start for her? After she said good-bye to Peg, Kat made calls to the local utility companies. And wondered whether there ever could be a fresh start for her and Evan. Or whether even that, like everything else to do with her and Evan Jerry, would be a monumental disaster.
Meet the author of OVER THE EDGE
SUSAN LORHER
Susan Lohrer grew up in more towns in western Canada than she has fingers to count them on. She currently lives in southern BC with her husband of more than two decades, their two teenagers who are still at home, three dogs, and far more aquariums than a reasonable household should contain. She believes life is always better with a healthy dose of humor.
Website:
http://www.susanlohrer.com
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Author.Susan.Lohrer
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