There You'll Find Me (7 page)

Fluffy blue slippers. Sleepy gaze.

Oh, she looked like the sweetest thing.

“Hello, Mrs. Sweeney. I’m—”

“Get outta my room!”

I took a step back as the woman roused like a waking dragon.

“But I’m Finley Sinclair and—”

“I don’t care if you’re the Blessed Virgin herself, get out.”

My heart tripled in time. “I’m from the school. You were assigned to me and—”

She peered over her bifocals, and I swore her eyes were mean enough to shoot lightning. “You have five seconds to remove yourself. I don’t want any schoolgirl reading me stories or interrupting my day. Go do your work somewhere else, why don’t you now?”

Out of fear, shock, or complete brain freeze, I stayed rooted to the spot, my feet locked to the floor.

“Nurse!” Mrs. Sweeney yelled. “Nurse!”

Oh, shoot. Oh no.

“Nurse!”

“Okay! I’m leaving!” I held up my hands as if Mrs. Sweeney had a pistol pointed at me instead of her bony finger.

“
What
is going on here?” The director of nursing stepped into the doorway, her scrub-clad body filling up the space. “Cathleen, stop that yelling.”

“Then get her out.”

“This young woman is from Sacred Heart. Haven’t we been talking about this for weeks? Remember our conversation?”

“The one about me eating more prunes?”

The nurse took a deep breath and slowly released it. “The one about being nice and not scaring children.”

“It’s okay,” I said, pulse galloping. “She didn’t scare me.” Much.

“Well, I meant to.” Cathleen rested her hands on her wheels and glared. “I told you, Belinda, I don’t want any company. I didn’t last year, or the year before, and I don’t today.”

“Too bad.” The nurse walked over to Cathleen, leaned down until they were eye to eye. “She stays. You’ll not be chasing this one off.”

This was not how I’d pictured this experience. I was
so
not going to bring her any of Mr. O’Callaghan’s cookies. Not even the burned ones. How did someone get to be this mean?

“I think I should go.” I tugged up the strap of my backpack. “I’ll . . .” Mrs. Sweeney watched me as I backed out the door. “I’ll just see if I can be reassigned. Shouldn’t be a problem.” I bid them both good-bye and all but ran out the door.

“Wait!”

I was halfway down the hall when the nurse caught up.

“I’m sorry for Cathleen.” She panted with every word, winded after her little jog. “She can be . . . difficult.”

Two-year-olds were difficult. That woman was a terrorist. “Really, it’s not a problem. I’ll just get a new assignment.”

The nurse’s brown skin wrinkled as she frowned. “I wish you’d give it another try. I know Cathleen is a bit harsh, but she needs someone right now.” She dropped her voice and locked her eyes with mine. “Cathleen has cancer. She has a couple months left—at the most.”

“She’s dying?” They’d set me up with a
dying
grandma?

No way.

There was no stinkin’ way.

“Um . . . I better get back home. Lots of homework to do.”

“Please consider it. Cathleen needs you.”

“No, ma’am. Pretty sure she doesn’t.” I shook my head, unwilling to explain, desperate to leave. “Good-bye.” I mumbled another apology and raced out.

In the lobby, the yellow-haired woman with the walker smiled and waved again.

“Come back soon!”

Chapter Six

Hey, sis, got your text last night. Lucy says to tell you she’s so proud of you. She also says not to be kissing any Blarney Stone. Love you and missed you at family dinner Sunday. I had to console myself by eating my pie . . . as well as the piece that would’ve been yours.
Love you,
Alex
Sent to my iPhone

B
ut you have to give me another assignment.”

I splayed my hands on Mrs. Campbell’s desk Wednesday after school, letting her see the desperation, hoping she got a whiff of my fear.

“Finley, if I reassigned you, I’d have to reassign half the class, and I’ll not be doing that.”

“She’s mean!”

“What she is, is a lonely woman who just needs some compassion, ’tis all.”

“I can’t go back there. Surely there’s something else. Like volunteering for a church or a local orphanage?”

Mrs. Campbell shook her head. “If you don’t complete this project you don’t pass. It’s as simple as that.” She stuffed a stack of papers in a file. “Chin up. You can do it.”

“But—” I choked on the words. And tried again. “She’s dying.”

Mrs. Campbell reached out and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “All the more reason Cathleen needs you. Do you realize what a special assignment you have here?”

I just stared at her. Special assignment would be like interviewing Lady Gaga. This was just cruel and unusual torture.

“It’s not negotiable.” Mrs. Campbell flopped open another folder and rifled through it. “Make it happen.”

“She demanded I leave.”

My teacher sat down in her chair and took out her grading pen, her focus on her work. “Then I guess you’ll have to try harder, so.”

“I can’t just—”

“Yes, you can. And you will. Try not to make this about you.

Make it about Cathleen.”

“But
Cathleen
isn’t the one flunking.”

Mrs. Campbell gave a small smile. “Just pray about it.”

Yeah. Because that’s solved a lot lately.

With a weary sigh, I walked out, following the tile down the hall and out the door where Nora waited in the car.

“No luck getting it switched?” Erin asked from the front seat.

“No.” And I had no idea what I was going to do. I’d had enough of death to last me until it was my time to go.

“We just got a reservation for the weekend with a scrapbooking club,” Nora said. “They’re paying extra to have lunch and dinner.”

Erin looked at her brother like he was pond sludge. “So I have to keep an eye on Liam.”

“That’s fine,” he said beside me. “That will give me time to hang out with Finley.” His thin eyebrows waggled. “Show her what a real man can do with Legos.”

Nora hung a left out of the school parking lot. “Finley, love, we’ll have to put off sightseeing again. But I promise we’ll get to it.” Her eyes watching me in the rearview were tired, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. “We’re still adapting to this B and B thing. We’ll get our balance soon. The good news is Sean picked up a new bicycle just for you, so you’ll be able to get about town.”

The car climbed up the hill to the house, and I watched the ocean in the distance, feeling a twinge of homesickness for the Charleston coastline.

Nora put the car in park and we piled out, just as an old, green truck shuddered and rumbled as it stopped in the driveway.

“Behave yourself, Erin,” Nora warned. “Liam, do not play twenty questions.”

Before I could question Nora’s odd tone, I got a closer look at the man behind the windshield. And it all became obnoxiously clear.

“Hello, Mrs. O’Callaghan,” Beckett Rush said as he climbed out of the truck. With wagging tail and floppy tongue, Bob jumped from the back of the truck bed.

“Hello, dear. Did you have a good day?” Nora asked this as if he’d just returned from his desk job as an accountant.

“Wonderful as always.” His gray eyes lit on me as he pulled Nora in for a side hug. “Probably due in part to your brilliant French toast this morning.”

“You should really branch out. Try something else on the menu.” Nora’s pale cheeks turned pink. “Oh, and you might want to lie low this weekend. Scrapbook group coming.”

“A bunch of girls with scissors,” Liam said. “That’s never ended well for me.”

“And poor Finley,” Nora said. “We were going to take her around a bit this weekend. But now we can’t.” She patted me on the back. “Girl’s probably going to turn us in for neglect. She hasn’t even seen the Cliffs of Moher yet, has she, Erin?”

Erin just stood there, her glazed eyes on Beckett. Her mouth tilted at an odd angle, as if she’d been struck dumb by lightning. Or the sight of an international teen heartthrob.

“I could take you.”

We all stared at Beckett Rush for an uncomfortable moment until he repeated himself.

“I’d be glad to take you to the cliffs.” He stood so close to me, I could smell his shampoo. I’d expected him to wear the scent of his own cologne sold by the finer department stores. Not something that reminded me of Pantene.

“That’s okay.”
What is the boy up to?
“I’ll just wait ’til next weekend.”

Nora’s frown deepened. “Next weekend we’re helping with the Donnelley family reunion. They love Sean’s gooseberry crumble. Oh, Finley, I feel terrible.”

“I really don’t mind,” Beckett said. “I’ve got the rest of the afternoon off. It’s just a few miles away.” He leveled his gaze on me. “You’ll be safe enough.”

“If it’s just a few miles, I can walk. Some exercise would do me good and—”

“Nonsense.” Nora regarded me as if I were touched in the head.

“You two go on. Have a lovely time.”

Oh no. “But I—”

“Would you care to join us, Erin?” Beckett asked.

Erin blinked twice. “No. No, thank you. Homework. I have homework.”

“All right, then. Good-bye!” Nora wrapped an arm around each kid and escorted them inside. Erin walked backward, her mouth wide-open, still wearing that blank stare.

“Bob, let’s go.” As Beckett opened the passenger door of his truck, the Lab hopped in the back behind the cab. “You getting in, Finley? Or did you want to ride with my dog?”

“I’d rather not go at all.”

“Clearly this is weighing on Mrs. O’Callaghan. You don’t want to let her down, do you?”

Why wouldn’t I have expected Mr. Casanova to have just the right words? “Fine.” I struggled with the step until he took my hand and helped me up. “But no funny business.”

His face was all innocence. “That hurts.”

The tires of Beckett’s rickety truck spun beneath us as we drove the short distance to the Cliffs of Moher. I stared out the window, rolling it down and inviting the wind to swoop inside, even though we were both in our jackets. Beckett didn’t say a word, giving me the chance to watch every bit of Abbeyglen we passed, storing it all in my head.

“It’s a beautiful town, isn’t it?” He turned off the staticky radio.

“I never get tired of it.”

“Are you from here?”

“Lived in Galway the first ten years of my life before moving to America. But I’d come back with me da’ to see me grandparents.

They’d take me all over.”

“And your mom?”

“She died, God rest her soul, when I was just a baby. Me da’ quit his own acting career for me. Me parents were young, only nineteen when I was born. Da’ did some work on a soap opera, and things were just taking off. Then I came along, and he had to take on a day job. The calls just stopped coming.”

Beckett parked the truck, and Bob pressed his nose to the window to check our progress. “The door sticks. I’ll be around to get it.” He walked to my side and let me out. I tried not to stare at his blond hair dancing in the breeze. Because that would’ve been dumb. And something every other girl would do.

“Why’d you offer to bring me out here?”

He hesitated as we walked across the street to the entrance. “I was grateful for your help last night. I, um, I’ve had a bit of trouble with my scenes lately. Just hasn’t been going well. It’s caught the director’s attention. But today”—he put a hat on his head and gave a curious smile—“after I ran lines with you, it was just solid. My director said Steele Markov came alive.”

“So I have the power to raise the undead.”