with Miss Janie, and I told him I’d be back by daybreak. Here’s my card—the house phone number is written on the back in case you’ve forgotten it. Just think about it. If you don’t show up by the end of the week, I’ll start looking for full-time help somewhere else.” He started for the door.
“Six, seven, eight, nine,” she called out.
He stopped and glanced over his shoulder. “What does that mean?”
“That’s the code to open the door.”
He chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“That would be the first thing most folks would punch in.” He hit the right buttons and disappeared out into the night.
Teresa turned and started toward the office and tossed the card in the trash can on the way. She punched out, picked up her tote bag full of empty supper containers, and headed back across the lobby on her way out to her truck. Stopping in her tracks, she stared at the trash can for several seconds. Her heart told her to at least pick up the card and take it with her, but she had vowed she would never let her heart make decisions for her again. Besides, she hadn’t been back to see Miss Janie since she’d left all those years ago. Miss Janie would know that she’d failed—both when she quit college and when she had married Luis. When she reached the door, she punched in the code and made it all the way to her vehicle, tossed her tote bag on the threadbare passenger’s seat, and drove home.
She stripped out of her scrubs, took a long, hot shower, and put on a faded nightshirt. Normally, she went right to sleep when she crawled into bed, but this wasn’t an ordinary night. For the first time in over sixteen years, she’d seen Noah Jackson again. She’d thought when she’d married Luis that she was over that little teenage crush, but evidently not, because merely being in his presence had created the same heat that those few forbidden kisses had caused.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been so hasty in throwing away the card. He had offered her a lot of money to come back to Birthright, and if she was honest with herself, she owed Miss Janie more than a few months of care. If guilt had a color, it would be black, and if it could be weighed, it would be heavier than a full-grown elephant. The feeling bore down on her so hard that she could barely breathe.
Miss Janie had been there when she’d needed someone, and now the sweet old lady needed help. That Noah would be in the same house didn’t matter. Those few stolen kisses had happened years ago, and it was time she stopped thinking about them.
“Dammit!” She sat up and pounded the lumps from her pillow, throwing herself backward once done. Dark clouds floating back and forth over the quarter moon created shifting patterns on the ceiling and the walls of her tiny bedroom. That alone seemed like an omen, telling her that even though she’d been through a divorce a year before, there was light in the darkness.
“But is going back to Birthright the clouds or the light?” she whispered.
Never know until you try, the pesky voice in her head told her.
At three thirty, she slung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. She found a pair of pajama pants in the clean laundry basket and put them on. Then she went out into the darkness, padded down the steps of her garage apartment in her bare feet, and got back into her truck.
Thank goodness no one was in the home’s lobby, and the code wouldn’t be changed until the seven o’clock shift came to work. She pushed the right buttons, found the card in the trash can, and tucked it into the pocket of her nightshirt.
When she got back home, she laid the card beside her cell phone and went back to bed. She closed her eyes and crashed almost at once. She awoke at noon and reached for her phone to see if she had been offered an extra shift, but there were no messages. She would have rather worked a double shift that day to give her something to occupy her mind, but oh, no, the fickle finger of fate had to point right at the card on her nightstand.
There will be no peace until you do this. That voice in her head was back.