minutes this was going to take.
I gave her a winning smile. “I don’t know whether you remember me, but I used to attend school here. Savannah Martin.”
She looked me up and down. “Of course I remember.”
It didn’t look like the memory brought her any pleasure whatsoever, either.
I looked around. “I don’t think I spent any time in the principal’s office back then.”
She smiled. Tightly. “Of course not. You were a well-behaved family, as I recall.”
We had been, overall. Catherine had had her short phase of rebellion in high school—dating Darrell Skinner, of all things!—but she’d kept it so quiet I hadn’t known about it until last fall, when Darrell and all the other Skinners got themselves killed. And as for me, I hadn’t started acting out until a long time past high school.
I switched Carrie’s car seat from one arm to the other—it’s heavy when you have to stand around holding it—and the baby cooed. Mrs. Halliburton zeroed in on her.
“Yours?” she asked after a second.
I nodded. “She takes after my husband.”
There was a moment’s silence when we both contemplated Carrie. In case I’ve neglected to mention it, she’s a very pretty baby, with Rafe’s skin and dark curls, but my eyes, surrounded by long, curving lashes.
“You married the Collier boy,” Mrs. Halliburton said eventually.
I nodded. “Yes. I did.” And she clearly remembered him, too. But probably not because he’d been so well-behaved.
“How is that working out?”
“Just fine,” I said. What did she expect me to say?
Oh, wait. I knew what she expected. For Rafe to be the same screw-up everyone thought he was in high school—with some cause, I’ll admit. She probably thought he’d have left us already.
“It’s the best decision I’ve ever made,” I added, just in case she was in doubt.
Between you and me, it might not have been. Divorcing Bradley might have been better. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have gotten my real estate license, and if I hadn’t gotten my real estate license, I wouldn’t have been in the office the morning Brenda Puckett died, and I wouldn’t have gotten the call to go out and meet Rafe outside Mrs. Jenkins’s house, and if I hadn’t done that, we might not have met again, and then someone else might be standing here right now, holding Rafe’s baby.
But either way, it came to the same thing. Rafe was still the best thing that had ever happened to me.
“How’s your family doing?” Mrs. Halliburton changed the subject. Or maybe it wasn’t so much a change of subject as a question as to whether my family approved of my husband.
“They’re fine,” I told her. “Catherine and Jonathan are still married, with three kids. Dix is slowly getting over losing Sheila, and Mother is living in sin with Sheriff Satterfield. She adores Rafe. Like, seriously adores him. Couldn’t love him any more if she’d given birth to him.”
Mrs. Halliburton didn’t respond. I’m not sure whether she just didn’t know what to say, or she didn’t want to say whatever came to mind. Either way, we stood in silence for the minute or two until Grimaldi stuck her head back into the room. “Thank you, Principal Halliburton. I have what I came for.”
She caught my eye and motioned with her head toward the entrance. I gave the principal a pleasant smile. “Nice to see you again, Mrs. Halliburton. I’ll tell Rafe you said hi. I’m sure he spent a lot more time in this office than I did.”
Mrs. Halliburton nodded weakly. I turned my back on her and followed Grimaldi through the outer office, down the hallway, and outside.
“Problem?” she asked when we’d reached the SUV and I was putting Carrie’s seat onto the base.
I glanced over. “Just someone else who remembers all the worst things about Rafe. It gets old.”
She nodded and opened her car door. “Her loss.”
I guess it was. I scooted into the passenger seat next to her and put Halliburton and high school in the past, where it belonged.
Nine
“Did you find out anything interesting?”
“Nineteen boys took Latin during the years Laura Lee Matlock—Drimmel, back then—went to Columbia High,” Grimaldi said, turning the key in the ignition. “Three of them matriculated after her freshman year.”
So they were three years older. The same as Rafe is to me.
“In addition to the three boys who graduated after her freshman year, four more graduated after her sophomore year. Three after her junior year, and two after her senior year. Those two, she went to school with all four