wasn’t his business. He shouldn’t inquire. The two of them were—and would remain—friendly colleagues, rather than friends. For so many reasons, his instincts had consistently guided him away from bridging that gap.
Still, he cleared his throat. Opened his mouth.
But before he said anything, she offered him a curt nod and trudged out the door of the faculty lounge. Belatedly recovering his own good sense, he waited sufficient time to ensure she’d reached her classroom before following her path to his.
Her room might adjoin his, and he might watch her from afar, but that was as much intimacy as he could handle.
Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.
Not that love had anything to do with it. Not at all.
They both worked the entire day at the school, sometimes encountering one another in the English department office or the copy room or—once again—in the faculty lounge, where he reheated the turkey sausage chili he’d made over the weekend while she retrieved a Diet Coke from the old, rattling refrigerator.
At each encounter, she greeted him with another dip of her chin and nothing more.
No talk of new department initiatives. No blustering insistence that he get more sleep, because she’d spotted the bags under his eyes. No demands that he tell her if he needed help moving or organizing anything.
She responded to his own offer of help with a mumbled assurance that she was fine, thank you anyway. He had to lip-read during that particular exchange, she was so muted.
He didn’t want to worry. He wouldn’t.
Most of their time, they spent inside their classrooms. And even through a wall, the screech of moving furniture told him what she was doing. Setting up her classroom, angling her desks and chairs just so. Exactly what he was doing.
Later in the afternoon, though, those bursts of sound ceased. Like him, maybe she was fastening laminated posters to the wall or covering her bulletin board. Labeling folders and reviewing opening-day lesson plans.
At some point, as the sun sank toward the horizon outside his classroom windows, he took a break. Leaned his desk chair back. Snacked on a handful of pretzels.
Thought, unwillingly, about Candy. Again.
After their encounters today, he’d found himself loath to turn on music as he worked. He’d kept close to the wall adjoining their two rooms, his own newly-assigned classroom silent. Just in case.
He’d seen that particular greyness before. In the mirror, three years ago.
He reached for his reusable water bottle, which was sitting at the edge of his battered, paper-covered desk, and tipped it back. Swallowed hard.
If she needed him—
Rather, if she needed anyone, he wanted to hear. Especially since no other teacher had started their classroom setup quite so early, and the school echoed with emptiness after the administrators and maintenance staff went home for the evening.
Because of the encompassing silence that night, he heard the short, shocked cry, the crash, the thud. The awful moment of silence, followed by something that might have been a whimper.
He didn’t have time to contemplate the matter further, because he was already racing out his door and wrenching hers open—why was it closed, when she never closed her door except when teaching?—and scanning her classroom for signs of trouble.
They weren’t hard to locate or interpret. A chair rested on its side before her half-finished bulletin board, and Candy lay crumpled on the floor near its metal legs, eyes clenched shut.
She’d stood on the chair. Overbalanced. Fallen on the unforgiving tile.
Half a dozen strides, and he was there.
“Candy?” When he knelt beside her, that same tile bit into his aging knees. “Talk to me.”
To his relief, her answer came immediately, its irony sharp enough to relieve his worst concerns about a concussion. “Certainly, Mr. Conover. Name your subject.”
Normally, she called him Griff. Caught in such a helpless, vulnerable position, however, little wonder she’d grasped for the dignity and distance of his surname.
No blood. No unnatural angles in her limbs. Thank the heavens.
That said, some serious injuries weren’t obvious to the untrained, naked eye. “Tell me where you’re hurting.”
She let out a single, heartrendingly raw sob, then pressed her wide mouth into a tight line and breathed hard through her nose. “I’m p-perfectly well, thank you.”
If he hadn’t been so worried, he would have yielded to the familiar, charming mulishness of her declaration. Given the circumstances, though, he couldn’t let the clear falsehood stand.
“That seems more aspirational than truthful, I’m afraid.” His hands hovered over her, his eagerness to help her from the hard floor at