Cold River (26 page)

Mandy followed Fran out the door and watched from the porch as she got in her pickup and drove up the hill. Mandy went back in and glanced at the clock, noting that Leesie would be home before too long. Nothing had been resolved, and she knew no more than before, but when she went into the kitchen to make lunch, she was humming a tune.

“YOUR EYES LOOK
like two burnt holes in a blanket!” Leesie paused in the act of scrubbing out the oatmeal pot and regarded her sister as she came down the stairs. “And you’re late. I thought you wanted to get to work early today.”

“Thanks for that positive start to my day.” Mandy took a spoon and tasted the oatmeal congealing in a bowl on the counter. “I had a bad night.” She put the cereal in the microwave and pushed some buttons.

“How come?” Leesie crouched to put the pot under the counter.

“I thought I had to stay awake to listen, in case someone was coming to set the house on fire again.”

Leesie stood. “Really?” Her eyes were wide. “You think someone set the fire deliberately?”

The microwave dinged, and Mandy carried her breakfast to the table. “What other explanation is there?”

“I don’t know. I’m pretty clueless about how a fire gets started— my tent mates at summer camp will swear to that. But isn’t it a stretch to think someone was going to try to burn the house down? I mean, we talked about the fire all the way to church, and Jake was wondering if there couldn’t be some corrosion in the wiring from the flood. He thought maybe something shorted out and started the fire in a wall.”

Mandy shook her head. “Fran said it couldn’t be electrical. There isn’t any wiring in that wall.”

“You don’t think so? I know there aren’t any outlets right opposite where the fire was, but I’ll bet you anything there are some wires that go across that wall. I mean, the electrical panel is in the laundry room, and there are all kinds of outlets in the bathroom. How do the wires get there?”

“Why would Fran say something like that, then?”

“I don’t know why she’d say it to you, but I can see why she’d say it to her insurance agent. I’ll bet she’s afraid her premiums will go up or afraid she’ll have to rewire or something.”

Mandy leaned her chin on her hand and stared at the steady drizzle outside as she considered. “Fran did say something about that. She didn’t want me to call the deputy sheriff for just that reason.”

“Well, there you go!” Leesie looked at her watch. “Jake will be here any minute.” She grabbed her coat and backpack and went to stand by the window.

Mandy sighed. “Now I’ll lie awake worrying about corrosion in the wires and another short somewhere else.”

“We’ve got smoke detectors.”

Mandy grimaced. “That’s another thing. There weren’t any batteries in the smoke detectors, and Fran swears she made sure they were there when she rented the house to us.”

Leesie snorted. “Or she meant to make sure they were working and forgot but doesn’t want to admit it, since we almost ended up as toast. Oh, there’s that pickup again.”

“What pickup?”

Leesie pointed as a shiny red, 80’s vintage pickup drove slowly by. A fellow with a sandy, Butch Cassidy moustache and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes turned his head to look at the house as he passed.

“Who’s that?” Mandy asked.

“I don’t know, but he was pulling onto the highway as we turned off onto our road yesterday. There’s Jake and Willow. Bye.”

Mandy took a bite of her oatmeal and chewed thoughtfully as she watched her sister dash out to catch her ride. Shortly after they disappeared up the hill, the red pickup cruised slowly by again. The hair on the back of Mandy’s neck prickled, and she stared at the road long after the bright red tailgate had disappeared behind the screen of blackberry bushes that clawed their thorny way out of the barrow pit where the road turned.

Her mind worked for a while on the puzzle of the red pickup but returned to the conversation she had with Leesie about the cause of the fire. “But wouldn’t a short have blown a breaker?” she murmured, turning an inquisitive gaze on the door to the laundry room.

She put her dish in the sink. Then she rose and went to the hall, where she peered through the half-open door at the gray box on the wall above the washing machine. “You’re on your own, Mandy,” she chided herself. “Suck it up! There’s no one to take care of you.”

Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open and approached the corner occupied by the washer. She leaned over its solid bulk and gingerly touched the metal door of the electrical panel, half expecting to be zapped. When nothing happened, she exhaled, pulled it open, and examined each of the switches. Not knowing if she should feel relieved that all the switches were in the
on
position, she closed the panel door and frowned all the way to the kitchen.

She put her dishes in the dishwasher and checked her planner, realizing with a sinking heart that she had an appointment with Grange first thing. She couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm this morning that she had felt last Friday when she promised Mo she’d speak to Grange about their plan. Sighing again, she stowed her planner in her purse. She put on her jacket and checked her image in the mirror. Leesie was right— her eyes had smudgy half-moons underneath.

“I look like a hag,” she muttered in disgust, then wondered why she should care how she looked when she met with Grange.

Mandy opened the door, ducked her head, and leaned against the stiff breeze that made needles of the chilly rain as she ran to her car.

She was halfway to her office before the heater started blowing warm air. “My kingdom for a sunny day,” she said aloud. As she slowed to turn into the district office parking lot, she passed a yellow mini-van emblazoned with the words
Short Hauling
in purple.

She parked in the superintendent’s space and dashed for the porch, glancing around to see if Grange’s pickup was there. She spied it, and the hour she had pledged to spend with him stretched out ahead of her as bleak and chilly as the weather.

No one was at the reception desk, but Mo came out of his office to greet Mandy as she went up the stairs. “He’s not in the best of moods this morning,” he warned, glancing at Grange’s office.

“Perfect,” she whispered, leaning against the newel post and closing her eyes. When Mo nervously cleared his throat, she opened her eyes, and the sight of his anxious face made her straighten up and make a show of taking heart. “Don’t worry, Mo. The worst he can do is say no.”

“I know,” Mo said in an earnest half voice. “He’s not really like that. He’s really supportive and fair and great to work with. It’s just that when… since… whenever…” He looked at the floor. “Today just isn’t a good day, I think.”

“Tell me about it,” Mandy murmured as she turned to traverse the mezzanine. She had just rounded the corner by Grange’s office when she was startled by a sudden
thunk,
and
a large, rectangular box bounced off his open door and landed in his doorway. She kept her eyes on her own office and marched on, resolving to be pleasant and unflappable in the approaching conference, no matter what.

She felt enthusiasm begin to creep back as she studied the folder Mo had left on her desk on Friday. She had forgotten, in the excitement and trauma of the weekend, how well he had laid out his case and how solidly he had buttressed it. She glanced at the clock and saw it was time to present the idea, so she took the folder and rose. Checking herself in the mirror, she forced herself to smile at the solemn face that looked back at her. She took a deep breath.

Mandy had deliberately set the meeting in Grange’s office because she didn’t want him to feel she was dictating to him from a position of power in the larger, superintendent’s domain. As she stepped into the hall, she paused a moment to say good morning to Mrs. Berman and then knocked gently on Grange’s doorframe.

He sat with his back to her, elbows on the desk, head in his hands, and fingers rumpling his dusky locks. She knocked again.

As he turned and saw her, his eyes widened. He sprang from his chair, scooped up the box that still lay in the doorway, and set it on top of a filing cabinet. “Yes?”

“We had an appointment, I believe?”
Remember, pleasant and unflappable.

His eyes narrowed.

Pleasantly and unflappably,
she waited.

Grange looked at his watch. “Did we?”

She forced a smile. “It’s on your calendar.”

“I can give you five minutes,” he said. He unloaded a stack of books off a chair and piled them on the box he had just set on the cabinet. “Sit down.”

Mandy felt a vein start beating in her temple. She sat and consciously relaxed the grip she had on the folder in her hand.
Pleasant and unflappable.
“Actually,” she said in an even tone, “what we have to accomplish will take more than five minutes. If you will check your calendar, you will see that I blocked out an hour.”

His brows came down. “You what?”

“Really, Grange.” She forced a light, conversational tone. “You cannot complain one day that I don’t include you in planning and then, the next, refuse to sit down with me and discuss issues at hand. I needed to talk something over with you. Your calendar was free. I made an appointment. If you had something planned for this morning, your calendar should have shown it.”

He looked at his watch again. “What do you want to talk about?”

“It’s a plan to balance the district’s budget without letting any teachers go. At the same time, it will let us pay for the new reading program.”

There was a long pause, and then it was his turn to speak lightly. “Planning on robbing a bank?”

Mandy drew a chair up beside his desk and opened her folder. “No. I am proposing that we go to a four-day school week.”

Grange didn’t look at the folder. He stared at her, his face set in lines of incredulity.

She returned his gaze calmly, determined not to be the first to speak.

“What turnip truck did that idea fall off of?”

She raised a brow. “Is this a sterling example of— how did you phrase it— professional courtesy? I am indebted to you, sir.”

Their eyes were locked for a full half minute. The pulse in her temple beat more rapidly, but she kept a firm grip on her temper. Grange was the first to look away.

“All right,” he said. “Explain.”

“This is not a revolutionary idea. I found at least twenty school districts in the Northwest that have gone to this model. They are all very like our district: small, spread out, and strangled by operating and transport costs. They immediately save almost twenty percent on those costs alone by going to a four-day week.”

“How do we meet the mandated instructional time?”

“We extend each day by an hour and fifteen minutes. That’s all. The kids start at seven forty-five instead of eight. Instead of going home at three, they’ll go home at four.”

Grange’s eyes scanned the page Mandy had opened in front of him.

She forged on. “You can see that studies have been done in schools that have gone to this schedule, that dropout rates have declined, and student disciplinary referrals have decreased. Achievement doesn’t seem to have been affected either way.”

“What about the child-care issue?”

Her voice took on an edge. “What about it? We’re not in the child-care business. We’re in the education business, and we need to find a way to do it with the money we have.” She paused, and then said more gently, “Older students will be free to tend younger students. I’m sure parents can work out something.”

“And what about the kindergarten? That’s too long a day for the little ones.”

“We can find out what other schools have found successful. One district schedules more academics in the morning and more play learning in the afternoon. It’s something that can be worked out.”

Grange closed the folder and pushed it away. “It will never work. The people would never go for it.”

Mandy rose. “Not even if the great Grange Timberlain spoke in favor of it?”

“Grange Timberlain isn’t going to speak for it.” His eyes flashed and his consonants were clipped. “I don’t know what you mean, coming in here without any investment, without knowing the people, trotting out some simplistic, harebrained idea and think it’s going to solve all the district’s problems.”

“As to that,” she said, “it wasn’t my idea at all. It was Mo’s.”

Grange clenched his teeth and turned his head away.

“It seems to me,” she said, forcing herself back into patient, unflappable mode, “that he has an investment, that he knows the people. And more than that, I think he has vision. He’s not afraid to think outside of the box to solve problems. I’ve said before that he’s a treasure and underappreciated.”

All of a sudden, Mandy’s throat tightened. “But that’s often the way.” She opened the door, but turned back with her hand on the knob. “I’ll leave his folder with you. If you have second thoughts, you may want to study the information he’s gathered. It’s pretty impressive.”

Realizing her eyes were welling, she quickly stepped out in the hall. She walked to her own office and managed to get the door closed before the frustration and disappointment she had been suppressing boiled over. Hating herself for the tears that were coursing down her cheeks, Mandy strode past her desk to the filing cabinet in the far corner, away from sight of the door, and leaned against it, biting the knuckle where her thumb joined her hand in a vain effort to stem the flood.