CHAPTER TWELVE
Two Weeks Later…
Fear shot through Miranda like a lightning bolt. All of her tires had been slashed and keyed into the side of her car was the word, “Slut.” Harrison’s demonic grin immediately came to her mind. There was no one else it could possibly be. Miranda looked around frantically. Harrison was probably still nearby. He was probably watching her this very minute. She’d only been gone from her car for 15 minutes at the most. During that time, she had walked Elise into school gave her a hug and talked to a few other moms of Elise’s classmates.
Her heart was pounding a thousand miles a minute. Harrison had done cruel things before, but this was a next level kind of threat. Her body began to tremor, sweat pooling under her arms.
“Act normal. Just act normal. He would want you to freak out. That’s what he would want. You’re fine. You’re fine,” she whispered to herself. It was working. She was slowly calming herself down. As casually as possible, she reached for her phone in her purse. She saw her fingers were trembling and she tried to keep them still as she quickly dialed her cellphone and put it to her ear. Her eyes scanned the elementary school’s parking lot for Harrison’s black jeep Cherokee.
“Hey Miranda! What’s up?” Kevin her perky and chatty co-workers voice answered the phone.
“Hey Kevin, it’s Miranda, my car broke down over here at Central Elementary and I was wondering if you could swing by and pick me up on your way to work?” Miranda slowly made her way further out into the parking lot, again trying to look as if she was casually strolling as she scanned every inch of the area. She had to know. She had to know if she was just being paranoid or if Harrison was really out to get her. She looked up and down the rows for his black car.
“I’m already as school, but I don’t mind doubling back and picking you up,” he replied. “Also, I have some amazing, amazing news!”
“Thank you Kevin, I really appreciate it,” Miranda said distractedly as she made her way further through the parking lot. So far, there was no sign of Harrison’s car.
“Miranda, are you ok? You seem a little dazed.”
Miranda could hear the concerned tone in his voice and felt bad for drawing him into her problems.
“I’m fine. Just haven’t had my cup of coffee yet,” Miranda covered as she walked down into the last row of the parking lot. Her eyes scanned over all of the shiny cars parked in neat rows.
Suddenly from behind her, she heard a car peel out, its engine revving as it gained speed. Miranda barely had time to turn around to see a black shiny car driving directly towards her flashing its brights at her and honking. She dove out of the way hitting the pavement hard all the breath knocked out of her body, she gasped desperately trying to suck air back into her lungs. A searing pain ran up her elbow. She took shallow repetitive breaths trying to catch her breath. She slowly sat up and looked at her elbow. She saw a large ugly bruise beginning to form. She tried to hold back tears but a few warm ones quickly slipped down her flushed cheeks.
She hadn’t seen who was driving the black car, but she didn’t have to. She knew it had been Harrison and that he was furious. No doubt, he was still angry from her challenging him at the school board meeting two weeks ago and this was his way of saying that she had crossed a line.
Miranda stood up shakily and brushed the dirt off herself. She saw there was also small scrape on her knees and a bit of her dress was torn but besides that she’d come out pretty well. She just worried that next time she upset Harrison that the consequences might even more life threatening.
* * * *
“You look like you’ve been run over,” Was Kevin’s initial comment to her as she got into his lime green Fiat.
“I tried to see if I could change my flat tire myself and I failed miserably,” Miranda lied easily.
“What bad luck to get a flat. Good news though, your luck is about to change.” Kevin began. He reached down by his feet and waved a slim white packet in Miranda’s face. “I got the best news we’ve had in years,” he told her, singing in his excitement.
It was not one of his traits that she enjoyed the most, and tried to push away the annoyance that was already starting to bubble up. “Well, now I’m intrigued.” She laughed, trying to grab the letter from him so he could have two hands on the wheel again. “What’s this great thing?”
He continued to taunt her with the white the large envelope, fluttering it excitedly. She frowned, trying to grab it, but he pulled it away at the last second, every time her fingers got close. She liked him, because he was always so happy, but at times like this, it started to seem excessive.
“Just tell me, before you hit a lamp post, you reckless driver!” she half-scolded, laughing at him.
“It’s this letter. This marvelous missive…” He fluttered the paper in her face once more, before she snatched it out of his hand.
She frowned at the envelope nothing about it seemed out of the ordinary.
Kevin was almost dancing in his seat, waiting for her to read it.
She was. It had been sent to Caroline originally, and the return address was from one of the government offices. Usually, she would have said getting a letter from the government was bad news, but Kevin was practically giddy. “Where did this come from?”
“I got it from Caroline 15 minutes ago in the teachers’ lounge, when I first got to school,” he answered, excitedly. “You have to read it. It’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time.” Kevin took a big swig of his large coffee thermos. “Want some celebratory caffeine?”
“Maybe you should be having less celebratory caffeine,” she muttered, looking at the paper.
Slowly she pulled open the ripped envelope. Whatever was inside was surely the reason for his good mood. Pulling out the sheet of paper, she handed the envelope back to Kevin, who took it, clutching it to his chest. She didn’t read all of it, just skimming through the page, her eye only landing on the keywords, “it is a pleasure to award your program” and “State Grant for English language literature development.” She went back to the top and read it again, this time actually reading the words instead of just skimming over the lines. “What is this?” she asked, waving the paper at him. “Did I miss something? Did we even apply for that one this year?”
Kevin gaped at her with wide eyes. “It’s the answer to our prayers, what does it look like?”
She pressed her lips together into a thin line. “Yeah, I got that. But I thought the grant announcements had been made already.”
“I know, I thought so too, but I guess not. Maybe they’re announcing on a rotating basis. Or as they’re filled. Maybe they went back through their files, since no one applied this year.”
Miranda shook her head. “But we’ve applied for that one how many times before? And every time it went to someone else, and it was always announced at the same time as the others. What’s different this time? And how likely is it that no one would have applied?”
His smile seemed to flag slightly, and she felt bad for raining on his parade like this, but something about this didn’t make sense, and she hated when things didn’t make sense. “I just don’t understand.”
“Do you have to? You understanding it isn’t going to change anything. We’re still getting this money.”
“I guess.” Miranda made a face as she tried to think of the words she wanted. “I just want to know what’s going on.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you.” Kevin shrugged. “Caroline said she called the department to confirm, and they told her we have a friend in high places.”
Miranda wrinkled her eyebrows in confusion. “What does that mean? A friend in high places? Since when do we have a friend in high places? High places?” she repeated slowly. “What kind of high places?
Kevin shrugged again. “I don’t know. She didn’t say more than that. Government high places, I guess.” He laughed at the thought. “Maybe our hidden influence goes right to the top.”
Miranda laughed lightly, letting it trail off, it was weird, and she didn’t like things to be off. She liked things that had answers, that could be explained, with no hidden angles. Experience had told her wherever there were hidden angles, she could usually find Harrison lurking somewhere. She looked at the letter again, the name of the grant looked familiar, she remembered last year, helping Nicole fill out the paperwork for it. Miranda remembered talking to Nicole about the grant in August, but the other woman had said they would skip it this year. Maybe she’d changed her mind, and sent in the same information as last year. That would explain how they got in this time.
“I think this one comes from State,” she said slowly, studying the paper, trying to think of what that might mean. A friend with influence there? How could that be possible?
Kevin snatched the paper back. “Who do we know who has access to State stuff?” Kevin asked, barely stopping himself from laughing.
“It looks like someone has…” Miranda started to say, before letting her voice trail off. It had to be someone new. If it had been any of the regular staff, they would have stepped in to help before this. The only conclusion was it was someone knew, which meant it could be only two options, May, the new bookkeeper, or Liam. A vague memory came back to her, of them sitting at a staff meeting, when Liam first started, and Caroline mentioning something about his background in the army, or perhaps it was the Navy, she hadn’t been listening very closely. It had been hard to concentrate, sitting so close to him, wanting to talk to him, but not daring to. For all she had known then, he could have already been on Harrison’s side, and would report back everything they’d talked about. It had been a surprise when he told her he didn’t know what had happened between her and Harrison.
It’d been two weeks since that conversation, and while she hadn’t purposely tried to avoid him, more like she always seemed to have to leave whenever he stepped into the staff room. No, she told herself sternly, that wasn’t right, she was trying to avoid him. She was embarrassed to be caught out like that, now he knew how badly she had judged him, and just how wrong she had been. Or had she been wrong, a small voice in the back of her mind whispered, maybe he had been lying, hoping to gain her trust, reporting every word they had said back to Harrison. It was so hard to know. She stifled a sigh and rubbed her forehead. Already, she could feel a headache coming on, just thinking about Harrison was enough to get her stress levels up.
“Does it really matter why we got the money?” Kevin seemed to note her mood.
Miranda thought about it, did it really matter? “I guess not. And it’s legitimate? Really?”
Kevin nodded, his smile getting wider as he sensed her coming around. “It is. Caroline double checked it before passing it on, you know how she is. She talked to someone at the grant office, and it’s ours. Free and clear.” He turned into the school’s parking lot snagging a spot near the front.
“As free and clear as grant money ever is,” she replied with a snort.
“True, but it’s better than nothing. According to the person Caroline talked to, the money should be in our accounts by next week. She wants us to think about what we want, discuss it at our next curriculum meeting, and give her the final wish list.”
It sounded amazing, but that tiny part of her still wondered if it were a trick. That was the worst part about what Harrison was doing to her, it made her suspect everyone, and everything.
She looked out the windows of Kevin’s car and could see the football field in the distance. She missed the quiet of the field and watching the football practices. She would sometimes bring her papers out to the bleachers to grade while watching the small figures of the players running back and forth across the field. She couldn’t see any pattern to it, even though Harrison had told her many times it was there.
After a few seconds, her eyes slid to the red shiny car parked a few spots over. She thought of Liam and how me must look driving it. The way he controlled such a powerful car. It must be him they had to thank for the grant. But why would he do that? Why would he push them forward like that? And if it had been him, why wouldn’t he say anything about it? If they knew it was him, they could thank him properly, though she wasn’t sure how you could thank someone who gave you the chance to entirely change how you teach. Maybe that was part of why he didn’t say anything, there was really no words to thank someone for a gift like that. Or maybe he just saw it as part of his job. It was his job to help people in need, and when he heard about their need at the staff meeting, he stepped in.
“I can finally get that reading recovery program we looked at last year!”
Miranda and Kevin slowly got out of the car. Miranda still clutched the letter in her hands. Her mind in a sort of trance as she tried to sort through the fact of this grant.
“What?” Miranda opened her eyes wide, she’d forgotten Kevin was even there,
He didn’t notice her distraction, and went on talking about the programs and studies he wanted to check out as they walked into the school. “Has Nicole left yet?”
“What?” Miranda asked, Kevin’s question shaking her out of her thoughts. It was starting to seem like she spent more time distracted than actually listening.
“Nicole. Do you think she’s left yet? Her door is closed.”
“Oh.” Miranda looked out at the hallway. “I think she’s gone already. She said something at lunch about having a student placement meeting after school.”
“Ah, damn.” He sighed. “She’s going to love this! I can’t wait to surprise her with it tomorrow. She’s going to be over the moon.”
“Yeah, she really is,” she answered distractedly. “She’ll love it.”
Suddenly Kevin grabbed her shoulders, making her jump in surprise, and looked straight at her. “So, what should we do with the money?”
Slowly she let a smile creep across her face, for the first time since the divorce, she was actually feeling excited about school, she was starting to think things could really be all right. Miranda reached out, gripping his elbows tightly, as they grinned at each other. “Anything we want!”