11
Sophie
The whole ride over to the school from the Homestead was just like a blur to me. I barely remember concentrating on the road and thinking more about Travis and how things were now. Before I knew it, I was parking my car in the customary spot in the parking lot right next to Mary’s. I was glad she was actually here and hopped out of my car and found myself pratically running through the front doors and towards her classroom, which was one door down from mine. The hallways were empty and quiet, just as they always are this time of year, and I could hear my sneakers squeaking on the polished floor as I ran, making a loud squeak as I stopped short in front of her classroom. I threw the door open, feeling a little out of breath.
Mary looked up from her paperwork on her desk with a surprised look. “What are you doing? Is everything okay?”
She surely wasn’t used to seeing me this excited. I grabbed a chair from one of the desks nearby and sat down right next to her. I reached over and grabbed her hands, more to get mine to stop trembling from excitement than anything else.
“He’s here,” I said to her as I couldn’t contain my smile any longer.
“Who? Kenny? What did he ask you to this time?” she said as she turned her face back down to her paperwork.
“No, not Kenny,” I said to her, pulling the papers away from her so she could look at me. “Travis. Travis is in Canon.”
“THE Travis?” Mary said with wonder. Now I had her attention.
“Remember the red-headed girl we saw last night at the Homestead with Maggie?” I said to her, trying to control myself a little bit.
“Sure, how could you miss her? No one in this town has red hair like that.”
“That’s Travis’ daughter,” I said to her. “I saw her eyes last night, and she has his eyes. I knew they were related somehow. I spent all night thinking about it, so I went to see Maggie at lunchtime this afternoon and asked her. She confirmed it; she’s his daughter.”
“And how is this good news for you?” she asked, turning to face me now, curious where I was going.
“I didn’t think it would be either, but Maggie told me he’s not married. He’s never been married. The girl – Abby is her name – the girl’s mother left them when she was a baby. He’s raised her himself. He’s still single.”
“And he’s here in Canon? Are you sure he’s going to be here for a while?” Mary said to me. This put a pinhole in my balloon.
“Well, no I don’t know that for certain,” I said to her as I got up from the chair and started pacing a bit. “But if Travis is here there’s a chance we could run into each other.”
“Do you hear yourself, Sophie?” Mary said to me as she stood up in front of me to stop me from pacing. “There’s a chance we could run into each other? You’ve been hung up on this guy for how long? Fourteen or fifteen years? I don’t want to rain on your parade, I really don’t, but if he’s been single this long, why hasn’t he ever come back here to Canon? Or tried to find you? People aren’t that hard to track down nowadays you know. Facebook, the Internet, all that stuff – I do plenty of cyberstalking of old boyfriends; it’s pretty easy to do.”
Mary made some good points that stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t come up with an immediate reason as to why he never tried to find me after all these years. It could be that he lost interest, gave up hope, gave up on me, but I didn’t want to believe it.
“Okay, you make a good point,” I said to her. “But that doesn’t matter. The fact is that Travis is here now, for whatever reason, even if it isn’t to find out about me. We could still run into each other, see each other, and maybe…”
“If you want to see him, Sophie, let’s just make it happen. Why does it have to be by accident? I know Canon is a small town, but suppose he was leaving today? Your chance might already be gone. Let’s go to the Homestead again tonight for dinner. It’s his mother’s place. I think the odds are good that he would be there, especially if his daughter were there. Then you can guarantee you see him and we’ll see what happens.”
I knew Mary was right. I couldn’t just hope that he would magically run into me on the street somehow, sparks would fly, and he would tell me he still loves me after all these years. This wasn’t a romance story after all; it was real life.
“You’re right Mary,” I said to her nervously. “We’ll go back to the Homestead tonight for dinner and see if he is there. If he is, we’ll see what happens.” I tried to sound as grown up about it as I could, but inside I felt like I was that eighteen-year-old girl again.
“Fair enough,” Mary said to me. “We’ll head over there around five. That should get us there before the Friday crowd for dinner so we can get a table and scope things out. Until then, I really do have work to do,” she glanced down to the papers on her desk then back up to me. “Do you think you can contain yourself until five?” she said, smiling at me. She could see me practically jumping up and down at the prospect of what could happen tonight.
“I’ll try,” I told her as I walked towards the door, figuring I would go to my classroom and pretend to do work for a few hours until we could leave. The excitement I felt in my body had replaced that anxious knot that was in my stomach just a little while ago. I walked into my classroom, sat down at my desk, and tried to concentrate on lesson plans, class rosters and the like. This was not going to be an easy few hours.