Excerpt from Protecting the Girl Next Door

“Mommy, would you please hurry up?”

The question was posed with impressive gravity and earnestness, despite the fact that it was asked by Lily, my six-year-old daughter.

I piled up the homework handouts I needed to grade tonight and stuffed them into my bag. “You know you have to be patient after school since I can’t always leave right away.”

Lily gave me a long-suffering frown. “I know. I’m being ex-treme-ly patient.”

I tried not to giggle at her conscientious pronunciation of the word.

Lily had long, dark, wavy hair that was presently styled in two very neat braids, and her pink backpack was propped up against her legs. Her hair and blue eyes were like mine, but her seriousness and her smile were just like her dad’s.

She wasn’t showing me the smile at the moment. I knew it was hard for her to have to hang around after school until I was ready to go. Overall, it was convenient for me to teach fourth grade at the same small, private school my daughter attended—the very same one I attended growing up—but this last half hour as I was scrambling to get things done always dragged for her.

I clasped my bag and then noticed books all over the floor near the bookcase. “Can you run pick those books up for me? I’ll just finish erasing the board, and we’ll be all done.”

She sighed dramatically but didn’t argue as she trudged over to the scattered books.

To distract her, I asked, “You had a substitute today, didn’t you? How did you like him?”

“Mr. Curtis. He was strange.” Lily had squatted down and was busily collecting books.

I paused and glanced over at her. “Strange in what way?”

“He only wanted to play.”

I’d only seen the substitute teacher briefly from down the hall. He wasn’t on the regular sub list, and I didn’t know anything about him. He looked fairly young and had golden-brown hair and an athletic body. Not the typical substitute for a first grade class. “Well, playing can be fun, can’t it?”

“I guess, but we didn’t do spelling words or math or anything.” Lily paused from neatly shelving the books and gave me a solemn frown. “I’m going to forget all my subjects before Mrs. Bradbury comes back.”

“No, you won’t.” I made my voice sound cheerful, but I was secretly worried. I’d seen a number of substitute teachers who mostly just filled the day with busy work to make it easy on themselves. If it was just a day or two, then it was no big deal. But Eileen Bradbury was out on maternity leave and wouldn’t return for at least ten to twelve weeks.

Lily might just be in first grade, but she couldn’t lose that much of her schooling.

“He was probably just getting to know everyone on the first day, and you’ll get into your subjects tomorrow.”

“I hope so.”

I slung the strap of my bag over my shoulder and smiled as Lily placed the last books on the shelf. She was very intelligent, and she did everything with infinite seriousness. Sometimes I thought she should have some more fun since she was just six, but reading and schoolwork seemed to be what she found the most fun.

“Ready?” I asked her.

“Yes.” She straightened up and pulled on her backpack, which looked almost as big as she was. “I’m ready.”

“We can do some reading tonight to make sure you don’t forget anything.”

She seemed to perk up at this news, and she reached for my hand as we walked down the hall and outside toward the car.

The school was quiet now since students had been dismissed almost an hour ago. The staff parking lot was about half-empty.

“There he is,” Lily announced as I was searching for the keys in my bag. “Mr. Curtis.”

I glanced up and over in the direction she indicated and saw a tall man leaning against an SUV across the lot.

He was talking on the phone, and he didn’t seem to be aware of our presence.

He really was very good-looking, with broad shoulders, long legs, and that hair that shone a dark gold.

I knew it wasn’t right to stereotype, but he didn’t look at all like any other substitute first grade teacher I’d ever seen.

He had to be around thirty. If he wanted to be a teacher, then he’d certainly had time to get his certification and get a full-time job by now. I wondered why he hadn’t. Maybe he was some kind of a slacker, just hanging around and taking on substitute jobs because they were easy. I hoped that wasn’t the case. Not only was that not the kind of teacher I wanted for my daughter—or for any student for that matter—but it also wasn’t the kind of teacher we needed for our school. Private schools required a more dedicated type of instructor. And if this man was only looking for an easy paycheck, then...

Okay, I was getting ahead of myself, and Lily had a tendency to easily read my moods. If I continued to stand here scowling, she was going to catch on.

Fast.

“I’m sure things will be better in class tomorrow,” I said to Lily, who was frowning in the man’s direction.

Like mother, like daughter.

“I hope so.” Lily looked up at me with big blue eyes. “I asked him why the sea was salty, and he said I should look it up because right now was playtime.”

I hid my immediate indignation at this half-hearted answer to a genuine question from an intelligent girl. “We can look it up when we get home. How about that? I’ve always wondered why the sea is salty too.”

“Okay.”

We both climbed into the car, and I glanced once more at Mr. Curtis as I started to pull out of the parking lot. He was still on the phone, and he didn’t appear to be having a happy conversation. He was scowling, as if he were angry.

Fight with his girlfriend or something. He was probably really popular with women.

I dismissed the man from my mind as I turned onto the street.

“Do you want to go pick out a Christmas tree this weekend?” I asked, glancing at Lily in the rearview mirror.

I saw her face break into a smile. “Yes! Can we get a really big one?”

“We can get as big a one as will fit in our living room.”

“How big is that?”

“I’m not sure. We’ll measure it before we go out and look so we’ll know exactly how big we can get.”

She nodded, obviously thinking deeply on this issue.

I was glad she was excited about the Christmas tree. About Christmas.

Last year had been really hard—being the first Christmas without Nick.

My husband, Nick, had been a SEAL, but he died on a mission a year and a half ago. We’d been married seven years. Sometimes I looked at myself in the mirror and couldn’t believe I was a twenty-eight-year-old widow.

But I was. That was me. Living the rest of my life without Nick, who’d been just as sweet and serious as Lily.

We’d grown up together and had been high school sweethearts. It was our love of literature that had first drawn us together in our tenth grade English class. I had known from the first time he read to me from Pride and Prejudice that he was the one for me. And just knowing that I’d never hear him do so again was sometimes too much to bear.

As if she’d read my thoughts, Lily said into the silence, “Remember when Daddy brought home the tree that didn’t fit.”

My throat ached slightly at the memory of Nick cursing under his breath as he tried to get a too-big tree into our small house. “I do remember. He had to chop off the top to make it fit.”

Lily giggled. “He wasn’t happy.”

“But it still looked good, didn’t it?”

“Yes. It was pretty. I picked out a bigger star for the top so it didn’t look so silly.”

“Your daddy always wanted the best for you.”

“Yes.” She was giving a little nod when I glanced to the mirror to check her expression. “Even the biggest Christmas tree.” After a pause, she added, “I remember he liked to read to me.”

“He did. He loved books just as much as we do.” Nick had loved his job, but he hadn’t been what most people thought of in a SEAL. In fact, he’d been thinking of getting out so he could go to graduate school. He’d just about decided on that plan when he’d been killed in action.

If he’d made the decision a little sooner, he might still be alive.

I shook the thought out of my head. Nick had always done his best—in his career, for his family—and there was no use thinking about could-have-beens.

For some reason I pictured again the handsome substitute teacher, leaning against his SUV.

But he was clearly nothing like Nick.

***

You can find out more about Protecting the Girl Next Door (and the entire series) .