Page 84 of Second Start: Family
That had been the prologue. Now she truly started.
She didn’t look at them, didn’t try to gauge their reactions as she told them.
Instead, she lived it again.
*
Kenzie smiled as the cool cotton of her caftan floated down around her body. It had been unseasonably warm for April, and she’d been wearing her suit since just after six this morning, so she’d wasted no time shedding it as soon as she reached her bedroom on the second floor of her townhouse.
She’d gone without the jacket during classes, but put it back on for dinner with Adam at the restaurant. Not the little out-of-the-way place they had gone to from the start — he’d said he wanted to give their relationship a chance to develop before exposing it to public scrutiny.
Last week, though, he’d taken her to his house. Now — tonight — he’d taken her to the trendy D.C. restaurant where he knew people and they knew him. And wondered about her.
A definite step in their relationship.
Belatedly, she reached for the plastic wand to adjust the blinds. She often forgot that precaution, since beyond her enclosed patio, there was only a private road, then woods. Looking down, she saw the patio was dark. The timer on the light would have kicked in by now, so the bulb must have burned out.
Adam hadn’t introduced her to any of the people who said hello to him, but she didn’t mind. He wasn’t interested in sharing her or dividing his attention. She’d understood that completely when he told her that he’d told his son, Bret, about seeing her.
She’d felt a hitch of concern at that. She knew Bret’s emotional problems — she’d been his teacher for almost two years. He’d been moved into her section in October after a very rocky start in another class. And the committee had decided the continuity of a second year with her would be good for him. There’d even been some thought to returning him to her section this school year, but they’d decided against that.
She found a long-lasting, non-bug-attracting lightbulb in the hall closet and went down the stairs to the first floor.
It was only at the end of last summer, with Bret headed for a new classroom that Adam asked her out — acting, he said, on an attraction he’d felt from the start. She was no longer the teacher of his child, but Bret wasn’t an ordinary child, and she’d agreed wholeheartedly that she and Adam should not let his son or anyone else know they were seeing each other. Not at first.
The past several months, though, she’d worried that Bret might find out on his own, which would be so much worse. She’d hoped Adam would tell Bret … Now he had. And Adam said the talk had gone great.
She opened the French doors to the patio. The light from inside cut a triangle across the stone-paved center, leaving the plantings around the edge dark. But she didn’t need a lot of light to find the fixture to the side of the door frame.
She was reaching up into the fixture, searching for the rounded surface of the old bulb when the shadows shifted to reveal a form.
Her initial relief at recognition fled with his first words.
“You think you’re so smart — you’re not. You’re pathetic. You think you’re going to marry this big, important guy, have all this money — be somebody? It’s not going to happen. I won’t let it happen.”
“Bret, your father and I—”
“Shut up! Just shut up! It’s not you and him. It’s not!” He breathed in noisily through his mouth. Was he trying to regain control over his impulses? Or stoking his grievance? “It’s not going to be that way — you understand? Not ever. I’ll see to it. I’ll make sure.”
He lunged toward her. Before she could react, he grabbed the open collar of her caftan, yanking it hard enough to pop buttons off and rip the fabric to below her breasts.
She held her calm.
“Bret—”
“Shut up, shut up.” He slapped at her, knocking the lightbulb from her hands, shattering it on the ground around her.
With a sucked-in sob, he pivoted and ran.
She tried to call Adam. He didn’t answer. Invited to leave a message, she asked him to call her.
Then she called Billie Raston, her mentor at Dalverston, as well as Bret’s current teacher.
Billie was there in twenty minutes.
*
The next day Kenzie was called to the headmaster’s office before her first class.
