Authors: Margot Dalton
“Hello, this is the store calling,” Enrique said. “I have fifty dresses here for you. When can you come in to try them on?”
“Well, I have my scuba lesson at ten, and then I have to play my guitar in a rock concert, so I won’t be able to make it until after lunch.”
“After lunch!” Enrique exclaimed in his best department-store voice. “But after lunch we have seventy-five bathing suits for you to model.”
Amy giggled in delight. “Okay. I’ll have to make an appointment. Now, what time should I be there?” The little girl rummaged in her backpack for a pencil and notepad while Jon caught Enrique’s eye in the mirror and grinned warmly.
They reached the campus and drove into one of the student parking lots, then walked across the lawn to the arts building where the twins scampered down the hall to their classroom.
Jon and Enrique went to their English class and found most of the students already assembled. Dr.
Pritchard was handing back essays, moving among the desks with brief comments.
She looked more beautiful than ever, tall and elegant in a long tan skirt, a white silk blouse and knitted vest. Enrique hadn’t seen her for almost two weeks, and he was surprised all over again by her golden loveliness.
“Well, hello there.” The professor greeted him with such warmth that he felt a little confused. “I’m very happy to see you back in class, Mr. Valeros. How are you feeling?”
He ducked his head shyly and gave her a folder crammed with papers. “Much better, thank you, ma’am. I have some assignments to hand in. I apologize that they are so late.”
“Well, in this case I think we can make an allowance for tardiness. I’ll try to mark these as soon as I can and get them back to you. Have you caught up with the reading?”
“Almost all of it, ma’am. And Jon gave me his lecture notes from the classes I missed.”
The professor glanced at Jon, who stood quietly next to them. “Good morning, Mr. Campbell.”
“Hello, Dr. Pritchard. Have you got my essay there, by any chance?”
She looked down and began to rummage through the pile of typed pages.
Enrique was certain he could see tension in her face, a sudden nervousness in the grip of her hands on the papers. For some reason, the English professor always seemed brusque and uncomfortable when she
was with Jon, though Enrique couldn’t fathom how anyone could dislike the man.
She handed over the essay and moved away to speak with another group of students. Jon and Enrique headed for their desks at the back of the room while Jon leafed eagerly through his paper.
“She didn’t make a single comment,” he said to Enrique at last, looking disappointed. “She just put the grade and nothing else.”
“What was your grade?”
“She gave me an A.” Jon settled in his desk and looked at the paper again, frowning thoughtfully. “It’s the best grade she’s ever given me. There must have been
something
she liked about this essay.”
C
AMILLA MOVED
automatically through her lecture on characterization, more conscious than ever of the man at the back of the room.
She felt so brutally exposed with his eyes resting on her, and now that she’d read his essay and knew how vividly he recalled that long-ago encounter, she was terrified of what was going to happen next. It was all she could do to finish the lecture. At the conclusion, she answered a couple of questions and gave a writing assignment to the class, then hurried from the room, not even stopping at her office.
Instead, she left the building and walked swiftly across campus to her own apartment, letting herself into the familiar sanctuary with a sigh of relief.
Elton was napping on the back of the couch in a ray of sunlight. He stretched and yawned when she came in, then leaped down and padded across the room to rub against her legs.
Camilla scooped the cat gratefully into her arms and settled in one of the armchairs. Elton snuggled drowsily against her as she stroked him.
Maybe she should just come clean, tell the truth and let the rest of her life unfold from there. But she simply couldn’t bear the anguish of having those dreadful memories revived and exposed. “I’d rather die, Elton,” she whispered. “I believe I’d honestly rather die.”
Somewhere along the way, in some secret part of herself, maybe she’d really started believing that she, Camilla Pritchard, had grown up in luxury and passed her childhood among the wealthy and privileged.
Or perhaps little Callie Pritchard, with her sad past and her shameful secrets, had simply been banished from existence for so many years that Camilla had really thought she was dead.
But she wasn’t. Callie still lived in Jon Campbell’s memory. And now the arrival of this man threatened to bring the whole careful structure of Camilla’s life crashing down around her.
She got up abruptly, displacing Elton, who tumbled onto the chair and gazed up at her with startled reproof.
“I’m sorry, darling.” Camilla bent to scratch the soft patch of skin behind his ears. “But there’s something I have to do.”
She crossed the room and went into the foyer, opened the door to her storage closet and pulled out
a little wooden stool, climbing up to reach the upper shelves. Behind a row of winter boots, she found what she was looking for and dragged it out.
It was an old red duffel bag, faded almost pink by wear and sunlight. Camilla huddled on the wooden stool, her skirt falling around her as she cradled the bag in her arms.
All these years she’d kept it, the only physical remnant of her childhood.
The duffel bag had served her well in those lonely months and years after she’d run away from the motel. Camilla had used it while she stayed at various youth shelters, taken it to work with her change of clothes when she was laboring at two or three jobs to pay her way though school, and carried her books in it when she went to college.
Even after her life had finally changed so completely, she could never bring herself to get rid of the old duffel bag, partly because, after a few years, it was the only thing left from their brief time together.
And because he’d bought it for her.
But it wasn’t safe to keep the bag any longer. Jon’s children often came to her apartment for their research sessions. Maybe one of them would go looking for something in the storage closet, find the red bag and mention it to their father, and then he’d…
Camilla knew how paranoid she was being, but before she could change her mind, she left the apartment and ran down the hall to drop the faded duffel bag into a garbage chute.
After it was gone, Camilla stood for a moment gazing
into the empty blackness of the chute. At last she turned away sadly, and trudged back to her apartment to wash her hands and prepare for her next class.
Only one term, she told herself.
If she could get through this term, Jon Campbell and his elder son would move on to other classes and she’d withdraw from the research program so she wouldn’t have to work with the twins any longer. Her life would return to its quiet, safe path, and she’d never see any of them again.
She just had to find a way to get through the months ahead without ruining everything.
L
ATER THAT DAY,
she picked up Ari and Amy from their classroom and brought them back to her office for their daily session. She was working this week on random selection, in which she showed the children a stimulus object along with a number of symbols and instructed them to pick the one that was the best match.
Then she asked the reasons for their choice and made note of their responses. She was trying to learn how the identification process functioned within their brains, and why they recognized some symbols while they discarded others.
The work was absorbing both to Camilla and to the children, who often made differing choices from among the available objects and then had lively arguments over the disparity.
“There’s no right or wrong answers on these tests,” Camilla said, intervening in one such dispute.
“It’s all a matter of opinion. If Ari picks the grapefruit and Amy picks the beach ball, and you each had a good reason for your choice, then you’re both right.”
“But the beach ball’s just stupid,” Ari muttered. “It doesn’t even have a peel.”
“It does so!” Amy said indignantly. “The part you blow up is the peel. The rest is air.”
Ari scowled in outrage and pounded his hand on the table. “That’s not a
peel,
you dummy. That’s the whole thing!”
“You’re so fierce, Ari,” Camilla told him gently. “You really need to learn the art of civilized intellectual discourse.”
“What’s that?” He cast her a curious glance.
“That’s having an argument in a very polite way so nobody gets insulted.” She ruffled his curly hair.
He looked up at her hopefully. “Can we go over to your place and see Elton and Madonna?”
Camilla glanced at her watch. “It’s getting late, dear. Margaret will be coming along in half an hour to take you home. Besides,” she added, “I think Madonna’s probably not home yet. She went out exploring this morning.”
“Why doesn’t Elton go exploring?” Amy frowned over her Barbie doll.
“Because Elton’s a stay-at-home kitty.”
“Like you.” Ari said. “You’re a stay-at-home kitty, Camilla.”
“I am?” she said in surprise.
“Sure. Daddy says you never go away for holidays
or anything. You just stay at home and work. You even live right at the same place where you teach.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Camilla glanced cautiously at the freckled curve of Ari’s cheek, wondering what this was leading up to.
“We think you should have a holiday this weekend,” Amy said, looking up from her doll. “We want you to come with us to the ranch. Daddy thinks you should, too.”
Camilla felt a surge of alarm. “Now, why would I do that?” she asked with forced casualness.
“Just to be sociable and make the kids happy,” a voice said behind them.
Camilla whirled and found Jon Campbell standing in the open doorway of her office.
“Hi, Daddy,” Ari said.
“Hi, son.” Jon strolled across the room and folded his long body into one of the little chairs at the table next to Amy. “Am I interrupting anything?”
Camilla shook her head. “We’re finished with our session. This is playtime.”
“Hi, pumpkin,” Jon said to his daughter. “What’s happening?”
“We did symbols again. Ari’s mad because I picked the beach ball instead of the grapefruit. He says I’m a big stupid dummy.”
Jon reached out with mock fierceness to grasp Ari’s foot. “Did you call your sister a big stupid dummy?”
Ari chuckled, trying to free his sneaker from his father’s grip. “Camilla says I need to learn the art of civilized intellectual discourse.”
“A fine art, indeed. I think your teacher’s right.” Jon settled back on the little chair and met Camilla’s eyes, smiling.
She was the first to turn away, and move behind her desk to gather an armful of papers. “I guess since you’re here to pick up the children, we can—”
“I’m not really here to pick them up,” Jon said lazily. Ari went over and leaned against his father, draping an arm around his neck. “I’m here to second their invitation.”
She looked up, startled. All three of them were watching her intently from the little table.
“What invitation?” she asked, filing papers with nervous energy.
“We want you to come to the ranch this weekend,” Jon said. “We’ve all talked it over and decided you could use a holiday.”
“But it’s…I have to work,” she said helplessly. “My classes…and there’s my research project…”
“Your work won’t suffer if you take a long weekend once in a while. It’s Thanksgiving, remember?” He waved his hand at the calendar, where the Canadian Thanksgiving was scheduled for the second weekend in October. “This whole campus is going to shut down for three days while everybody has a holiday. We believe that should include you.”
Camilla began to put away the file folders in her desk, trying to keep her face hidden from them while her mind raced around in search of an escape.
“It works just right,” Amy said, “because Daddy
can take six people in his plane and that’s exactly how many are going.”
“Six people?” Camilla asked.
Amy counted on her fingers. “There’s Daddy and me and Ari, and Ricky and Van and you. That’s six.”
“Doesn’t Steven want to go? Or Margaret?”
“Steve never goes with us anymore,” Ari said. “And Margaret’s boyfriend is coming to visit her this weekend. They’re going to drive over to the ranch in Eddie’s truck so they’ll have lots of time alone together.”
“Who else did you say is going?” she asked helplessly.
“Ricky and Van.” Any took out a plastic comb and began to tend her doll’s long golden tresses.
Camilla looked at Jon.
“My daughter Vanessa,” he explained. “And Enrique. It’ll be his first trip to the ranch.”
Their eyes locked while she continued to search for a way to escape. “Look, I appreciate your kindness,” she began, “but I don’t think I can possibly…”
Amy’s green eyes filled silently with tears.
Camilla looked at the little girl in alarm. “Amy, darling, what’s the matter?”
Amy got out of her chair and ran to hug her father, sobbing against his chest.
“She’s disappointed,” Jon said to Camilla, patting the child’s back. “It’s their birthday on Sunday, and they wanted you to be there. It was going to be a surprise.”
“Oh, no…” Camilla looked from Amy’s heaving
shoulders to Ari’s downcast, troubled face. “All right,” she said, feeling utterly helpless. “All right, I’ll come to the ranch. When will you be leaving?”
Amy’s tears vanished like a summer rainstorm. She darted across the room to hug Camilla, bubbling with plans. “Ari and I want you to see our ponies and our special pets and all our secret hiding places,” she whispered. “We’ll have so much fun!”
Camilla held the little girl and felt a treacherous stirring of anticipation. It really had been such a long time since she’d given herself a holiday, gone away and done something just for pleasure.
If only this holiday didn’t have to be in the company of the one man she wanted desperately to avoid.