Spring Secrets: Pine Point, Book 3 (2 page)

Chapter Three

Sienna thought about that kiss the entire way to her new apartment on the opposite end of town. She thought about it as she carried boxes and luggage up three flights of stairs and when she finally peeled off her clothes and took a long, hot shower. She could still feel Mike’s mouth on hers, his hands pulling her close in the biting winter air. All muscle. All confidence. She had no intention of getting seriously involved with anyone while she was in town, but
damn
. A guy like that might almost make her change her mind.

As she wrapped a towel around her head and pulled on a robe and fuzzy socks, she surveyed her new living room. Couch in one corner, recliner across from it, and a brand new flat-screen TV hanging on the wall. A fireplace with a gas insert burned brightly and did a decent job of keeping the January chill at bay. Small kitchen to her left, bathroom and two small bedrooms down the hall. All furnished as well. A place like this, even unfurnished, would cost well over a thousand dollars back in Chapel Hill. Here, two floors above a diner, she’d be paying six-fifty a month. Including all utilities.

Sienna walked to the wide window that overlooked Main Street. From here, she could see one long block in each direction. Two floors below her sat Zeb’s Diner, a fixture in town for as long as she could remember. Directly across the street was Bernie’s Barber Shop, with what looked like apartments on its second and third floor. She could see a pet store, some kind of clothing boutique, and a hardware store to the left. St. Mary’s Church sat on her right. Beyond that, if she remembered correctly, was the entrance to a small local park. A few streetlights twinkled in the dark. A car, then two pickup trucks, then a snowmobile, drove down the street and north toward County Route 78 and Red Barn Road, which eventually led out of town and over the hills to Silver Valley.

Sienna sank into the recliner and tucked her feet beneath her. Three bulging boxes of books and papers sat under the front window. For the first time, a squiggle of doubt moved through her. Was it wrong not to tell anyone the real reason she’d come to Pine Point? Did someone besides her dissertation advisor need to know she was analyzing the behavior of the people who lived here? She loosened the towel, raked her fingers through her long curls, and shook her head. She wouldn’t use identifying information. It would all be kept confidential and anonymous.

She reached into a brown leather backpack and pulled out a new, sealed stack of yellow notepads. Twenty-first-century technology might be great in a lot of ways, but she still preferred taking notes longhand and then transferring them to her computer.
Map out Main Street
, she jotted on the top page of her notepad She needed to get a feel for the town again, see who spent time where and what they did. As a kid, even as a teenager, she hadn’t paid attention to much of that. Their rundown apartment, the school, and the streets and shops between them had been all she knew until the day she left.

Local residents,
she wrote below her Main Street note. She thought a minute, then added
blue-collar workers
in parentheses.

Mac Herbert

Damian Knight

Mike Springer

She stopped. Small-business owners weren’t really considered blue-collar workers, were they? She drew a line through Mike’s name and flipped to the next page.
Local professionals
, she wrote instead.

A car horn beeped outside, and Sienna leaned over to see a bulky black SUV pull into the parking spot behind her car. Matching blond twenty-somethings emerged from the vehicle, one dressed in a red parka, jeans, and work boots, the other in a slimming blue ski jacket and what looked like black leggings and stiletto heels.

Sienna added the names of Ella and Becca Ericksen to her second list. They must have been out for a late supper at Zeb’s. But to her surprise, they unlocked the door beside the diner entrance. A moment later, she heard footsteps on the stairs and then the door below her open and shut. She scrawled
sisters sharing an apartment?
next to their names and wondered how difficult it was to have a social life when your sister slept in the bedroom next to you. She knew Becca was dating Zane Andrews. From what she recalled, Ella was dating half of Pine Point.

She stared at the notepad. Ella had been one grade above Sienna back in high school, one of the Queen Bees and the center of everything social. Sienna knew because she’d watched from far outside the center. Tears stung her eyes, and though she did her best to wipe them away, they slipped down her cheeks.
Things have changed since you were fifteen.
You’re not a lost, lonely teenager with a name and a face that doesn’t fit in.

True. She’d chalked up eleven years of living somewhere else, three years of therapy, a wide circle of friends, two serious boyfriends, a slew of jobs, and two college degrees.
You’ve done okay since leaving Pine Point
. She pinched the bridge of her nose. She’d done better than okay, her therapist would tell her, though she didn’t always believe him. The scar on her wrist served as evidence of that. So did the scars inside, cut more deeply into her soul and impossible to see. Returning to a place where she’d never felt at ease, and where she’d lost the one person she loved in life, set all those old wounds to aching again.

Finally, she blew her nose and ran a hand over her face. Time for bed. Time for a fresh start in the morning. Sienna hadn’t come back to Pine Point to mourn her mother or relive her childhood. She’d come back to finish her dissertation. Prove to the world she could do it, she could earn the highest college degree despite all the shit she’d lived through. If she had to do it by watching and recording the lives of the people who still lived here, then so be it.

* * * * *

Long after nightfall, Mike headed for the parking lot behind the gym and climbed into his jacked-up red pickup truck.

Zane had asked him once why he didn’t put the name of his business on his truck. But which business? The gym, or towing and plowing? He figured it didn’t matter either way.

Everyone in Pine Point knew where to find him when they needed him. He kept some business cards for the gym over in his towing garage outside of town, and he kept some business cards for the garage on the front desk of his gym, but other than that, he didn’t do much advertising.

He passed the entrance to the interstate and then a few residential streets. Finally, he turned onto Cornwall Road and followed it out of town. Here on the south side of Pine Point, squat one-story homes alternated with rundown trailers and empty lots. After a mile, he turned into the driveway of the only two-story house on the road and parked in front of the garage. A single light burned in the living room.

He didn’t bother to lock his truck. He never left anything inside it. He climbed the front steps and opened the door. Inside, his mother slept in front of the television tuned to a reality show. She wore a blue bathrobe and matching slippers and snored softly.

“Ma.” He shook her shoulder. “Ma? I’m home.”

Loretta Springer’s eyes opened, and she blinked in confusion. “Mikey?” She sat up. “What time is it?”

“Almost eight thirty.”

She yawned. “Oh.” She reached for the half-empty cup of tea on the coffee table. “Did you have a good day at work?”

She always asked him the same thing, and he always answered the same way. “I did, yes. How was your day?”

“Busy.” She turned off the television. “Martha came over for lunch.” She gestured around the room. “I’m thinking about repainting in here. Maybe blue. It’s been green for too long.”

Mike dug a beer out of the fridge and joined her on the couch. “I think blue sounds nice. I can do it next weekend if you want. I’ll ask Mac or Damian to come over and help.”

“You don’t have to. Martha’s twin nephews are looking for some extra money. I told her I’d hire them.”

Mike leaned his head against the couch and closed his eyes.
Good ol’ Ma.
“That’s nice of you.”

“Nice, schmice,” she said. “It’s what you do for other people.”

He patted her leg and let the cool beer slide down his throat. “You’ll never believe who came into the gym tonight.”

“No? Who?”

He sat up and opened his eyes. “Sienna Cruz.”

She paused, not long enough to make him worry, but long enough to make him wonder. “Oh?”

He hadn’t bothered to tell his mother he’d gone out with Sienna before. He didn’t now. “She’s filling in over at the school. Teaching Lucy Foster’s class.”

“Well, good for her. She was a smart girl.” Loretta looked into the darkness. “I always wondered what happened to her after she left Pine Point.”

“You remember when she lived here as a kid? And her mother?”

“Of course.” Loretta finished her tea and set the cup aside. “Elenita and I worked together that summer cleaning houses.” She stood and reached for his empty bottle. “Terrible, terrible thing when she passed. No child should lose a mother that young.”

The tone of her voice struck Mike as odd, but before he could ask her about it, she walked into the kitchen. “Think I’ll go to bed and read for a bit,” she said over her shoulder.

Mike followed her to the small bedroom at the back of the tidy house. The only other bedroom, long since turned into her sewing room, still had pencil marks on one wall measuring his height, scratched there each September from first to twelfth grade. He’d had to make the marks himself when he’d outgrown her at fourteen.

He turned on the bedside light and illuminated a large crucifix on the wall above her bed. A Bible lay on the table next to her reading glasses. “Need anything?”

“No.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek and patted his arm as if he were still a boy. “You be nice to Sienna. She’s had a hard life.”

And he hadn’t? “Of course, Ma. I’m nice to everyone.”

“Get some sleep tonight,” she added. “You work hard. All the time. Too hard.”

“I don’t. But, yes, I’ll get some sleep. And I’ll see you in the morning.” Although he had no idea how he might find sleep easily tonight, with the smell of Sienna still in his mind and the feel of her skin still on his hands. He climbed the back stairs to his apartment over the garage and wondered what she’d think if she knew he still lived at home. Of course, lots of people did in Pine Point, for various reasons. He hadn’t thought twice about moving back in after returning from California. He’d needed a place to stay, his mother had needed a helping hand, and it had worked out well all the way around

Mike turned on the light over his small kitchen table and went to the bathroom to run a hot shower. Be nice to Sienna? He wondered what his mother would say if he told her he’d kissed Sienna. If he told her he’d spent the rest of tonight trying not to think about her and failing. He dropped his clothes to the floor. One tattoo above his right elbow stood out in stark contrast to the others, with a single date and the words
Never Again
inked above it.

He stared at the letters and the numbers until they were burned into his mind’s eye. The memory of Edie mocked him all these years later, and his stomach clenched. He’d thought she’d had a hard life too, when they’d first met. He thought that was the reason fate had brought them together, so they could ease each other’s hurt and build a life together. He’d realized only too late that Edie was more interested in setting him up and stealing every last dime to ease her own hurt and build her life with someone else.

Mike tightened his hand into a fist.
You put that tattoo there for a reason. Don’t let a woman mess up your head again
. With that, he stepped under the spray and let the hot water ease the tension from his muscles and drive all thoughts of Sienna from his mind.

Chapter Four

“Who is that?” A thin boy with brown hair pointed at Sienna, his dark brows drawn together in concern. “Mrs. James, that is not our substitute teacher. Nor is it Mrs. Foster.” His words, prim and proper, sounded funny coming from the lips of an eight-year-old.

“You’re right, Caleb, this is someone brand new.” Jenny James, the principal of Pine Point Elementary School, smiled at the boy. She and Sienna stood in the doorway of Room Eighteen. Jenny dropped her voice. “I didn’t tell the class they might have a new teacher until I was sure you’d take the job. They were with a substitute last week.” She gestured across the room. “Loni is one of our floating aides. She’s available first thing in the morning and then after lunch, if you need an extra pair of hands.”

Sienna nodded and looked around the classroom. Two wide-eyed boys with chubby cheeks sat on the rug while Loni, a matronly woman with a double chin, read them a book. Another boy, with the telltale upward eye slant of Down syndrome, rocked in a chair near the window. The only girl in the room, her hair pulled into two tight braids, walked a careful circle around the rug. Heel touched toe in careful, mincing steps, and her fingers tapped together in a rhythmic cadence. She kept her eyes on the floor.

“Dawn has OCD, anxiety, and selective mutism,” the principal said as the girl walked by. “Billy and Bailey are twins and both developmentally delayed.” She nodded at the aide, who continued to read. “Eight years old but at kindergarten levels for reading.” She pointed at the boy standing in the middle of the room. “Caleb is on the autistic spectrum, as far as we can tell. Asperger’s, I suspect, but his parents refuse to have him formally tested.”

“At all?”

“At all.” Finally, Jenny walked to the child in the chair and patted his head. “And Silas is the lover boy of the class.” As if on cue, he jumped from the chair and ran to Sienna. He wrapped his arms around her legs and grinned up at her. Sienna grinned back and tried not to lose her balance.

Jenny clapped her hands together three times. “Room Eighteen, all eyes on me, please. This is Miss Cruz.” Jenny waited until they gathered around her in a haphazard semi-circle. “She’s going to be your teacher for the rest of the year.”

All the boys stared. Dawn continued to circle the room. “The whole year?” one of the twins asked.

“Yes. The whole year.” Jenny patted Silas on the head. He turned and looked at Sienna with a wide grin.

“She’s pretty,” he said.

“Yes, she is,” Jenny answered. She brushed her hands on the blue skirt of her business suit. The James family was one of the few old-money families in Pine Point. Most of them had ended up in law or real estate or business, and Sienna wondered what had brought Jenny, the baby of the family, to education instead.

Jenny motioned at the teacher’s desk in the corner. “There are lesson plans in the top drawer, but of course you’ll want to design your own once you get a feel for the class. The children’s Individualized Education Plans are all in that file cabinet in the corner, top drawer, locked up.” She produced a ring of keys from the pocket of her blazer. “The large one is for the classroom, the silver one for the closet in the corner, and the small gold one for the two file cabinets.”

“Thank you.” Sienna palmed them. Yes, she’d taught a special-needs class before. Once. Three years ago. During her interview for this position, it had seemed like the perfect qualification, along with her education and the fact she’d grown up in Pine Point. The superintendent and principal had obviously agreed. Now she wondered if they were all off their rockers.

“The schedule for the day is posted by the door,” Jenny went on. She turned and pointed. As she did, Caleb walked over to the blue banner.

“Nine o’clock is arrival time,” he began in his thin, high-pitched voice. “At nine-fifteen, you have to call the main office and tell them if anyone is absent. And if we are each having hot or cold lunch today.” He paused. “I am having hot lunch. My mother gave me one dollar and fifty cents for it.”

Jenny leaned close and whispered to Sienna, “He’ll be your best resource.”

Caleb dragged his finger down the banner and the explanations went on. “We leave for lunch at eleven-thirty. Every other day we have special, like Art, or Music…”

Jenny tiptoed her way around Caleb, mouthing,
“Call me if you need anything.”
Loni stood and followed her with a smile and a bob of her chins. Sienna nodded at them both, and then it was just her alone with the students.

“At twelve o’clock, we go outside when the weather is nice,” Caleb was explaining, “but not if the temperature is below freezing. That is thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit or zero degrees Celsius.”

“Yes, it is,” she said, but he didn’t slow down or stop to respond.

“And at quarter to three, we have to pick up everything and walk out to the buses when the bell rings at three o’clock.” He finished and folded his hands in front of him, like a public debater who’d finished his formal presentation.

“Well, thank you for all of that,” Sienna said. She tried to give him a smile, but Caleb looked over her shoulder, avoiding eye contact. She didn’t touch him. Instead, she walked over to the bookcase, selected two books, and sank into the chair at the edge of the rug. “How about a story or two to start the day?”

Billy and Bailey were squirming where they sat, but they looked up expectantly, which she took as a positive sign. Silas had returned to the chair under the window and was rocking it furiously. His cheeks had turned bright red, but he waved at her and grinned as if he was having the time of his life, so she left him there.

Caleb walked across the room, pulled out a chair, and sat at the small table near the teacher’s desk. He folded his hands again and waited, his gaze still focused somewhere over Sienna’s head. In the only other chair at the table sat Dawn, the lone girl in the class. She had wide blue eyes and beautiful blond hair pulled into neat braids. She wore what looked like designer clothes, a long maroon sweater over patterned leggings and cute black shoes with bows on the toes. But her cuticles were chewed to the quick, and as Sienna looked at her, she pulled her knees up to her chin and dropped her gaze to the floor.

A flash of memory swept over Sienna. The Pine Point playground in bleak winter, kids playing, Sienna standing near the swings and waiting for her turn.

“Her mother talks funny,” one of the boys said in a low voice. He inspected his bright red ski jacket and tugged on the ski lift tag attached to the zipper.

Sienna dug her bare hands as far as they would go into the pockets of her secondhand coat.

“My mother says she’s a
gringo
,” said another boy with a glance at Sienna. “That means a dirty Mexican.”

Eight-year-old Sienna turned, cheeks burning, and stumbled in the direction of the slide instead.

“I know the schedule says math at nine-thirty,” she said as she banished the memory, “but I think since we’re all getting to know each other today, we’ll start with a story and then do math a little later on.” She glanced at Caleb, but he continued to stare at the wall. Billy and Bailey were slapping each other’s knees. Sienna reached down to put a hand between them and spread her fingers wide on the carpet. “One, two, three, four, five,” she said, wiggling each finger in turn. “That’s how much space I want here, okay?”

They blinked and frowned, but they stopped slapping each other and moved apart a few inches. One of the twins had a small scar on the bridge of his nose, and his hair was a shade darker brown than his brother’s.
That’s how I’ll tell them apart. I’ll figure this out.
She opened the book and began to read.
One step at a time.

* * * * *

“You’re teaching the special-ed class now, right? Lucy Foster’s class?”

The voice came from behind Sienna as she stood in the doorway to the cafeteria and watched her students walk to their table. “Yes,” she said and turned. A short, young woman with a dark blond bob and frosted-pink lipstick smiled up at her.

“I’m Polly Preston,” the woman said. “Second grade.” She pointed to the woman beside her, a taller version of Polly with the same haircut, only in light brown. “Harmony Donaldson. Third grade.” They both dressed in long tunic tops and leggings, with identical black boots on their feet.

“Sienna Cruz. Nice to meet you.”

Polly shook her hand. “You too.” She looked and sounded exactly like a second grade teacher should, cute and sparkly and full of energy. “Are you from the area?”

“I was. Left when I was fifteen and moved to North Carolina.”

“Oh, you must be freezing!” Polly said and rubbed her arms as if a winter wind had swept down the hall. “North Carolina must be a lot warmer than Pine Point in January.”

Sienna couldn’t help smiling. “It is.” She glanced at Harmony, who hadn’t stopped studying Sienna’s clothes, her hair, her ringless left hand. “So…have you two worked here long?”

“Four years,” Polly said.

“We’ve been best friends since second grade,” Harmony added.

“You’re from Pine Point?”

Polly shook her head. “Silver Valley.”

Sienna mentally took a few notes. “And you both always wanted to be elementary school teachers?”

Harmony shrugged. “Not always. But it’s a good job. Reliable. With benefits and summers off.”

“It’s good until we find husbands,” Polly said. Her cheeks pinked, and she looked around as if to make sure no one else had heard her. “I mean…I want to have a family. I like kids and everything, but this is just until I have my own.”

Sienna filed that information away with the rest of the stereotype beginning to emerge. She tried to give a conspiratorial smile. “I hear you.”

But Harmony lifted a brow as if in doubt. “You’re not married, right? I heard you were working on your PhD.” She said the words as if getting a PhD precluded any chance of settling down with a husband and kids.

“Well, I am. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want a social life too.”

“Harmony said she thought she saw you at Mike Springer’s gym yesterday afternoon,” Polly said. “Was that you?”

Harmony gave Sienna another quick up-and-down glance. “You work out, don’t you?” She pinched at some imaginary fat on her belly. “I should. I just can’t find the time.”

“No kidding,” Polly agreed. “Although I’m sure having Mike as a trainer is a pretty good incentive. Are you, you know, like, friends with him?” she asked Sienna.

Ah, so the real reason Polly and Harmony had stopped to chat. Sienna shrugged. “We’ve hung out a few times.”

“He seems like a nice guy,” Polly said. Five or six silver bracelets dangled on her wrist, and she played with them as she talked. “I don’t really know him that well. He hasn’t gone out much since he came back.”

“Back from where?” Sienna asked. She’d always assumed Mike Springer was a local boy, born and raised. She remembered him vaguely from high school, three years ahead of her. His senior year, he’d sat with his buddies on the long stone wall outside Pine Point High’s main entrance and whistled as the cute upperclassmen walked by.

A long look passed between Polly and Harmony. “He lived in California for a while,” Polly said. “He came back to Pine Point a couple years ago and opened the gym.”

“Oh. That’s cool.” Sienna gave what she hoped was a noncommittal nod.
Interesting he never mentioned that.
How long had he lived on the West Coast? How had he ended up that far from home? And why had he left to return to Pine Point?

“Anyway, we just wanted to say hi and introduce ourselves,” Polly said, the bubbly tone returning to her voice. “Good luck with everything. I’m sure you’ll do fine.” She glanced into the cafeteria. “That Silas is a cutie-pie.”

They all are,
Sienna thought as she watched her five students clustered at a table in the corner. With a glance at the clock on the cafeteria wall, she pulled her phone from her pocket. She wanted to see Mike again. She wanted to talk to him, spar with him, get worked up and sweaty and then watch his arms flex as he mixed her a smoothie and grinned from behind the front desk. Finding out any backstory about his time in California would just be a bonus.

“How about a workout tonight?”
she typed.
“I’m gonna need one after today.”