I was saved from responding by my phone signaling a text.
Sloane: My blabbermouth niece told me something I think you should know.
Me: What? Is my side part out of style?
Sloane: Yes. Also she said the teacher’s been pretty rough on Way the last two days.
Me: What do you mean?
Sloane: Chloe said Mrs. Felch is being mean to Waylay. Yelling at her in front of the rest of the class. Making “weird” comments about her mom. Chloe and Nina got in trouble for defending her.
Me: Thanks for letting me know.
Sloane: You’re going to go mama lion on an elementary school teacher, aren’t you?
I pocketed my phone. “I hate to do this to you guys, but I need to go to Waylay’s school.”
“Is Way in trouble?” Fi asked.
“No, but Mrs. Felch is about to be. Mind covering for me until I get back?”
Silver looked up from the heating pad she was taping to her stomach. “I’ll cover for you if you bring me back one of those pretzels with caramel dip from the place next to the school.”
Fi’s eyes lit up. “Ooooh! Bring two!”
“Better make it three,” Silver amended. “Max is coming in at four thirty and she’s on Day Two of the Red Tide.”
“Three pretzels with caramel dip. Got it,” I said, untying my apron and grabbing my purse. “You sure you don’t mind covering for me?”
Fi waved away my concern. “It’s always slow the first hour or two after opening. And Knox won’t be here with all us gals in the middle of Shark Week.”
“Shark Week?”
She pointed at the Midol and brownies.
“Oh, right. That Shark Week. Thank you for covering!” I blew them kisses and headed for the door.
The school was less than two blocks away, so I hoofed it. It gave me the time to work up a good head of steam. I was sick and tired of people thinking they could judge someone by their family’s behavior. I’d lived in the shadow of Tina’s misdeeds my entire life and I hated that Waylay was facing the same kind of problem.
She was just a kid. She should be having sleepovers, playing games, sneaking junk food. Not dealing with the fallout of her mother’s reputation.
Worse yet, she hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me she was having problems with her teacher. How could I fix a problem if I didn’t know it existed?
Knockemout Elementary School was a squat brick building in the middle of town. There was the standard wood-chipped playground to the right and the long drive out front where buses loaded and unloaded every day.
The school day had already wrapped up, but I hoped I could catch Mrs. Felch in the building.
The front doors were all still propped open from the mass exodus of students, so I headed inside. It smelled like floor polish and disinfectant. It was only the first week of school, but the bulletin boards outside the sixth-grade classrooms were already full of artwork. Except for Room 303. The board was empty except for a calendar with a countdown on it and a piece of paper with the name Mrs. Felch.
I hadn’t met her at Back to School Night. She’d been out sick, and I’d spent most of the hour gently reminding parents and school staff that I wasn’t my sister. I kicked myself for not making more of an effort to meet her before leaving her in charge of my niece.
I spied a woman sitting behind the desk at the front of the classroom. Best guess put her in her early fifties. Her silver-streaked hair was pulled back in a bun so tight I bet she got headaches from it. She was dressed in head-to-toe shades of beige, and her lips were pursed in a thin line as she scrolled through something on her phone. She gave off the air of someone who was disappointed in just about everything life had to offer.
I gave a cursory knock and walked into the room. “Mrs. Felch, you don’t know me, but—”
The woman looked up and bobbled her phone, eyes narrowing behind her glasses. “Don’t play games with me. I know who you are.”
Good lord. Hadn’t the dang grapevine caught up to the teaching staff yet?
“I’m not Tina. I’m Naomi Witt. My niece, Waylay, is in your class, and I’d like to talk to you about how you’ve been treating her.”
I’d never been good at confrontations. Hell, I’d squeezed my ass out of a church basement window to run away from a wedding rather than tell the groom I wasn’t going to marry him.
But in that moment, I felt a fire burning in my belly. Backing down wasn’t an option. Neither was retreat.
“How I’ve been treating her? I’ve been treating her the way she deserves to be treated,” Mrs. Felch snarled. The lines on her face carved deeper. “I treat her the way the daughter of a whore deserves to be treated.”