He’s not worth the drama.
He wasn’t. Miles was a shiny new object. That was it. Was this how Mr. Grady felt when I showed up here two years ago?
No.
Grady was beloved. He had old-man wisdom and wit and decades of experience under his belt. I’d never been any sort of a threat to him. He was practically an institution at Stanton and might very well have stuck around until the day he died if he hadn’t been diagnosed with cancer last fall. He’d gotten sick around November and by February had to drop out of the rest of the school year for chemo treatments, leaving a large void in his place—unfillable, in my opinion. Thankfully, unlike my dad, his treatments were successful and his cancer was officially in remission, but instead of coming back to work, he retired early and was currently on a Caribbean cruise with his wife.
When the school board finally found someone to take Mr. Grady’s place in March, I’d been conflicted in my feelings but was determined to be welcoming. Since Miles had arrived in the middle of the semester, I graciously offered advice and lesson plans to help get him caught up. He politely listened, took my plans, but then proceeded to do nothing with them. Instead of reading Jane Eyre, he chose Oliver Twist and then bought his students’ interest with cheap gimmicks like movie clips and donuts. Which was fine. Really. It suited him better. To each his own. I couldn’t tell you exactly why it nettled so badly. Maybe it was the constant jabs he threw at me about Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice, （my other beloved piece of literature）。 But still, throughout all this, I attempted to keep my face passive and cheerful. Helpful. Except, he clearly didn’t need my help.
FINE.
I could be the classic to his modern era. We could make it work. But I was finding that I couldn’t compete with his modern pop culture. Mr. Grady and I had a similar understanding with teaching English. We wanted to make the classics relatable. There was so much to learn from history, even historical fiction, and we wanted to teach it. But Jane Eyre was having a hard time competing with wizards to a modern audience.
When I first met Miles Taylor, I thought he was cute. There. I said it. At that first hello, our relationship had all the beginnings of a perfect romantic-comedy plot. We were both under thirty, we both loved English, and we taught at the same school. Seriously, I was waiting for Hallmark to call me for some insider info.
Unfortunately, THAT was where our similarities ended.
I packed my school bag, adding Harvey’s one-hundred-page thesis to the weight, and locked up my room. I couldn’t help but think that for all the ways I buried emotion in my life, it flew out of me like a sprinkler in the grass on a summer day whenever Miles looked at me wrong.
Which happened daily.
THREE
“Angry people are not always wise.”
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
I walked into my messy house, flipped my shoes off by the doorway, and dropped my purse and keys on the small table by the door. Hanging my coat on the rack, I collapsed onto the couch. For all my prim and proper at work, home was where I let my hair down. While I kept a clean house, it was messy. Lived in. There were my morning dishes in the sink （okay, one bowl and a coffee mug）， my laundry piled up on the far side of the couch （one load, which I was planning to pack most of tonight）， and on the kitchen counter, next to the sliding door leading into the small backyard, sat a pile of mail and magazine clutter （a pizza coupon and a magazine I wanted to leaf through before throwing away）。 If I went into the bathroom, I was pretty sure my towel was still on the floor.
Take that, Miles. It was pure chaos in here. I could handle mess. I helped out at school not because I couldn’t stand the mess, but because I wanted to. Like a decent human who cared about other people.
I fought with Miles in my head for a bit longer, and in my relaxed state, all the things I should have said came flying out—genius zinger after zinger. Let’s just say, he would have felt like crap after I was done. Eventually, I forced myself to think of something else. From my position on the couch, I stared contentedly at the two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that were on either side of the fireplace in my living room, filled with great American classics from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte. It was hard to describe just how much the words in those books had taught, comforted, and inspired me throughout the past few years as a teacher and during the dark times of my dad’s death.
Eventually, I peeled myself up off the couch to microwave a Hot Pocket for a quick dinner. Pulling out the rest of my half-eaten bag of salad, I ended up with a well-rounded meal of cardboard carbohydrates, imitation dairy, and lettuce drenched in ranch dressing. I ate my dinner standing over the kitchen sink, looking out the window at my snow-filled backyard. Moving to Stanton two years earlier, I had planned on finding an apartment to rent. But on the way to scout out an apartment complex, I passed a single-level, honey-butter-yellow house with painted blue shutters that sat quietly at the end of a cul-de-sac, with a For Sale sign in the yard.
There was nothing to decide. The price was good, and my credit score was excellent, and thirty days later, I was unpacking boxes in my new home. Instantly, those four walls became my oasis. My safe space. The place where, even when parents pass away, or moms get remarried, or mentors leave the school, I had somewhere that the day could fall away. The two neighbors next to me were of the elder-grandparent variety. They were also a safe space in my life. No drama whatsoever. Over the fence, in the summertime, you could often find us chatting about our gardens, the books we read, the disrespectful youth of today, and how much we all appreciated an early bedtime. We understood each other perfectly.
I spent the next hour packing for Vermont. Though my mom still lived in New Hampshire in the house I grew up in, it was no longer my home. It was the house my mom now shared with Russ. Which meant that the one time I had been home since the wedding, it was Russ in my dad’s easy chair, watching TV. Russ at the head of the dinner table. It was Russ sleeping in my dad’s bed with my mom. Hurt burned in my chest until I grabbed the remote on my bedside table. I turned the TV on and was soon sucked away by a medical drama.
The forecast on my phone made it clear that I would basically be a human popsicle for a week, so I packed a couple pairs of thermal underwear （a staple in the northeastern states） and clothes with lots of layers. Though, if I were honest, I mostly planned to bunker down in my cabin, alone, most of the week. I threw my Kindle on top. There were benefits to being single. I’d have my own cabin, and everybody else would be so wrapped up in their kids and family and…new husbands, they’d hardly notice I wasn’t there.
My phone buzzed on the table.
“Hey, Chlo,” I said to my sister, Chloe, when I picked up, folding another sweater neatly into my suitcase.
“Ivy, don’t pull your sister’s hair. No. Stop.” I pulled my ear back from my phone as the muffled sound of a child’s wail pierced the airwaves between me and my sister. “Nope, honey. We don’t act like that. I’m putting you in the time-out chair.” Ivy’s little voice became louder before Chloe spoke into the phone again. “Sorry. Of course World War III broke out the second I pressed your number.”
“You’re fine. How are my favorite twins today?” By this time, I had moved into my bathroom, cleaning and wiping down the counters with the phone pressed against my cheek.