Chapter 1

1

It’s 2:15 on Monday afternoon, and I’m slowly walking up the sidewalk to Lakeview Elementary, hands shoved into the front pockets of my jeans. My first time here was this morning, when I dropped my seven-year-old son Tyler off for school, and in the bustle of parents and kids and teachers, I didn’t really get a good look around. Now I check out the playground—lots of swings, good, he likes those—and notice the two baseball fields that hem in the blacktop area. Not too bad. At seven, Tyler’s favorite subject is still recess, so I want him to be happy playing out here during the day. If I were his age, I’d have a ball.

Cars line the sidewalk, the women waiting behind the wheels watching me with guarded expressions. I know what they’re thinking—I’m a writer, I can read people as well as any book. They’re describing me to police in their minds. Caucasian male in his early thirties, dark hair a little too long, wearing jeans and a denim jacket. Shifty eyes. Kept looking around like he was casing the joint. What’s a guy like that doing hanging around an elementary school anyway?

How about picking up my son?

But I know the routine—I’ve seen the distrust before, when I first started taking Tyler to school. Being self-employed, I have the luxury of dropping him off in the mornings and picking him up in the afternoons. Things had just settled into a routine at his old school—hell, the head of the PTA even asked me out to dinner one evening, though I had to politely decline. She wasn’t my type. Married, for one. Female, for another.

The mothers at the school Tyler last attended had just begun to accept me as one of their own. We’d joke over cups of coffee in the morning, or chat about what was on sale at the local grocery store while we waited on the sidewalk in the afternoon. Then I decided it was time to move out, move on, into a place Tyler and I could call our own. When our apartment’s lease came up, I didn’t renew it, and my sister helped me find a small starter home in a neighborhood close to hers. It’s just over the county line, putting Tyler in a different school district. I could’ve kept him in his old school for the rest of the year, then moved him when he started the second grade, but I didn’t see the need in driving through traffic twice a day just to keep him at the old school. He’s only seven. He’ll make new friends easily enough.

This school is larger than his old one, though. I don’t see any of the same faces I saw this morning when I dropped him off. Still, it isn’t hard to figure out which door the kids exit at the end of the day—rows of women line a set of double doors just off the playground, and they shift nervously when I approach.

I try my most disarming smile on the mother closest to me. “We’re all lined up out here waiting for school to end,” I say, trying to spark up a conversation, “and I bet our kids are in there waiting just as eagerly.”

For a moment, she stiffens. Then she says, “I’ve never seen you here before. Who’s your wife?”

Ignoring the question, I explain, “My son just started class today. We moved in from Hanover. He was at Northside before.”

“I hear they’re good,” she admits as she turns slightly towards me. Warming up, just a little, to the new guy. Geez, I hope Tyler had it easier with the kids.

“They’re small,” I tell her. “This school’s much bigger. I hope my boy doesn’t get lost in the system.”

Now she laughs, and her whole body relaxes. “No, this is a great school. He’ll be fine, I’m sure. What grade did you say he was in again?”

I didn’t, but I don’t point that out. “First. I think he’s in Boucher’s home room, or something like that? The name started with a B.”

“Boucher,” she confirms. “He’s wonderful. My Melanie simply adoreshim. I swear, some days, it’s all she talks about. Mr. Boucher this and Mr. Boucher that.”

I almost say, it’s a guy?before I bite back the words. I’d sound as suspicious as these women were of me. My own elementary school experience was years ago, granted, but I don’t recall having any male teachers until middle school. Junior high? What do they call it nowadays?

Before I can ask, a bell rings inside the school. It may have been years since my elementary school days, but Lord if that bell doesn’t sound exactly the same. It sends a chill down my spine. Beside me, the woman murmurs, “Here they come. Stand your ground or you’ll get swept up in the tide.”

The doors open and out rush a gaggle of kindergarteners. Though they’re only a year or two younger than Tyler, they look so small. Kids grow so damn quickly, and watching these little ones batter each other with backpacks and book bags as they race towards their parents brings a lump to my throat. Lisa should be here with me, insteadof me. She’d fit right in with these mothers who bend to scoop up their babies and whisk them away. She’d have introduced herself to half the women here before the bell even rang, and all I managed was one contact. Not really even that—did I ever introduce myself? I don’t think so, and I didn’t catch the woman’s name.