The Heart Hopes by Lyn Cote

Author:Lyn Cote [Cote, Lyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyn Cote

“My mother’s fingerprints?” Patience gaped at him. “How did you find—”

“We entered them in the national database and she came up as a match.” Pause. “Why didn’t you tell me your mother has a criminal record?”

Patience felt her throat dry up. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, she only stared at him.

“Mrs. Carmichael has told us that your mother has been coming to her house weekly to demonstrate cosmetics to her. So your mother had been in the house with her permission—”

“And because she has a criminal record, she automatically becomes a suspect.” Patience didn’t even recognize the harsh voice as hers.

“Your mother is being investigated thoroughly as a person whose fingerprints were in the house and as a person who knew Mrs. Carmichael and her routine.” Gil looked strained and uneasy. “Don’t you see? I wanted you to hear this from me and not the sheriff or read it in the newspaper.”

“The newspaper?” Her parched throat nearly squeezed shut. “It’ll be reported in the newspaper?”

“It may be.” He put his hand over hers where it clutched the table’s edge. “We won’t give out our list of suspects, but there may be a leak. It can happen.”

“I might as well just resign and leave town right now.” Patience ripped her hand from his. She shot up out of her chair.

“Wait.” Gil stood up, too.

“People in town had started forgetting.” She wanted to stop her voice from rising but it possessed its own mind and shrilled higher. “They’d started looking at me as if I weren’t public enemy number one. I can’t face it all over again. This will bring everything up all over again.”

He reached for her.

She stepped back, bumping against her chair. “You read her whole record, didn’t you?” she accused him. “Not just her most recent sentence for causing a serious accident while driving drunk? And leaving the scene?”

Gil nodded, his eyes pitying her.

“Oh, no.” Patience felt as if the words had been jerked out of her somewhere near her heart. She couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want anyone to know. I left that all far behind me. Dear Lord, make this just a dream. Her heart pounded in her ears. “I’m going now.”

“No.” Gil blocked her path. “No, don’t leave like this. I wanted to shield you from this, but I couldn’t.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, edging back from him.

“I frankly couldn’t believe it when I read it.” His voice low, he leaned toward her. “You don’t fit the profile of a person with an abusive childhood.”

She glanced up at this, her face burning. She wanted to shout at him. She wrestled with her outrage, the feeling of her privacy being broken into. Moments flamed through her. I can’t give in to emotion. Why does it seem that wherever my mother goes she brings only pain and shame?

She finally subdued her emotions, sucking in deep even breaths. She couldn’t let Gil know why this affected her so completely. He was merely the father of a student.

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