Chapter Ten
BLAIR LEANED back in her office chair, plastic container of salad in hand.
Usually she ate lunch in Joy’s office, but Joy had dashed out the door right after fourth hour, bound for the grade school with a box of Benadryl to bail out her oldest son, Graham.
His allergies were always awful in late summer.
Over the last few days, Blair had reached out to a handful of alumni, but all her inquiries about Iris met the same brick wall. Iris Wallingford? Sure, I remember her. She was quiet, though. Kept to herself. I didn’t really know her. I don’t think anyone did.
So here she was with the yearbook, hoping that a name might leap from the page as a possible new lead.
Setting her salad aside, Blair opened the front cover. A large black-and-white photo of a teenage girl stared up at her.
In loving memory of our friend and classmate Iris Jean Wallingford. We love you, Iris. Fly high.
It was her.
Short, shiny dark hair.
Dreamy light eyes.
A sleeveless, high-necked blouse and delicate necklace.
She appeared to be looking past the camera, almost as though seeing a faraway future.
A future that had been denied.
The office door creaked open, and Callum gave his usual grunt of greeting as he moved past her toward the minifridge and rooted around inside. Then the microwave door opened and shut, followed by three beeps and its annoyingly loud whir.
Okay, the fridge was community property. Vic had brought it in years ago after his daughter moved from dorm to apartment. But the microwave was hers. And Callum had probably been using it the whole time, that fink.
Irritation rising, she turned to snipe at him, but the words died in her throat when she saw him.
He sat at his desk, hunched over his iPad.
His left hand plunged deep into his mass of coffee-colored hair while his right traced a beat pattern.
Was that . . . Yes. That tricky passage of “Dies Irae,” the one with the random bars of five-four, where the sopranos always came in late.
He beat a few bars, then stopped. Did it again.
And again. Changed a gesture and cued his imaginary soprano section with a bit more crispness.
He broke off. Shook his head. Practiced the pattern again.
Hmm. For all his blustery arrogance, he certainly seemed to care about the precision and clarity of his conducting gestures.
Quite a lot, if the bags beneath his eyes were any indication.
He must still not be sleeping well. And the slump of his shoulders .
. . He looked like he bore the weight of the world on those shoulders.
He’d shed his tweed coat, and his light-blue dress shirt highlighted his broad, muscled shoulders.
The sweep of strength in his upper back.
The microwave beeped, a necessary jolt from a most unwelcome—though annoyingly not unpleasant—reverie. Had she truly been admiring Callum’s back? His shoulders? She shuddered. Thank God Joy wasn’t anywhere nearby. She’d never let Blair hear the end of it.
Another series of beeps from the microwave set her teeth on edge, but Callum made no move to retrieve his lunch. He was still hunched over his screen. Still conducting an imaginary choir.
When the microwave beeped yet again, Blair rose, opened the door, and slid the plastic tray from the warm interior.
Some sort of single-guy microwave pasta dish, no doubt chock-full of sodium and chemicals and smothered in something that may have, at one time, been actual tomatoes.
She shut the door and placed the tray of pasta on Callum’s desk, near his left elbow.
He glanced up, the expression in his forest-green eyes a mixture of surprise and gratitude, along with a tiny bit of embarrassment.
“Sorry.” He slid his iPad to the side and replaced it with the tray of pasta. “I must’ve zoned out for a bit. Apologies if I hogged the microwave.”
Sitting back down at her desk, she gestured toward her salad. “No need. But I appreciate it all the same.”
She reached for the yearbook again.
Callum’s chair gave a squeak. “Last year’s yearbook has you sucked in too, I take it?”
“What?” Oh. Right. Yearbooks had been distributed yesterday morning, and getting the kids to focus on anything but those had been an uphill battle. “No, this one’s from 1970. Iris Wallingford’s senior year.”
“I see.” Pasta in hand, he rolled his chair closer. “Anything good?”
“Well . . .” Rolling her own chair, she met him halfway and showed him the picture at the front of the yearbook. “Callum, meet Iris.”
He took the book from her, and a subtle whiff of cologne cut through the fake-marinara smell. A not-unpleasant whiff either.
In fact, it was . . . quite pleasant.
Ugh.
Callum’s hair fell across his forehead as he studied the picture, and suddenly she couldn’t look away. Cheekbones shadowed by the office’s soft lamplight. A defined jaw shrouded in a hint of dark stubble. And those shoulders . . .
Crap.
Joy was right. Callum Knight was handsome.
What a revolting development.
Callum chuckled, low and in his throat, and Blair startled. Had he caught her staring? Did he know her thoughts? He probably did, that eel, and now he knew she—
Oh. His eyes were focused on the yearbook. Good.
“That’s Vic?” he said around the baritone melody of his laughter. “My word. I had no idea what he looked like in high school.”
“Let me see.” Blair leaned in closer, a second whiff of Callum’s cologne doing nothing for her concentration.
But the sight of Victor Nelson as a high school senior caused her to erupt in her own giggles. Heavy, dark-blond hair combed over his forehead, Beatles-style. Thick black plastic glasses. And a smile not unlike Sheldon Cooper’s Joker-like grin in The Big Bang Theory. “Wow. Just . . . wow.”
“At least we know the man didn’t peak in high school,” Callum said. “That’s comforting.”
“Right?” Blair chuckled her agreement. “Never peak in high school.”
Their eyes met then, and their laughter died. Something hovered in the pasta-scented air between them. Something warm and wonderful, yet also alarming. Callum looked as uncomfortable as she felt.
Were they . . . having a moment?
He broke eye contact first and handed the yearbook back. “Thank you, Blair. I needed that laugh.”
“You’re welcome.” She turned back toward her desk, gulping a bite of salad and turning another page in the yearbook. Iris should provide a needed distraction.
Except . . . huh. This was Vic’s senior picture. In 1970.
Had he and Iris really graduated the same year? With both of them being involved in music and in the same hundred-member graduating class . . . no way did he not know her.
So why would he claim otherwise? She turned another page in the yearbook and froze.
Because front and center on the marching band page, feathered band uniform hats pressed together, mugging for the camera, were Iris Wallingford and Victor Nelson.
“Callum?”
“Mmm?” He sounded distracted. Must’ve gone down the “Dies Irae” rabbit hole again.
“Didn’t you say Vic told you he didn’t know Iris?”
Callum glanced up from his iPad and met her gaze. “Yeah. Why?”
She held the yearbook out to him, and he took it from her. “Because I don’t think that’s entirely accurate.”
Callum stared at the picture, then looked back up at her, eyes wide. “Nope. Not accurate at all.”
The lunch bell rang then, and they both jumped. Was their break really over? How had time evaporated so quickly?
Callum handed the yearbook back, then shoved an unseemly amount of microwaved pasta into his mouth, picked up his iPad, and headed out to the choir room. She turned back to her desk, set the yearbook aside, and wolfed down the rest of lunch, her mind in overdrive.
Vic Nelson had always been above reproach in all he did. She’d never known him to lie about anything. So why would he tell them he hadn’t known Iris, when that yearbook photo seemed to prove otherwise?
Maybe the yearbook photographer had been roaming the sidelines and decided to snap a picture of the marching band. One of those random “Okay, folks, grab the person next to you and say cheese” sort of situations.
Or perhaps the years were catching up to Vic, poking a few holes in his legendary memory.
Blair grabbed the thick blue music binder off the corner of her desk as the final bell rang.
There had to be an innocent explanation. Had to be.
Any other possibility simply wouldn’t be worth entertaining.
“No, no, it’s not ‘haaaaal-le-lu-juh.’” Callum drawled an exaggerated short A sound on the first syllable and all but grunted the final syllable.
“It’s hah-le-lu-JAH.” Opening his mouth wide and dropping his jaw practically to his sternum, he placed his hands on the sides of his face. “Drop your jaw.”
Normally his exaggerated accents and fish faces drew a chuckle or two from the kids—or at the very least a few halfhearted grins—but on this day, the Friday before Labor Day weekend?
Crickets. In fact, the only sound permeating the dead-quiet choir room was a literal cricket chirp, though whether it came from an actual insect or just someone’s phone, he couldn’t be certain.
“Again,” he said. Blair gave the pitches, and he raised his right arm and cued the choir. Better, but only marginally. Still, this close to a long weekend, it was about as good as he could expect.
The bell rang as he cut them off, and Callum slumped onto his stool, relief coursing through him.
A three-day weekend. Three whole days away from this place.
The very idea sounded like heaven itself.
His Netflix queue was stocked and ready to go, and the DoorDash gift card his mother had sent him was fully loaded.
With any luck at all, maybe he’d even sleep.
Not that luck had been on his side lately.