Chapter Four
Failure was not a shortcoming she suffered lightly, but as she’d had little practice getting back on the horse, she suddenly found she didn’t even know where the horse was.
—The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels
Anna should’ve taken the date with the exterminator.
She sat in a corner of the Jimmy Beans Coffee Shop a block off campus, rubbing at the uneven tiles in the mosaic tabletop as if she could force them into symmetrical lines.
The instrumental music coming out of the ceiling was probably supposed to be soothing, but it reminded her of funeral hymns.
Not even the aroma of fresh roasted beans could make this better.
She should’ve gone home to study, but she still shuddered at calling her new, affordable-on-a-single-income apartment home.
So instead, she’d walked into Jimmy Beans to grab a latte.
Wasn’t as if her fish would notice if she were five minutes late.
A line of kids who hardly looked old enough to vote had filed in after her, and instead of pushing back through them, she’d used the human wall as an excuse to claim a table in the back corner and feel sorry for herself.
The coeds were apparently part of some campus group, and not the officers’ ex-wives club that she’d seen advertised on the bulletin board outside her thermo classroom.
If she were being honest with herself, she would’ve admitted she’d come here looking to make a friend or two who might tell her life would go on.
But it was easier to scowl at the table and pretend she hadn’t been rejected by a group of bitter divorcees who couldn’t be bothered to show up for their own meeting.
The kids gathered at the front of the room took papers from skewed stacks that made Anna’s fingers itch.
They gradually filtered out into the night.
The door’s bells jingled, and warm air wafted over Anna’s skin.
A blonde stayed behind by herself, her back to Anna, but she called out in a Dolly Parton–ish drawl, asking the barista for another espresso.
Anna’s finger burned from the friction it was creating on the tiles, so she switched hands. Stupid South. Stupid Neil. Stupid, arrogant James Robert College professors.
“Sugar, it’s too early in the term to be letting the classes get to you.”
Anna blinked up. The blonde peered down at her. She’d seen the girl shopping in the bookstore yesterday. Her perky attitude and infectious grin had made her stand out.
But it was the massive rock on her left hand that Anna remembered more. If love were measured in carats, she must’ve gotten the ring from God.
Also definitely not the ex-wives crowd.
Without waiting for an invitation, the blonde plunked her petite frame into the wire-backed chair across the table. “I’m Kaci. You got a name?”
Anna blew out a slow breath. She fisted her hands and put them in her lap. Sure, she had a name. It started with an F and ended in an -ailure. But since Minnesotans prided themselves on their “nice” the way Southerners prided themselves on their manners, she nodded. “Anna Mar—somebody.”
One hour. She wanted to get through one hour without that damn burning behind her eyes.
Kaci gave her a smile laced with sympathy and encouragement. “How long’s it been since you took classes?”
Great. Now Anna was an old failure. She dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “A few years.”
“It’ll come on back soon enough.” Kaci leaned back in the chair and gave her hair a fluff. “What’re you studying?”
“Chemical engineering.” How to Make Your Life Implode wasn’t formally offered at James Robert.
The other girl’s nose twitched. “Military bring you here?”
No, she always wanted to be underemployed in a place that didn’t recognize ketchup as its own food group. But the words got stuck under the lump in her throat.
“Aw, sugar. You’re gonna be just fine. Look at you taking classes. That’s something. That’s something real big.”
She wanted to tell Kaci the lie that had become so easy the last week—that she was already fine—but the girl had sat down.
Anna could’ve called Jules, but she didn’t want this spreading around the office.
“I’m already failing,” she whispered, because she was afraid if she said it any louder, she wouldn’t be able to recover.
She’d walked into class sixteen minutes late, right as Dr. Kelly was collecting the pop quiz he’d started the semester with.
Timeliness, according to Dr. Kelly, was the sign of a strong mind, and only strong minds would survive.
“Now, you can’t be—” Kaci started, but her encouraging smile dropped off almost as fast as Anna’s marriage had. “What class?”
“Thermo.”
Kaci whipped a smart phone out of her messenger bag. “I swear to sweet baby Jesus, if I told that man once, I told him a billion times, teaching ain’t about being an ass.”
That sinking sensation in her gut was becoming all too familiar as well. “You know Dr. Kelly?”
“Oh, I know him.” Her drawl flared. “Know him all too well. Pompous, old windbag. Never did care about people needing to make a living first and educating themselves second. I’ve got half a mind to go on over there and give him what for.”
Her thumbs flew so fast Anna saw smoke. She lunged for the phone. “No. Please, please don’t say anything. I was the only one. He’ll know it was me. I need this class.” Her voice cracked. “I really do. Please.”
Kaci regarded her with a mix of curiosity and sympathy.
“Don’t you worry about that pop quiz. Tell you a little secret.
Jim-Bob’s great-great-great grandson sitting over there in the chancellor’s office is making the old bag of bones curve since he flunked his whole last class.
Ol’ grandpappy, he likes to feel important. ”
Anna’s breathing evened out, but her pulse was still hammering faster than a hummingbird’s wings. He couldn’t flunk the whole class. That was a good thing. But she would still have to study her brains out to earn tuition assistance from work.
“Dr. Kelly’s your grandfather?” She wouldn’t have thought he was old enough to have grandbabies, much less a grown granddaughter. Maybe life was doing her a favor to even out all the bad lately.
Kaci grinned. “No, he’s my ex-husband.”
“Your what?” Anna sputtered. No way Kaci was old enough to have been married. Not with those baby cheeks and flawless skin. And to Dr. Kelly?
Oh, God. Dr. Kelly was a retired colonel. Kaci was the officers’ ex-wives club.
Kaci winked. “Chaps his knickers when I call him that.” She fluttered her left hand. Her diamond sent rainbows dancing over the mocha walls. “But it taught me a darn good lesson. I’m going for a younger man this time around.”
“Is that legal?” The words were barely out before she clapped her hand to her mouth. That was rude. Minnesota had minimum age restrictions, but—
“This here’s Georgia,” Kaci said. “Everything’s legal when you’re marrying your cousin.”
Anna’s lips twitched. Then her chest heaved. Not the pathetic, Titanic-watching, broken label maker kind of heave. More like an amused, my-best-friend-told-a-dirty-joke kind of heave.
But if she wanted to pass thermo, dawdling here tonight probably wasn’t in her best interest.
The twinkle in Kaci’s eye outshone her diamond. “Just joshin’ ya. Lance isn’t my cousin. But he is a Bama boy. They do things even worse over there. Now listen to me. Here I am scaring your poor Yankee sensibilities.”
Anna sank back into the chair, fascinated and mildly besotted. She hadn’t made a friend outside the military or work since college. “I don’t think being from Minnesota makes me a Yankee.”
Kaci cocked her head. “Do you eat grits?”
“Um, no.”
“You don’t like grits, you’re a Yankee. That simple. But don’t you worry. I won’t hold it against you. More grits for me.”
Her smile grew. “Thanks.”
“So. What’d he do to you?”
“Dr. Kelly?”
“No, sugar. Your man.”
And there went her momentary happy. “What man?”
Kaci pointed to Anna’s ring finger. The indentation from six years of wearing a wedding ring had completely faded already, but the spot burned under the woman’s scrutiny. “That man,” Kaci said. “You got the look.”
She slouched. “I’m fine.”
Kaci pursed her lips, then nodded. “You bet your britches you are.”
She could’ve made an excuse and left. Gone back to her apartment, pulled out her label maker and used it until she felt better about having to downsize in the first place.
But there was something perceptive about Kaci’s gaze.
Something that told her Kaci got it in a way her family and her friends couldn’t.
So Anna took a sip of her chai latte, then went for the distraction. “What are you studying?”
“Efficient combustion physics.”
Anna stifled a hiccup of surprise. “Grad student?”
Kaci grinned. “Professor.” She gave her own baby cheeks a pat.
“Good genes. Still working on my tenure.” She gestured to the scattered papers on her table.
“Means I get to babysit the high school programs too, but that’s the most fun part.
Still got some influence over those minds. You need any physics classes?”
“Those transferred.”
“Perfect. You got plans Friday night? Some of us girls are having a pinot and pedicures night. You come on over, and I guarantee you’ll be happier than a goose on tequila come Saturday morning. Most of the rest of ’em are busy tonight.”
A girls’ night.
With real girls.
Longing welled in her chest and almost choked her. “I can’t.”
“Kids?”
Anna shook her head.
“Well, you’ve got my blessing to slug the first person who says that’s a good thing.”
“They don’t really say that, do they?”
“They say all kinds of crap. That kid question, it’s barely the start. Hope you got some good family to back you up.”
Her chai latte got stuck between her throat and her stomach right about where her heart used to be.
It wasn’t that they didn’t support her. They were simply disappointed.
“He did you good, didn’t he?” Kaci said.
And there was that damn stinging in her eyeballs again.