Chapter 2 #2
She couldn’t just go home, that was for sure. She had to make sure that man didn’t get another opportunity to be alone with Sara. It sounded as if he was making her let him take photos of her in exchange for grades. That had pedophile written all over it.
One didn’t teach for thirty-eight years and not know how to recognize a predator like Mr. Terrence.
Her first thought was to march straight to the office and tell the superintendent what she’d heard.
But the superintendent was new, and male.
She didn’t know him and she hadn’t heard anything that Mr. Terrence couldn’t deny or explain away.
Of the test itself, she’d only seen a large red F with the words “See me after school,” scribbled underneath.
She needed more. But she also needed to keep Sara safe. And the only way she could think of to do that was to keep Mr. Terrence in her sight until she could get him alone to talk to him.
What she’d say—well, she had no idea, but she had to do something.
She went down the stairs, then parked herself in the hallway where she could still see his classroom door and waited for him to come out.
It took him a few minutes. While she waited, she realized he’d be damned suspicious if he caught her following him.
She glanced at her teal and yellow beach bag, hanging from her shoulder, then quickly dug out the pillbox hat, spun her hair up, and stuffed it under.
She put on the shawl to cover up the clothing she was wearing.
She had a puffy coat in the bag, in deference to the still freezing temperatures, but for now, the shawl.
Mr. Terrence came out and closed the classroom door behind him. He wore tan pants, with a sharp crease, and an oatmeal-colored button-down shirt.
Bonnie pushed her glasses down her nose and hunched over her cane. He came down the stairs and walked right by her. Didn’t even notice her standing there.
It was true what Christine always said. When you got old, you became invisible.
She headed for the exit, not using the cane, but ready to bend over and start thumping should Mr. Terrence look back. He didn’t. He was in a hurry. He went through the doors, down the sidewalk, and out to the parking lot.
The man aimed and clicked a key-bob. A squatty black sports car bleated its reply and blinked its headlights at him.
Bonnie did not drive anymore. She could drive, she just preferred not to.
Mark had driven everywhere since they’d both retired.
She’d had no idea how challenging it would feel to start driving again.
Or living again, all by herself. Maybe it was less fear, and more that a new normal without Mark in it felt like moving on. Like letting him go.
It was awful, frankly. If Sam and Marina and the grandkids lived closer, it might help with her feelings of being adrift at sea, but they lived all the way in Flint, Michigan and they both had good jobs.
Marina was a lawyer with a big firm, and Sam was a deputy in the Genesee County Sheriff’s Office there.
Still, there were ways around everything, even not driving. She’d taken a Lyft to school, the way she took it everywhere. Always the same driver, because he was a brilliant and reliable young man. She’d asked him to pick her up at three.
He was waiting right where she’d told him to be in his white Nissan Rogue, on the side of the road beyond the school parking lot, out of the way of traffic.
Mr. Terrence was already backing out of his space, and he’d parked near the exit.
Staying between vehicles, ducking low here and there when the angle might have revealed her, Bonnie made her way to the Lyft, scrambled into the front passenger seat, where she liked to ride, and said, “Follow that car!”
The driver laughed, shaking his head full of brown curls, then said, “Very funny, Miz Tucker.”
Terrence was already exiting the parking lot.
“Follow that car!” she repeated, pointing. “Get the lead out, Coy!”
“You were serious? You mean the Porsche?”
She checked the little black car’s logo in the distance, then quickly pushed up her still-lowered glasses and checked again. “Yes. Porsche. Nice pronunciation, by the way.” She couldn’t help herself.
Coy pulled the car into motion just as Mr. Terrence turned right and sped out of sight. “You uh, wanna tell me what this is about, Miz Tucker? That guy rob you or something? You need me to call a cop?”
“No, nothing like that,” she said, racking her brain for a story. She’d spent decades teaching literature, for heaven’s sake. Come on, brain. Come on, brain. “It’s my son. He’s a cop you know.” All of which was true, just not about that guy.
“A cop, huh? And he can afford a Porsche?”
No, that didn’t sound at all good, did it?
Come to think of it, a teacher shouldn’t be able to afford a Porsche either.
“It’s actually my son’s friend. With whom my son is staying while he’s in town.
And um…I don’t know where the friend lives…
and…um… Don’t follow so close, Coy, I don’t want him to see. ”
Coy slowed down a little, met Bonnie’s eyes across the car, and nodded like he had her all figured out. “It’s a woman, isn’t it? Your son’s friend?”
Eureka! This kid had a future spinning fiction.
Except her son was married with fifteen-year-old twin daughters, and she didn’t even want to pretend otherwise and jinx his happy family.
“Nooo, it’s not a woman,” she said slowly.
“The real reason is…is…he gave me the address. And I…forgot.” That’s it, that’s it.
Use what I have. Age! “I wrote it down but I can’t find where.
And he already thinks I’m getting senile and I just…
” She waited until he looked her way, then lowered her head, and lifted her gaze.
“I just don’t want to get put into a home. ”
“Whoa! No way. All right, Miz Tucker, I got you. Let’s follow this guy.”
He followed Mr. Terrence like a pro for thirty fun minutes. Bonnie was jotting down every turn and street name along the way. Coy asked if he could put on music, and she said sure, distracted by the thoughts in her head. What was she going to do when they got there?
Just note the address. Don’t do anything else, just note the address.
How does that protect Sara, though?
Mr. Terrence pulled into the driveway of a rather shitty looking log cabin.
Its logs were ash gray with splinters peeling off, giving it a shaggy, unkempt look.
The lawn was a weed patch, the driveway, worn dirt with grass growing in the middle, and the For Rent sign was leaning against the side of the building.
Mr. Terrence got out of his fancy car and started for the front door.
“Keep going, keep going,” Bonnie said, texting herself the number on the mailbox. “I’m so sorry, Coy, that’s not the right car after all. I don’t know who that fellow is, but he’s not my son’s friend.”
“Aww,” Coy said. But he looked at her with real concern in his eyes. Maybe she’d done too good a job convincing him she was getting senile. “Look, Miz Tucker, this is costing you a bundle, and I have to head back to Cortland anyway. I’ll take you home for free if you want.”
She hated lying to him. And it wasn’t easy.
He was smart. Was doing postgrad work and had a degree in some coding or hacking or some such thing that made her think of spies and computers.
But she couldn’t let Coy drive her home.
She had to stay there. She had to talk to Mr. Terrence.
Maybe if she told him what she’d heard and threatened to turn him in, he’d leave Sara alone.
And move on to some other girl?
“Didn’t we pass a diner a little way back?” she asked, pushing the disturbing thought aside. “I think I’ll have an early dinner and weigh my options.”
“Are you sure, though? You’re gonna eat all alone?”
“Psssh, no way. I just texted some friends to come join me. If I spring for dinner, one of the girls will have to drive me home.”
Coy smiled, shaking his head at her naughtiness.
He found a place to turn around, then drove her past Mr. Terrence’s rented log cabin to the little roadside diner less than a mile away.
It was a square, cinder-block building with a neon sign in the large front window that said “Starlight Diner.” The glass door had a sheet of paper taped to it with the hours listed in a large, bold font.
The parking lot was not paved, just well-worn dirt with some gravel scattered overtop for traction.
Bonnie glanced at her phone and said, “Yes, the girls are all coming,” to reassure Coy. He was too good a person to leave her there alone otherwise.
She gave him a good tip. He was having trouble finding a job, even with such an impressive education, and she worried that it might have something to do with racism.
Bonnie waited until he was out of the small parking lot and out of sight to begin a nice, brisk, walk back to Mr. Phillip Terrence’s house. She didn’t want him out of her sight for longer than necessary, after all.
Big T, as he called himself in the biz, had another rich SOB via secure live feed—one of a group of bona fide billionaires with their own whole thing going on, looking for fresh meat. The videos were more than entertainment—they were auditions.
He only got the girls who were vulnerable. You could pick them out easily after a while working with kids. His clients would recruit some of them for further work; the ones most eager to please, the ones most easily intimidated, the ones most alone in the world.
This could be T’s route to the big time.
But this guy, the tenth of ten, had connected early, and T hadn’t finished his dinner of beef tips with mushrooms. It was one of those cook-at-home subscriptions, and it smelled too good to ignore, so he used a potholder to take the sizzling skillet with him into the living room.
Holding it in one hand, a fork in the other, he took his first bite and imagined the day when he’d be one of the elite, with a mansion and a private jet.