Chapter 3
JILLIAN
The end-of-day bell rang in the nurse’s office, and Jillian turned to the girl who had come in asking for an ibuprofen to see if she was feeling any better.
But even though she’d been squirming with pain just a few minutes ago, Tara hopped up from the infirmary cot quickly, like nothing was wrong.
Jillian had been pretty sure Tara hadn’t really come in for bad cramps, but because she was having a hard time with her friend group. Once she took a pill and lay down with a heat pack, Jillian asked her a casual question about how her day was going while she logged the visit in her book.
The teen had shocked her by answering in detail.
So many things had changed since Jillian was a teenager, but plenty hadn’t. It seems that there would always be gossip and drama and hurt feelings when it came to teenage girls.
Jillian had avoided a lot of it by having just a few close friends who were as driven as she was to earn scholarships for college. They’d had their ups and downs, of course. But they basically accepted each other as they were, and she’d hardly ever gone to bed with a feud still going.
Tara, on the other hand, seemed to be part of a more popular crowd. From what Jillian could understand, she was being excluded right now because of something to do with a boy who she didn’t even like.
Jillian pieced together that the boy probably liked Tara, and an even more popular friend liked him—a classic love triangle, made worse by teenage mood swings, social media messages, and poor communication.
At any rate, she hoped a sympathetic ear and half an hour’s escape would help the unhappy girl feel more like herself.
Maybe Jillian should have been unhappy herself to have spent her afternoon tending to a kid who wasn’t actually physically ill, instead of organizing the supply cupboards.
But she saw her role in larger terms than just icing bruises and bandaging cuts.
As far as Jillian was concerned, tending to Tara’s mental well-being was just as important as her physical health—maybe more so.
“Thank you,” Tara said softly when she reached the door. “It was really good to talk.”
Jillian glanced up and was happy to see a smile on the girl’s face.
“I’m so glad you’re feeling better,” Jillian told her, meaning it. “Come back and say hi anytime.”
“I will,” Tara said, looking pleased as she slipped out the door and into the press of the crowd.
In the hallway, kids were practically stampeding to get out of school. Jillian remembered feeling the same desperation to stretch her legs after a long day sitting at a desk.
Today though, she wasn’t in any hurry to get home. Gram and Grampy were excited to get the girls off the bus and do homework and play with them. And the girls were scheduled to have a phone call with their father, which Jillian didn’t want to interfere with.
That left time for her to work on her new office and supply room. The former nurse had been put on unexpected bed rest during her pregnancy, and then decided not to come back after the baby was born, leaving the position open for Jillian.
She liked to think that the other nurse would have cleaned and organized better if she had known she was leaving permanently. As things were, there wasn’t even an accurate supply inventory.
Grabbing a notebook, Jillian headed into the supply room that was off the same small hallway as her office. There was an ancient-looking radio on one of the shelves, and just for fun, she tried turning it on.
It crackled to life with Elvis Presley’s voice crooning “Blue Christmas.”
She smiled as she began taking down boxes of bandages.
Her plan of attack was to empty a single shelf, note the contents, clean the supplies, clean the shelf, and then replace everything.
It was tedious work, but with the music playing and no students popping in for Band-Aids or ice packs, she moved quickly.
Once everything in the room was clean and neat, she pulled everything down again and started a full reorganization.
There was something satisfying about having a whole station all to herself. Working at the hospital, she’d had to do everything according to a very strict protocol, including organizational strategies that she was pretty sure had never been run past a working nurse.
Running the school infirmary gave her more leeway to place commonly needed items in easy to reach spots, choose how to label each shelf and section, and even track which supplies she should prioritize ordering with the annual budget next year.
After two concentrated hours, the supply room was spotless and well-organized, with fresh labels on all the shelves. She just needed to transfer her inventory notes onto the computer, which she planned to do over the course of the school day tomorrow, if there weren’t too many student emergencies.
She headed back to her office and grabbed her insulated water bottle out of her bag.
The bottle was a luxury from her old life, before Alan left. It was a birthday gift that had probably cost a fortune, but it kept her water ice-cold all day and she loved it. A pattern of wildflowers decorated the outside.
He loved me once, she reminded herself.
Jillian had put her whole heart into her family. She had taken good care of Alan and the girls, worked hard, and tried to be the best wife and mother she could be.
Even after Alan left, she kept trying to improve herself, losing the last five pounds she had never managed to take off after Posey was born, and even taking a cooking class and painting the foyer of their condo while the girls were at summer camp, all in the hopes that he would forget the other woman and be happy when he came back to the life they had built around his dreams.
Of course she was humiliated, but in Jillian’s heart, a promise was a promise. She couldn’t imagine that Alan wouldn’t come to his senses eventually.
“Why would you even want him to?” her sister would ask her on the phone, sounding horrified. “He’s never been a nice guy, but what he did to you and the girls is unforgivable.”
But Amberlee wasn’t a mom yet, so she didn’t understand. Children needed loving grownups and they needed structure.
Now that they were going to be settling in Sugarville Grove, Jillian was building a new version of structure with her grandparents’ help. And that was something to feel hopeful about, even if things weren’t perfect yet.
She popped off the cap of the bottle and took a deep pull of cold, refreshing water.
Tonight would bring a whole new set of challenges, so it was nice to take a breath now, in between work and home.
Gram and Grampy’s house was a mess. Upstairs was worse than downstairs, and Jillian was pretty sure it would take almost everything she had just to bring it back to good condition.
For now, she and the girls were sharing the large spare bedroom. In spite of its peeling wallpaper and threadbare carpet, it was clean and dry, thank goodness.
There was a junk room between that room and the one Gram and Grampy shared, a room they wouldn’t even let her see.
Maybe at some point it would get cleaned out and the girls could move into it, but she didn’t want to bring up the idea since she sensed her grandparents were already a little embarrassed about how bad the house had gotten.
They also thought she was still planning to put on an addition. She had no idea how she was going to tell them that she would rather fix up the existing house.
But she was going to have to find a way, and soon. The general contractor from Burlington she had planned to work with for the addition wanted to come out and see the place in the next few days.
I’ll worry about it when it’s time to worry about it, she told herself. For now, we’ll focus on enjoying time together, so it stings less when the time comes.
She was just recapping her water bottle when she heard the unmistakable sound of someone shuffling around in the supply room.
“What on earth?” she murmured to herself as she hopped up from her desk and headed down the hallway.
Sure enough, a big, dark-haired man in a gray sweatshirt was digging through her beautifully organized boxes, letting a box of gauze pads fall to the countertop willy-nilly.
“Excuse me,” she said in her sternest voice.
“Oh sorry,” he said without turning around, his deep voice oddly familiar. “Kowalski’s a bleeder. Where is everything anyway?”
“I just reorganized it,” she said, stepping into the room.
The man stopped suddenly, probably realizing from her voice that she wasn’t the usual school nurse.
When he spun around, Jillian nearly let out an audible gasp.
Tripp Lawrence. What are the chances?
“Jillian Johnson,” Tripp said softly, his blue eyes widening slightly. “I mean Jillian Price.”
There was an awkward pause, in which her mind tried to call up why she didn’t like him.
At the same time, her eyes catalogued every muscle, right down to the clench of his chiseled jaw.
“Hi,” she said at last, dragging her eyes away from him.
“So, you’re the new school nurse,” he said, his voice brightening with what she was pretty sure was forced cheerfulness. “That’s a good gig. Did Mr. Price get a job in town too?”
She had practiced so many times in the mirror. He’s not in the picture anymore. He’s not in the picture anymore.
“He left me for another woman,” she heard herself admit instead.
She was so surprised at herself that she made the mistake of letting her eyes go to Tripp’s.
He looked as surprised as she felt. And there was a flash of something in his eyes. Anger, maybe? Though that didn’t make much sense since he barely knew her.
“Coach,” a kid yelled from the hallway.
A strange sense of déjà vu went through her, and she almost looked around for her grandfather. She’d heard high school boys yelling Coach for him so many times in the past that it was a habit. But of course he wasn’t here.
Tripp used to be one of those boys. I used to pretend not to watch him when I hung out at practice, reading my book.
“That’s me,” Tripp said. “I’d better go. It was good seeing you.”
He gave her a wave with a hand that was holding a large adhesive bandage, and then headed out of the supply room.
He’s coaching hockey?
“Oh hey,” Tripp said over his shoulder as he crossed the threshold. “He was a fool.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Price,” he called back to her as he disappeared down the hallway. “What an idiot.”
Jillian stood in the supply room for a moment, trying to take it all in.
He’s not a nice person, she tried to remind herself, even as her chest filled with warmth at his words.