The voice of reason quickly extinguished Patch’s involvement. He could have caught a cold. Or he could have run out of gas on the drive to school and was stranded miles away. Or maybe there was a highbets pool game going on at Bo’s Arcade and he figured it was more profitable than an afternoon spent learning the intricacies of the human body.
At the end of class, Coach stopped me on my way out the door.
“Hang on a minute, Nora.”
I turned back and hiked my backpack up my shoulder. “Yes?”
He extended a folded piece of paper. “Miss Greene stopped by before class and asked me to give this to you,” he said.
I accepted the note. “Miss Greene?” I didn’t have any teachers by that name.
“The new school psychologist. She just replaced Dr. Hendrickson.”
I unfolded the note and read the message scrawled inside.
Dear Nora,
I’ll be taking over Dr. Hendrickson’s role as your school psychologist. I noticed you missed your last two appointments with Dr. H. Please come in right away so we can get acquainted. I’ve mailed a letter to your mother to make her aware of the change.
All best,
Miss Greene
“Thanks,” I told Coach, folding the note until it was small enough to tuck inside my pocket.
Out in the hall I merged with the flow of the crowd. No avoiding it now—I had to go. I steered my way through the halls until I could see the closed door to Dr. Hendrickson’s office. Sure enough, there was a new name plaque on the door. The polished brass gleamed against the drab oak door: MISS D.
GREENE, SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST.
I knocked on the door, and a moment later it opened from within. Miss Greene had flawless pale skin, sea blue eyes, a lush mouth, and fine, straight blond hair that tumbled past her elbows. It was parted at the crown of her ovalshaped face. A pair of turquoise cat’seye glasses sat at the tip of her nose, and she was dressed formally in a gray herringbone pencil skirt and a pink silk blouse. Her figure was willowy but feminine. She couldn’t have been more than five years older than me.
“You must be Nora Grey. You look just like the picture in your file,” she said, giving my hand a firm pump. Her voice was abrupt, but not rude. Businesslike.
Stepping back, she signaled me to enter the office.
“Can I get you juice, water?” she asked.
“What happened to Dr. Hendrickson?”
“He took early retirement. I’ve had my eye on this job for a while, so I jumped on the opening. I went to Florida State, but I grew up in Portland, and my parents still live there. It’s nice to be close to family again.”
I surveyed the small office. It had changed drastically since I’d last been in a few weeks ago. The walltowall bookshelves were now filled with academic but genericlooking hardcovers, all bound in neutral colors with gold lettering. Dr. Hendrickson had used the shelves to display family pictures, but there were no snapshots of Miss Greene’s private life. The same fern hung by the window, but under Dr.
Hendrickson’s care, it had been far more brown than green. A few days with Miss Greene and already it looked pert and alive. There was a pink paisley chair opposite the desk, and several moving boxes stacked in the far corner.
“Friday was my first day,” she explained, seeing my eyes fall on the moving boxes. “I’m still unpacking.
Have a seat.”
I lowered my backpack down my arm and sat on the paisley chair. Nothing in the small room gave me any clues as to Miss Greene’s personality. She had a stack of file folders on her desk— not neat, but not messy, either—and a white mug of what looked like tea. There wasn’t a trace of perfume or air freshener. Her computer monitor was black.
Miss Greene crouched in front of a file cabinet behind her desk, tugged out a clean manila folder, and printed my name on the tab in black Magic Marker. She placed it on her desk next to my old file, which bore a few of Dr. Hendrickson’s coffeemug stains.
“I spent the whole weekend going through Dr. Hendrickson’s files,” she said. “Just between the two of us, his handwriting gives me a migraine, so I’m copying over all the files. I was amazed to find he didn’t use a computer to type his notes. Who still uses longhand in this day and age?”
She settled back into her swivel chair, crossed her legs, and smiled politely at me. “Well. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about the history of your meetings with Dr. Hendrickson? I could barely decipher his notes. It appeared the two of you were discussing how you feel about your mom’s new job.”
“It’s not all that new. She’s been working for a year.”
“She used to be a stayathome mom, correct? And after your dad’s passing, she took on a fulltime job.” She squinted at a sheet of paper in my file. “She works for an auction company, correct? It looks like she coordinates estate auctions all down the coast.” She peeked at me over her glasses. “That must require a lot of time away from home.”
“We wanted to stay in our farmhouse,” I said, my tone touching on the defensive. “We couldn’t afford the mortgage if she took a local job.” I hadn’t exactly loved my sessions with Dr. Hendrickson, but I found myself resenting him for retiring and abandoning me to Miss Greene. I was starting to get a feel for her, and she seemed attentive to detail. I sensed her itching to dig into every dark corner of my life.
“Yes, but you must be very lonely all by yourself at the farmhouse.”
“We have a housekeeper who stays with me every afternoon until nine or ten at night.”
“But a housekeeper isn’t the same thing as a mother.”