Monday's Child by Patricia Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t have a choice, really.
    At least she worked nearby. If Jill needed her, she could be home in minutes.
    A dime and a penny slid along the knife blade and dropped onto the other coins. She poked at them, counting. “Seventy-six cents.”
    The school lunch was a dollar fifty, and extra ice cream bars were priced at twenty-five cents. Another dollar and Jill could have it all.
    Her gaze turned to the chair by the dresser where Dave had draped his pants. She could see a corner of his wallet and a thin edge of green within it.
    Would he even know if she borrowed a dollar?
    The piggybank was heavy in her hands, full of change. It wouldn’t take that long to get the rest of the money, she thought, but it would be easier to use a bill.
    On the other hand, she had never taken money from her husband’s wallet. He’d never told her not to, but her own mother had been an alcoholic who regularly snuck money from her father’s billfold to pay for her booze, and she’d always felt that doing so was wrong.
    Of course, paying for their daughter’s lunch was something else entirely.
    At that moment the water in the shower turned off and she glanced at the bathroom door. She heard the shower curtain being drawn back.
    She put the piggybank on the bed and got up, moving without sound to the chair. The wallet fit snugly in the pocket, but she pulled it free.
    Georgia took a breath and opened it, listening at the same time for footsteps nearing the door.
    He had a twenty, a five, and three singles.
    With her fingertips, she eased one of the singles out of the wallet.
    Now put it back, she thought.
    Her heart had begun to pound.
    Put it back.
    Her hands refused to do as she bid them, but rather they opened the wallet wider, and began to finger through the folded slips of paper tucked inside. There were a surprising number of them, she thought.
    “What are you looking for?” she asked herself.
    From behind the bathroom door, the medicine cabinet squeaked open, startling her.
    That was enough. She closed the wallet and shoved it back in his pants pocket.
    After replacing the piggybank on the dresser, she scooped up the coins and left the room hurriedly.
    She didn’t want to be there when Dave came out of the bathroom.
    Georgia stood inside the front door, watching as Jill walked down the street to the corner where the other children were waiting for the school bus.
    Jill stopped a short distance from where they were gathered, and it seemed to Georgia that the other kids moved back. The animation that they’d displayed before Jill arrived was markedly absent.
    It was a scene she’d witnessed before, she realized.
    Other children didn’t take to Jill.
    Georgia felt an ache in her heart at the sight of her daughter standing alone.
     
     
     

Twelve
     
    Roland Barry arrived at Meadowbrook Elementary at precisely seven-thirty as he’d been doing since being named principal more than two years before. He parked in his reserved space and was gratified to see that, as usual, he was the first to arrive.
    He unlocked the front doors and stepped inside, pausing for a moment to admire the serenity and even beauty of the empty hall. It wouldn’t stay this way long, but the night custodian had done a nifty job on the floors, buffing the hardwood to a warm glow.
    All along the hall the doors were shut, the classrooms dark and silent.
    The building smelled strongly of chalk and pencil shavings, and it evoked nostalgia in him for his own school days, many years ago.
    Schoolhouses like this were the reason why he’d gone into education.
    Life never got any better.
    His footsteps echoed most satisfactorily as he walked to the office and let himself in. After turning on the lights at the master panel, he went into his office and put his briefcase on the desk.
    His desk was clear except for an inter-office envelope which was resting face down on the blotter, centered in Lucy Chisolm’s distinctive fashion.
    A strip of Scotch tape covered the