.
Copyright © 2012 Priscilla Glenn
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1479103780
ISBN 13: 9781479103782
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62345-994-9
.
To my family, who has supported me in everything I’ve ever wanted, thank you.
To my test readers: Amanda Reina, Therese VonSteenburg, Daniella Leifer, Millie Morelli, Rachel Wilkins, Joanne McConnell, Kari Cieslak, Crystal Wilkins, Caryn Brogan, Grace Wilkins, Beth Poust, and Brett Sills—your feedback, advice, and encouragement have been invaluable, and I am extremely grateful for you all.
And to my husband, who cooked dinners and changed diapers whenever I would disappear with Lauren and Michael for a while, I love you. Thank you for your endless support and reassurance.
.
“It has been said that time heals all wounds. I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
—Rose Kennedy
.
Contents
August 2011
November 2000
August 2011
December 2000
September 2011
March 1989
October 2011
March 2001
October 2011
June 2001
November 2011
December 2001
November 2011
May 1992
November 2011
August 2002
December 2011
December 2002
January 2012
May 2003
January 2012
August 2003
January 2012
February 2012
Epilogue—May 2015
.
August 2011
Something about this place made Lauren Monroe feel nostalgic.
It didn’t make sense. She’d never gone to day care as a child, and never worked in a day care facility before, so she shouldn’t have been feeling reminiscent. But as she stood in the vestibule of Learn and Grow Day Care, looking at the drawings of stick figures and rainbows and suns with smiley faces, she felt a faint ache in her chest, almost like homesickness, that she couldn’t explain.
Maybe it was just the wonder and innocence of being a kid again that she was missing.
“Ms. Monroe?”
She turned to see a woman standing in the doorway of the office, her blond hair pulled back into an efficient ponytail. Her outfit was casual, jeans and a T-shirt with the day care’s logo emblazoned across the front, and Lauren guessed she was probably in her mid-forties or so. But her smile made her seem almost childlike, and Lauren couldn’t help but smile in return.
“Please, call me Lauren,” she said, walking toward the woman as she extended her hand.
“Nice to meet you, Lauren. My name is Deborah Sayer. Come in and have a seat,” she said, stepping to the side and gesturing for Lauren to enter after they had shaken hands.
The desk was all business: a desk calendar with meticulous handwriting, a computer, a phone, and a stack of manila folders a mile high. But the walls—the walls matched the woman she had just shaken hands with; they were a warm creamy blue, the backdrop for dozens of framed class photos. Image after image peppered the wall, pictures of children lined up as neatly as toddlers could be, smiling, laughing, holding hands, with a few proud teachers standing behind them. As the photos went on, the teachers changed and aged, and some came and went.
But Deborah Sayer was in every one.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” she said, nodding toward the pictures as she walked behind her desk and took a seat. “It feels like I opened this place up yesterday, and yet there are kids on that wall that are in law school right now.” She smiled fondly at the wall before she turned her attention back to Lauren.
“So, Lauren,” she said, reaching over to the first manila folder on the pile and opening it. “You’re from Bellefonte?”
“I’ve lived there for the past three years. I’m originally from Scranton.”
“I have family in Scranton,” Deborah smiled. “I was just there a few weeks ago.” She looked down, eyeing the document in front of her, and from her place across the desk, Lauren could see it was her résumé. Deborah looked up, a smile lifting the corner of her mouth. “Penn State girl?”
“Through and through.”
“Me too,” Deborah said. “Class of eighty-seven.”
“The professors there are amazing. I’m going back there now to get my master’s.”
Deborah nodded, the smile still playing at her lips as she looked back down at the résumé. “So, you taught kindergarten for the past three years at Unionville Primary. Tell me about your time there. What would you say your biggest accomplishments were?”
“Probably my biggest personal accomplishment was learning how to become a teacher,” Lauren said with a laugh. “You take all these classes on best practices and teaching methods, but you don’t really learn how to swim until you’re thrown to the sharks.” Deborah laughed, and Lauren added, “And as for professional accomplishments, while I was there I developed a literacy rubric that was adopted by the other kindergarten teachers in the district, and I also founded and headed a committee for increased parental involvement that was really successful.”
She nodded. “I see you were heavily involved in the community. In fact,” she said, looking up as she closed the folder, “from what I see here, I have to say, for only having worked there three years, you definitely left your mark on that school.”
“Thank you.”
“Which brings me to the million-dollar question.”
“Why am I no longer working there?” Lauren said.
Deborah nodded once, a small smile on her lips.
“I know how it looks, leaving after my third year, but I can assure you I received tenure. I would have loved to stay. I left because of my master’s degree.”
Deborah tilted her head and Lauren continued. “I’m going for my master’s in child psychology. I guess in a way I’ve always been drawn to that field, even when I was getting my bachelor’s in primary education. But working full time as a teacher and going back to school for a master’s degree,” she trailed off, shaking her head. “I always throw one hundred percent of myself into everything I do, and there was no way I could give one hundred percent to both of those things at the same time. I took some courses this summer, and the workload was…intense, to say the least.” She exhaled a breathy laugh. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to get this degree while planning lessons and grading and evaluating students and running committees and completing all the paperwork that comes with them. Not without sacrificing my sanity anyway.”