Chapter 3

The man looked at me, and there was a kind of lofty arrogance in his tone.

"Engineer Delgado went back to the town to bury his mother, and found you gone. He spent three whole months looking for you."

"He's a key man at the River City National Laboratory now. You disappearing like that, without a word, has caused him a great deal of trouble."

"Here's his number. Call him right now, and stop distracting him."

I looked at the gold-embossed card, my hand frozen in midair. I didn't take it.

"Go back and tell him Janice Swanson already died in that town."

The man frowned. "Miss Swanson, don't be stubborn. Engineer Delgado's position is different now. Carrying on like this does nobody any good."

I let out a cold laugh, picked up the broom beside me, and started sweeping the floor.

"Get out. Don't dirty my place."

His face went ugly. He threw the card down on the table, turned, and left.

I looked at the card. It read, "Lloyd Delgado, Deputy Director, River City National Laboratory."

Deputy Director.

So he had climbed that high already.

And I was still worrying over a few dozen dollars of rent a month.

But there wasn't a shred of regret in me. Only disgust.

Word of the Sprout Learning Class spread fast through the neighborhood. The fees were low, the teaching was serious, and plenty of women workers were glad to come take our classes.

But it didn't last.

Dean Chavez soon caught wind of what we were doing.

He couldn't stand seeing us take his students, so he teamed up with the licensing office and the fire department, coming around every day to make trouble.

That afternoon, we were in the middle of a class when several people in uniform suddenly barged in.

"Who's in charge here? This place is running a school without a license. Shut it down for review, now!"

The one leading them shouted it out.

The classroom fell into chaos in an instant, the women too frightened to speak.

Dean Chavez stood in the doorway, looking at me, smug.

"Janice Swanson, I told you. You'd never make it in Harbor City."

When the parents heard the school was being shut down, they came running to demand their tuition back.

"Con artist! Give us our money back!"

"You said you'd help us get into college. It was all a lie!"

The two women teachers who'd followed me couldn't hold back their tears.

"Teacher Swanson, why don't we just go apologize to Dean Chavez? At worst... at worst you marry his brother."

I looked at the crying students and the wavering teachers, and drew a deep breath.

"No apology."

I looked at Dean Chavez and said it one word at a time. "I haven't done anything wrong. Why should I apologize?"

I stayed up all night reading through policy documents, and made a dozen trips to the neighborhood office and the education bureau.

Harbor City summers come with pouring rain. I had no umbrella, and I stood soaked through at the door of the education bureau.

My heels were rubbed raw and bloody by my new shoes, and every step felt like dancing on a knife's edge.

The guard wouldn't let me in, so I waited in the downpour for six hours.

At last, the people at the education bureau were moved by how much I meant it, and made an exception to look over our application.

"Adult education really is a gap right now. You have the qualifications and the passion. You could be a model community pilot program."

The day I got the pilot status, I stood in the middle of the street holding the document with its red official seal, and cried my heart out.

Just when I thought things were finally about to turn, Lloyd Delgado showed up.

He wore a crisp white shirt and stood at the door of the Sprout Learning Class.

He looked thinner, with heavy dark circles under his eyes, and there was something worn-down about the whole of him.

He looked at me, his voice badly hoarse. "Janice, I've finally found you."

I looked at him, and inside I was calm as a pool of dead water.

I took the marriage certificate I'd carried out of that town from the drawer and slammed it down hard on the table.

"Lloyd Delgado, the day you got married, I was washing your mother's diapers."

"What gives you the right to stand in front of me and ask me to go back with you?"

The color drained from his face in an instant. He opened his mouth and reached for my hand.

"Janice, let me explain. It's not what you think..."

Click, click.

The sound of high heels on the concrete came from the stairwell.

A woman in a red wool coat, her makeup flawless, came up the stairs.

She hooked her arm through Lloyd's and looked at me, taunting.

"Miss Swanson, thank you for taking care of my mother-in-law all these years."