Maron shrugged again. “Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

She sighed. “We have bathroom breaks every hour. If you don’t take the break when it’s time to, you can color or paint or talk quietly, but then you have to wait for the next time. And then there’s no talking, playing, pushing or laughing in line…or else. Megan kept saying she really had to go.”

Becca raised her eyebrows. Nothing wrong with some rules; it was a good idea to help these little ones establish their own limits and boundaries. But dangling “playtime” if they pass on the bathroom break was too tempting.

“I bet Mrs. Anderson felt really bad about the accident.”

“I think the whole class always makes her feel bad,” Maron said. She shook her head, then went back to copying her spelling words.

Can’t get much by kids, Becca thought. It seemed pretty obvious that this particular teacher was not a happy person.

After the children had gone home for the day, Becca made her way down to Denny’s efficiency. Inside, she heard the shower running. She picked up the phone and called her mother.

“Remember that teacher I had in fifth grade?” she asked. “Was her name Mrs. Anderson?”

“No,” Beverly said, laughing. “Johnson, I think. I’m not sure I remember, but I’ll never forget her face.”

“Me, either. One of my little girls has a teacher who sounds so much like that. Very punishing, very unhappy, thrilled when you screw up. Her teacher kept pushing her to the back of the bathroom line because she was wiggling too much and she had an accident.”

Beverly gasped.

“This little girl has had such a hard year. Her dad was injured in a logging accident, lost his arm and his job, and the family is struggling. You’d think she could cut her a little slack.”

“Is the little girl awfully upset?”

“She didn’t come to our homework session so I guess the answer is probably yes. And you know what came to mind? I was in tears most of fifth grade, believing the teacher hated me, believing I’d never make it to sixth grade. I was miserable, and I didn’t even have a troubled home life! I had every advantage, and I was destroyed.”

“But here’s what you did have, Becca—the best sixth-grade teacher in the world, Mrs. Dallas. We met with her before school started and explained how hard your fifth grade was. By the very look in her eyes, she wasn’t surprised. Everyone knew that teacher was hard to survive, but there was nothing they could do. I think Mrs. Dallas made an extra effort for you. It was not the difficult teacher that made you want to teach, it was the wonderful teacher who inspired you!”

Denny came out of the bathroom, holding a towel around his waist. He blew her a kiss then proceeded to quietly dress.

“I think she saved me,” Becca said. “You know, I’ve had some monumental brats in the past couple of years, but I wouldn’t treat the worst kid so meanly!”

Beverly laughed. “You better not, Becca. A young teacher like you—it’s so important that you focus on what you have, not on what you don’t have.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“You had a couple of crappy teachers, but you had way more wonderful, inspiring teachers. And if you look at your teaching career, young though it is, you’ll see that it’s been shaped by the excellent teachers. You’ve learned so much from them. You’ve become like them in so many ways. You haven’t chosen teaching out of retaliation—you chose it to be as positive an influence as you can!”

“Oh, Mom,” she said. “Thank you for saying that.”

Beverly laughed. “Just because we’ve been known to disagree, doesn’t mean I’m not proud of you, Becca. And I’m really starting to miss you, too.”

“I’ll see you soon,” Becca promised. “I’ll let you know when I’m headed that way.”

“Be careful on the snow and ice!” Beverly said.

When she hung up the phone, she found that Denny was dressed and sitting in the chair, waiting for her.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” he said. “Not on purpose, anyway. But I’m sorry if you’re missing your mom. If you need to go home, just tell me when. I can drive you.”

“And then I’ll miss you,” she said. “It’s no-win.”

“We have to face it, honey,” he said. “We’ve talked about everything but where we go from here.”

She straightened and paid attention.

“I don’t know what comes next for us, but whatever it is, it’s got to be me and you. Together. Forever. I want to marry you, Becca. If you want that, too, we have some things to work out. We have a geographic situation. And I think we’ve both been putting off talking about it.”

“I know,” she said very softly.

“I have two jobs and a good opportunity here, Becca. Maybe you could give it a try, since you don’t have a job to go back to in San Diego. You could probably find a good teaching job somewhere around here if you want to, but if not, I can support you. And since good jobs are real hard to find in this economy, I shouldn’t give up two paychecks. Remember, I don’t have a degree.”

That made her almost gulp, thinking of what Doug had said and feeling angry all over again. “I might not have a job in San Diego, but my whole life is there.” She shook her head. “I don’t have anything here. I don’t have anyone but you.”

“You will have more good friends here,” he promised. “Everyone loves you. This is a great place, once you get to know it. It’s hard to explain, but everything is a team effort here. It gives a person an interesting kind of confidence, the way no one is ever left uncared for. If I needed something, I can name fifteen people who’d be right there lending a hand. And I can name twice as many people I’d be happy to help out. I’ve never had that before. It’s more family than my family was.”

“Oh,” she said weakly.

“If you could just try,” he repeated. “Give it a chance. Consider it. See if it works out as well for you as it has for me. I mean, works out for us…”

“Denny, we talked about what happened to you when your mom died, when we broke up and you went to Afghanistan, but we haven’t talked about what happened to me, and we should. It was horrible. I didn’t eat or sleep, I was depressed, my grades dropped and it was a struggle to graduate. I’m scared, Denny. What if I give this place a chance and you change your mind again? What if I leave everything I know and love to be here with you and you come up with some profound reason why it’s better for us to split up, like before?”

“Whoa, honey, I won’t, I swear to God. I always knew that was a stupid mistake. I regretted it right away. I learned from that. You can trust me. I love you so much.”

“I do trust you,” she said. “And I love you, too. But it’s going to take time for me to feel a little more secure about that. I want to go home. Think things through. Everything and everybody I love is there…everyone but you.”

“Okay,” he said. He said it quietly and smiled, but it was a weak smile. “Let’s plan next week, after I get Jilly’s farm caught up and you’re done with all the stuff you have planned with the women and the kids. You have your pageant practice on Saturday and some hen party on Sunday, right? I’ll get you home in plenty of time for Christmas. Will that work?”

“Thank you,” she said. But she was afraid to ask if he would stay.

Becca and Denny went to Jack’s for dinner and sat up at the bar. It was easier now that she could dangle her injured leg. As soon as they’d eaten, Denny started helping out behind the bar, in the kitchen, around the tables. The place was packed. Mel had kept her word and brought out the Christmas decorations. There were pine boughs heaped on the mantel and twinkling lights everywhere.

“I love that tree outside,” Jack told Becca. “But I probably shouldn’t have let Melinda talk me into it.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Look at this place,” he said. “Tuesday night and it’s standing room only. We never had crowds like this around the holidays until that tree started lighting their way into town. A lot of these folks have military backgrounds—they come to see the red-white-and-blue tree, leave unit patches to be added next year.”

She looked around. “They all look pretty happy. And it must be a few extra bucks in the Christmas kitty. Huh?”

“Can’t complain about the business,” he said. “Just the hours. We’ve got stuff to do. Like the Christmas baskets.”

“Ah. Would that include the ‘town turkeys’?”

“Huh?”

“One of the little girls in my homework group indicated her dad resented what he called the ‘town turkey.’ You probably know him—lost his arm in a logging accident?”

“Yeah, that’s Frank. He’s a real sourpuss. Too bad—he wasn’t before the accident. Used to be a sweetheart. Lots of fun. But now? Not so much. He’s just a young guy with a young family. I bet he’s thirty-two.”

“I think I saw him in here once. And I met his wife. Frankly, I thought she was a bit older.”

“We’d all be a bit older if we worked twelve-hour days in a truck stop,” Jack said. “Frank can resent the town turkey, as he calls it, all he wants, but I bet his kids don’t. He’ll be getting a real nice Christmas package.”

“Do you do a lot of that sort of thing?”

Jack shrugged. “We help out where we can. There’s enough to keep us all busy around here. But we only do the baskets at Thanksgiving and Christmas. We got together with Noah, the preacher, and started a list of people who needed a hand. No one is better equipped to put names on that list than the pastor, the town doctor and my wife.” He rubbed his chin. “Bothers me that there are probably more folks out there in need that we just don’t know about. I worry about the elderly. There are some folks around the mountains who have been here fifty years or more and most of ’em just don’t take to charity. If they get sick, they’ll just hunker down till they either feel better or drop dead.”

“Ew. What a creepy thought.”

He grinned at her. Then the grin faded. “And the children—I always worry about the kids. While the elderly won’t ask for help, the kids can’t. We keep our eyes open and do the best we can.”

She smiled and said, “And yet, even with all that, people seem to find this place enchanting.”

“Enchanting? I don’t know about that.” He leaned on the bar. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I feel useful here. Needed. I’m appreciated for what I can contribute and people let me know that. In a lot of other places, I could disappear and barely be missed.”

“Aw, I can’t believe that.”

“Accurate or not, I know I’m counted on here.” He glanced down the bar to see a patron with his hand up, beckoning him. “Excuse me a minute.”

While he moved down the bar to serve a drink, she caught sight of Denny bringing food from the kitchen to a table full of people. Locals, she presumed, because they all laughed with him, joking around with him, and he was giving it right back, as if they’d all been friends forever.

That’s what Denny meant. He felt useful; he knew he was needed. Back in San Diego, he must never have been sure of that.

Because the bar was so busy, Denny wanted to help out until closing, despite the fact that both Jack and Preacher told him to take off, spend time with his girl. He took a fifteen-minute break to walk Becca home and make sure she got up those stairs safely. “I hope you don’t mind too much, I’m going to be another hour, maybe hour and a half. The guys told me to call it quits, but Paige is busy with the kids and I can help while you use the time to get ready for bed, call your mom or maybe read for a while.”