If only he hadn’t told his parents…
“Do you know who’s interviewing for the job?”
Caleb nodded. “Some woman named Amanda Williams. She just moved here.” Maybe Pastor Edmund wouldn’t readily make the connection to another local woman whose last name was also Williams and someone who had left the congregation after last year’s debacle.
Then again maybe not… “Amanda Williams? Isn’t that Mary’s sister?”
Caleb shrugged. He knew perfectly well Amanda was Mary’s sister, but he didn’t need to make things worse by admitting it. Thousands of people had the last name Williams.
“You would think Mary would have better sense than to allow her sister to take such a job in town. Has the woman learned nothing?”
Caleb flinched. Had Pastor Edmund learned nothing? After all, he and his parishioners had been the ones to harass the Masters guy and his partners until they got a restraining order against about two dozen church members. The sheriff’s office would be keeping a close eye on the church and its followers. Pastor Edmund would be an idiot to consider provoking yet another member of the community.
Pastor Edmund’s voice rose, and he slammed a fist onto his desk. “Damnation. We don’t need this swirling pot of blasphemy in Cambridge again. Mary knows it. That woman’s crazy. First she spies on our well-meaning members and turns us in to the police, and then she thumbs her nose at us and walks away like nothing happened.”
Caleb didn’t move a muscle. It seemed prudent to let the man work the venom out of his system.
“Now she thinks she can encourage her sister to work on a project no one in the community wants in our backyards and not receive retaliation? She’s crazier than I thought. A few phone calls, and there’ll be families pulling their kids from her preschool in hours.”
Caleb opened his mouth to point out the insanity of that plan, but thought better of it. If Pastor Edmunds wanted to have his tantrum in front of Caleb, so be it. Caleb didn’t have to participate.
“I thought we had come to a truce, an unspoken agreement. She walked away with her mouth closed, and in return we didn’t shut down her business. Now this? The last thing we need in Cambridge is more of those damn Indians traipsing up here from their reservation to attend our junior college. We don’t need to be mixing with the likes of them. The quality of education in this town will go down the tubes.” He hauled himself to standing. The man was about seventy. But he was nimble. As he stomped to the window to look out into the night, Caleb considered slipping from the room.
He didn’t have enough time to execute his plan, however, before Pastor Edmund spun around and faced him again. “You keep me posted, kid. Got it? You hear anything else, you let me know. If Mary Williams wants to go to war, then war she will have.”
Caleb’s mouth was completely dry as he lifted gingerly from the chair, nodded, and eased from the room. This was not a war he wanted to be involved in.
Chapter Five
It was after ten when Amanda heard several cars pull into the driveway. She had Adam in her arms sucking a bottle. The other two children were asleep. Finally.
She indeed had her work cut out for her that evening. It had only been three hours, and she felt wrung out. She didn’t envy either mother.
The door opened, and Rebecca stepped inside first. She smiled at Amanda and came straight toward her. “I can’t thank you enough for doing this. I haven’t had three straight hours without a baby on my hip for a year and a half.” She reached for Adam, keeping the bottle in his mouth to gently transfer him.
The way she looked at his sweet face told Amanda that Rebecca was full of shit. She missed those kids in that short amount of time. She was salivating to get her little boy back in her arms.
Amanda smiled as Rebecca moved farther into the house with the baby, and several others entered the great room.
There were so many of them. Amanda had pieced together that this house belonged to Laurie, Zachary Masters, and Corbin Archers. The smallest baby was theirs. Or at least two of theirs. If she had to guess, she would go with Zach as the father since the baby had his features and complexion.
She shuddered as Zach stepped into her line of vision. This was the second time she’d seen him, the first being when they’d left for dinner. And she was as haunted by his looks now as she had been four hours ago. When she’d first met him, her knees almost buckled as she recognized him as one of the men in her dreams.
How was that possible? She had to be hallucinating. But the resemblance was uncanny. And her dreams had been frequent enough lately she was certain he was one of them. Who dreamed about a man they’d never seen in their life and then met him? And more importantly, what did it mean since he was clearly already in a relationship and very much in love with Laurie?