Chapter 6

Lee parked Amanda's Chevy Tahoe in the driveway at 4247 Maplewood and went around to open her door. She let them in through the back door, calling, "Mother! We're here!"

Dotty was watching the six o'clock news; she turned off the television set with the remote and stood up to greet her daughter and son-in-law as if she hadn't seen them in weeks, rather than just the previous day. "Amanda, did you know that Phillip is on a date as we speak?" she asked.

"Is he? Do we know her?" Amanda asked.

"Well, you should, dear, since she's one of your new recruits, Kendra Davis."

"Kendra? Well, her application mentioned that she was a Thornton Foundation fellow, so she would have had to have met Phillip last summer, I suppose, but I didn't know he knew her otherwise."

"He said he met her in front of the Agency this morning."

"Interesting. That must have been right after he dropped those papers off in my office, because he didn't mention anything about it to me."

"I don't know; he just came home, announced he was going out for pizza with her, changed into jeans, and blew back out again."

"Well, that's very promising. Ms. Davis is very level-headed, very intelligent, and has very good qualifications for the job, which is how she made the cut. She's certainly a cut above the usual sort of girl Phillip likes."

"You mean because she has a brain?" Lee asked dryly.

"Well, yes, that, and she's not the type to suffer fools gladly, not that Phillip's a fool, but…."

"But he sure has acted like one in the past," the man who had been Phillip's stepfather for over ten years said. "Good to hear that he's looking beyond the vital statistics to something more, er, intangible. Not that she isn't physically attractive, of course."

"He said that he was picking her up at her mom's house right here in Arlington," Dotty said. "I thought that was a very smart move on her part, to make sure he met her mother right away."

"I agree," Amanda said. "Wait a minute – Leeanne told us the other day that one of the first-grade teachers at Lyon, Ms. Davis, is going to have to miss the last couple of weeks of school because she's been diagnosed with MS. Since Leeanne's Montessori school is already out for the summer, she's going to sub for her. It has to be the same person, Lee."

"Very possibly," Lee agreed.

Lee and Amanda's adopted daughter, Leeanne McCracken, was married to a fifth-grade teacher at Lyon Elementary, John McCracken, better known as "Jack Mack". She'd met Jack while they were both doing their student teaching at another APS campus six years before, had married in 1992, and after two years of teaching first grade at Lyon, Leanne had realized her dream of owning and operating her own Montessori school in the old house in Arlington that she and Jack had bought and lovingly restored. While she was in school at George Mason, she'd been Bobby Stetson's nanny, and when Emily came along in 1990, she'd taken care of Emmy too. She and Jack had used some of the money her mother had left to buy and restore an old home, and once it was restored, start the school. Emily Stetson, aged three, had been one of her first students in 1993, and even after the children had gone on to public school, they'd still returned to Leeanne's house each day after school and during school breaks.

Jack and Leeanne had hoped for children of their own, but had learned, to their sorrow, that the injuries Leeanne had suffered in the same car accident that killed her mother had made it impossible for her to have children.

"I'm sorry to hear about Kendra's mother," Dotty said. "Maybe I should make them a casserole. If she's not well and Kendra's leaving for Station One on Wednesday, she won't want to cook."

"And it will give you a chance to meet a new neighbor," Amanda said with a smile. Dotty Weller might be slowing down a bit physically, and her arthritis made some activities much more difficult, but there was nothing wrong with her curiosity, and she was genuinely kind.

"That's right. I wonder where she lives?"

"I'm sure you can find out, Mother. We need to go pick up the kids and go home."

"Find out from Leelee where she lives."

"I'll do my best, Mother," Amanda said.