The library was already fairly full when they walked in, but no one other than Jane was sitting at the designated fourth grade table. It was no secret that Jane could be a little rude, and the other teachers didn’t like to give her an excuse to put them in their place.Ru did know a few teachers on other teams well from some of her committee work, and one of them, Hannah West, who taught third grade, waved at her as she came in. Ru waved back and approached her usual seat. She wasn’t paying attention when she set her belongings down, and it wasn’t until Jane shrieked that she realized what she’d done. Looking down, she watched as Jane’s full cup of coffee spilled all over the table.“Ru! What did you do?” Jane screamed, jumping up like the hot liquid was coming right at her, even though it was flowing the other direction.“I’m so sorry!” she said, feeling the

It was no surprise that Ru would spend the evening running around refreshing drinks, setting out more food, cleaning up plates, etc. She was fine with it. It gave her less of a chance to talk to people she didn’t really know. She did get a few pitied glances from some of the women who had known her most of her life, but few people attempted to talk to her. She did have a short conversation with the birthday girl, who was ecstatic about her new job as a personal assistant. Her boyfriend, Chuck, who worked on Wall Street, though Ru didn’t understand what he did no matter how many times she heard him explain it, seemed both proud and relieved that she’d finally be contributing. Melissa had quite the shopping addiction, always had, and since Liddy had done her best to make both of her older daughters appear to have more money than they did, she was used to wearing clothes and accessories with price tags beyond her means.“How’s

Sandra Delvecchio heard a noise and stumbled out of bed, certain it was her cat, Tiger, wanting out. Without fully opening her eyes, she shuffled toward the back door, the backs of her heels sticking out of her house shoes.She didn’t glance at the clock to see what time it was, but she felt like she’d been asleep for at least a few hours. Since she’d gone straight to bed after Bull, she figured it was close to midnight. Tiger usually wanted out about this time, and even though it was a pain in the ass, he was her only companion, so she tried to keep him happy.Opening the back door, she said, “Here you go, kitty,” expecting to feel him rub against her leg as he darted out into the fall evening, but there was nothing. “Tiger?” she called. Turning around and finally opening her eyes completely for the first time, she didn’t see him anywhere. “That’s odd,” she mutt

The meeting lasted a little over half an hour, and when it was over, Ru had to rush off to get her students from the music teacher. She was in a good mood; they’d come up with some solutions that should help Ira. She saw Jane in the hallway, on her way to retrieve her class from art, and she was smiling, which surprised Ru. She thought she’d be angry at not getting her way with the parking spot.Returning to her classroom, Ru got her students started on their math assignment before taking a moment to look over her notes for Ira, who seemed to be much more calm now than he had been earlier in the day. She knew how much he loved music, and she’d even requested he be evaluated for music therapy services, which she thought would really help him. This truly was going to be the best year ever.At the end of the day, she sent each of her students out the door with hug, handshake, or high-five, their choice, and then took the

Cutter made sure Ru was out of the building before he switched from texting and gave Rider a call. As the phone was ringing, he stood and walked to his door, closing it, just in case anyone was listening in. Rider answered on the second ring. “What’s going on? How did it go?”“Well, the good news is, she agreed to go out with me tomorrow.”“Oh, you’ve turned it into a date then have you?” Rider teased.“No, not exactly,” Cutter replied, sitting back down. Not that he would mind dating Ru, though her comment on not dating coworkers was about to be taken to a whole ‘nother level. “But something else happened you need to know about.”“Yeah, I saw your text.”When Ru had walked in, he’d been in the process of trying to explain to Rider what had happened with the car. There was a distinct possi