Free Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle by Ann B. Ross Page B

backyard. I can’t help but wonder who it was and how it got there.”
    “Well, yes, I suppose so. But you do have to be careful how you express that wonder. You can be interested but not obsessed, and it’s all right to listen but it’s not all right to pass along what you hear.”
    “Oh,” he said, frowning and leaning back. “You mean I can’t tell you or Mama or Lillian or Mr. Sam, or even J.D., what I hear?”
    “No, no. I wouldn’t go that far. Of course it’s perfectly all right to tell us anything you want to. I’m just saying that we all have to be careful about becoming known as gossips. As long as we keep it in the family, we’re all right.”
    “That’s what I’m doing, ’cause I haven’t told another living soul, not even at school.”
    “Well, good,” I said, pleased that the boy was able to take correction with such ease.
    “Yes’m,” he went on earnestly, “and I wasn’t even going to say anything to Miss Petty because I thought it might upset her, even if I just said, ‘I’m sorry for your troubles.’ But I didn’t get the chance to not say anything because she wasn’t there. We had a substitute like I thought we would.”
    “Oh dear,” I said, thinking of that lonely woman who was now the focus of so much talk. “I hope she has friends to help her through this time. It must be so unsettling for her. I take it she lives alone, but she must have friends among the other teachers. Most likely they’ll gather around for support. I expect she has a special friend, maybe one from school, don’t you think?”
    He shrugged his shoulders. “Beats me. I just see her during fourth period and sometimes at lunch, but that’s all I know. Why? You think she has a boyfriend or something?”
    “Goodness, I don’t know. I’m just concerned about her well-being, living alone as she does and all this happening so close by. Your mother, though, speaks quite highly of her after their meeting at Parents’ Night.”
    “I can try to find out if you want me to. I bet Joyce McIntyre would know. She hears everything when she gets sent to the principal’s office.”
    “They’re not likely to speak of a teacher’s boyfriend in the principal’s office, so I doubt your friend would know anything.”
    “You’d be surprised, Miss Julia. Joyce knows lots of things, or pretends she does, one.”
    “Well, don’t ask her. That’s the way rumors get started. Someone asks a simple question out of real concern for another person, and next thing you know, it becomes a statement of fact. No, Lloyd,” I said, speaking to myself as much as to him, “let’s not ask any questions or volunteer any information we might have. In that way, we won’t be responsible for starting something that might not be true. Just let little Miss Joyce McIntyre alone.”
    He nodded gravely in agreement. “I know what you mean. You should’ve heard what she said about Mr. Dement one time, and I know that wasn’t true. But a lot of kids still believe he cuts his grass in his boxers.”
    Hearing a car turn into the driveway, I said, “That must be Lillian. Run help her bring in the groceries, Lloyd, and I’ll be there in a minute to help put them away.”
    He immediately stood up, ready to go. “Can I tell her about him being rich and how he used to live here? She might know who it was.”
    “Yes, you can tell her.” I stood too and reached for the poker to shift the logs on the fire. But what I really needed was a minute or two to think. For one thing, my nerves were still frayed from my run-in with the Abbot County Sheriff’s Department, and they’d stay that way until I could prove I was a victim, not a perpetrator.
    And now, after cautioning Lloyd about how easily a person could start a rumor, sometimes by throwing out only a suggestion that quickly became accepted as settled fact, it occurred to me that I might have become a victim again in a different case.
    I thought back to my conversation with Thurlow