Free No Ordinary Day by Polly Becks Page A

shook the contents into her lap.
    Then shrugged, turned again and walked away into the dark.
    1:35 AM
    It took the tow truck more than an hour to reach her.
    By then, Lucy was kicking herself for her rash rejection of help from the Army National Guardsman, whom she determined, while waiting endlessly, would have undoubtedly gotten her car started while minding his manners after the chaos of the Town Board meeting.
    Instead, she was paying for her bad temper by sitting in the heavy cigar smoke of the tow-truck’s cab, coughing every now and then, while the operator jumped her battery in the pouring rain.
    She had needed to make her way back inside the town hall to use the pay phone to reach AAA, mentally thanking Glen Daniels for loaning her the umbrella overnight. In spite of the umbrella she had managed to get bone-chillingly soaked, as the rain was now blowing sideways, and had broken the heel off one of her shoes on her way back to the car.
    I need anger management classes, she decided while she waited.
    Finally, when her car was running again, and the tow truck driver opened the door, she stepped down from the cab tiredly and thanked him, got her card back from him along with the paperwork, and made her way under Glen Daniels’ umbrella in the heavier rain.
    I’m going to get Glen some baklava as a thank-you present, she mused as she returned to her running car.
    She put the umbrella in the front seat once more, touched the rosary, fastened her belt and drove off into the night to her tiny but beloved house in East Obergrande.
    At the corner, the lights of a jeep came on.
    It sat quietly as Lucy’s car drove around the corner and out of sight.
    Then pulled away in the other direction, heading to the local motel for the night, too late to start back to Saratoga until morning, a little over an hour’s journey home.
    Out behind the town hall, where cars had been parked like sardines over the course of the night, a dozen or so remaining people finally left the building, exhausted.
    Two of them, however, held back as the rest got into their cars, long enough to exchange a glance.
    Then opened their umbrellas and hurried into their own vehicles.
    Heading off into the black night, the heavy rain and the obtrusive mist beneath a dark, moonless sky.

Chapter 9
    ‡
    THE NEXT DAY, Friday, 7:03 AM
    Obergrande Elementary School
    K elly Moran came into the classroom in a foul mood, shaking the rain from her clothing and dripping it from her coat onto her shoes.
    “This is ridiculous,” she muttered, fighting with her broken umbrella to close it. “Thank God it’s Friday.”
    Lucy was perched atop a small stepladder, hanging up student self-portraits.
    “No kidding,” she agreed. “Look at it out there—it looks like a tornado is brewing—except there’s no separation of light and dark in the sky, and it’s not green.”
    “No, it’s pretty much black all the way down to the ground,” Kelly agreed, hanging her dripping coat in the teachers’ closet. “And the bloody rain is blowing sideways —they give us snow days when the weather’s awful in winter. I can’t imagine those poor little kids waiting for the bus this morning.”
    “Maybe we’ll get an early dismissal,” Lucy said, coming down from her stepladder. “Clarence is passing over Philadelphia almost four hundred miles to the south, and dissipating, but the edge rains are supposed to hit us this morning—that’s probably them out there now.”
    “How was the Town Board meeting last night?”
    “Awful.” Lucy picked up the ladder, closed it, and took it back to the closet. “A total free-for-all.”
    “Yeah, I can’t believe they’re bringing that dam thing up again,” Kelly said, laying out the morning’s WHAT IS SPECIAL TODAY? cards on each desk. “Where does the Board stand on that? I thought we voted it down.”
    “We thought we did too, but apparently that wasn’t enough for the West Obergrande folks.”
    “Hmmph,” Kelly snorted in