Dust by Eva Everson (epub e reader .TXT) 📕

now closed and abandoned on the table. “I’m a professor at Dekalb College,” he said. “That kind of doctor.”

“Oh,” she said again, mostly because she had no idea what he was talking about.

“I’m the head of the business department there.” He reached into his shirt pocket and drew out a business card, then chuckled again. “Just happened to have one of these.” He handed it to her, and she took it, rubbing her thumb over the raised lettering of his name. His title. His office phone number. “Tell me something, Cindie—and forgive me if I’m being too forward—but you’ve dropped out of school, you’re working in a diner probably not making a lot of money, and you don’t have your GED.” The brow shot up. “I can’t help myself here—when I see a young person, I look for the potential.” He picked up the other half of the sandwich. “And you, Cindie, should be in school somewhere and not serving strangers in town BLTs.”

“Well, somebody’s gotta do it,” she mumbled, but smiled anyway. “So, let me know if you need anything else.” She left, coming back only one other time—refill on the tea again—but not to talk. Mainly because she wasn’t sure she liked his insinuations—even though he was—if she were honest—completely right. She should be in school and not working for the nickels and dimes and sometimes quarters and half dollars left tossed on the tables for her to claim like some prize. And as if to prove himself to her, the business doctor left a tip larger than she usually totaled in a whole shift.

Days crawled by—days of carrying plates heaped with food to customers who barely understood the concept of tipping, much less actually leaving her anything to live on. Days of her mother’s nonstop complaints and demands. And that’s when the plan came like a much-needed breeze on a muggy summer’s day full of gnats that swarmed and stuck to skin.

She left early for work that Monday morning—the start of a new week as she saw it—stepped into the phone booth just outside the café and inserted the necessary coins before dialing the number on the card.

“Dr. Miller’s office,” a female voice answered on the second ring. “Rita Maledon speaking.”

“Um …” Cindie said, then grimaced at her stammering. She pictured the woman on the other side of the line. Pretty and slender and probably rolling her eyes. “Yes, ma’am. I’m calling for Dr. Miller.”

“Dr. Miller is not in right now.”

Cindie’s shoulders sank. “Oh.”

“May I take a message?”

“A message?” She had to think. And she had to think fast. She couldn’t give her home number. Lettie Mae would want details and she didn’t have them to give. And, if she did, she certainly wanted her mother as far away from them as possible. “Yes. Could you tell him that Cindie from the café in Baxter called? He-um-he left me his number. Tell him I’d like to talk to him about something. Um … do you know when he’ll be in?”

“Should be any minute now,” the woman answered and Cindie now pictured a woman with styled hair wearing a pink cashmere sweater and a strand of pearls. As smartly dressed as she was smartly educated. “Did you say Baxter?”

“Yes. Yes, ma’am. And I’m Cindie … from the café.” She left her work number, hopeful that Dr. Miller would call back sooner rather than later. Which he did. Not fifteen minutes after she tied an apron around her waist, her workmate Midge answered the wall phone while Cindie poured coffee into the five mugs of the Monday Morning Men’s Coffee Club, her heart thumping at the possibility that her future could be on the other end of the call.

“Cindie,” Midge hollered out while holding the phone’s handset up in the air. “For you.”

Cindie rushed over. “Thanks, Midge.” She brought the phone to her ear, nearly breathless, her heart hammering, so much so that she wondered if it could be heard over the din of customers and Lynn Anderson’s Rose Garden playing from the overhead sound system her boss was so dang proud of. “This is Cindie,” she said, a little too loud. She swallowed, repeated herself, this time keeping her voice low and businesslike … the way Dr. Miller’s secretary had spoken.

“Cindie? Cindie from the café in Baxter?”

Cindie turned her back to the noise around her, a smile sneaking up on her at the lilt in Dr. Miller’s voice. “It is. Um—” She had so little time; she had to make each second count. “Dr. Miller, I wanted to talk to you. And it’s a little busy right now, being a Monday morning and all. But I wanted to talk to you about what it would take, say, if I wanted to go to college up there where you teach.”

“You’ll need your GED, Cindie,” he said, his tone now controlled and almost parental.

“Okay.”

“Once you get that, if you need help getting in, all you have to do is call me back and I’ll see what I can do from here.”

“Is it—does it cost a lot of money?”

“It can. But there are grants and scholarships. Loans. Of course, you can always work part time while you go to school full time. Do you know what you want to study?”

She didn’t. She only knew that Westley required a smart woman and she was nothing but a dumb girl. But she could learn to be smart. Surely she could. She’d learned her ABCs once upon a time. And she’d learned to add. To subtract. And she’d always been good with fractions. “Well … what do you teach, Dr. Miller?”

“Business.”

Oh. Yes. How could she forget? Because she was stupid, that’s how. Stupid, stupid, stupid. But, business. Business. “I’m good with fractions,” she blurted out, then gritted her teeth.

Dr. Miller laughed, but not at her. She could tell. She amused him, and being able to amuse him fell in her favor.

“Well, here is the part that’s kinda tricky, Dr. Miller. You see, I have