My Husband Kissed Another Woman on the Ballpark Kiss Cam, and the Friend I Called a Liar Was the One Running the Scoreboard novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Visitor Badge

Dani dropped me at the curb outside school at ten after seven on Monday, with a coffee and an order.

"Text me if he shows," she said.

"He won't show."

"Text me when he shows."

I run the front office of an elementary school, which means I'm the first face anyone sees and the last one anybody blames.

I unlocked the door, turned on the lights, and had the sign-in tablet booted up before the principal's car pulled in.

She called me into her office at 7:25 and shut the door.

She's fifty-eight and wears reading glasses on a beaded chain.

In nine years I'd never seen her sit on the corner of her own desk.

"Todd called my cell phone yesterday," she said.

My stomach dropped.

"He found the number in the district directory. He said you'd been erratic and he was concerned about the children."

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't be." She held up one hand. "I told him Mrs. Carroway has worked in this building nine years and has never once missed a bus."

I couldn't speak.

"Then I told him not to call me again."

"Half the faculty sent me that video, Beth." She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. "I've watched the part where you put the hot dogs down a dozen times."

I laughed, and it turned into something else halfway out, and she handed me a tissue from the box on her desk without comment.

At 7:40 a second grader in a dinosaur backpack stood on tiptoe at my counter.

"Are you the hot dog lady?"

I stared down at her.

"My mom said you're the hot dog lady."

"I'm the front office lady."

"Why did you put them down?"

I thought about it.

I'd been asked by coworkers, by strangers online, and by my mother-in-law, and I had never once answered honestly.

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