twenty-four.

As I'm in the kitchen washing the tins from the blueberry muffins we made in class earlier, Miriam enters and asks if I'd like to help-the kids want to make posters and flyers to promote the upcoming bake sale.

"They just came in from playing basketball. They're in the fellowship hall." With that, she leaves me, her tennis shoes squeaking in rhythm.

I can hear them; the fellowship hall is the next room over, and no walls can keep out the noise the kids make when they talk.

As I enter the large room lined with metal tables and chairs, Lisa is pouting because she didn't get the anticipated visit with her mom last weekend. She moans that she had to stay with her foster family and all they did was rent a movie. "

A movie sounds good," Zack says to her. He is wearing jeans and a dark brown T-shirt that brings out the flecks of brown in his hazel eyes.

"What did ya see?" asks Bobby. The group is seated around two rectangular tables-tables Miriam has piled with colorful construction paper, poster board, and markers.

"Ratatouille." Lisa makes a face; the others laugh.

"That's a fun movie," says Zack. For some reason, I'm surprised he watches movies. I thought he spent all his time helping the kids. I imagined that when he wasn't with them, he used every available hour to figure out how to make their lives better, maybe poring over his psychology books from grad school.

Lisa's frown doesn't leave her face. "My mom was going to take me to buy clothes at the mall in Asheville and out to dinner at the Fryemont Inn."

"Your mom ain't that rich!" yells Rainy, and her voice bounces off all four walls.

"She is so! She's got more money than all of you!"

"My mom's got two houses," Rainy boasts.

"And one of them's the jailhouse," quips Dougy. "Where she lives all the time."

Rainy rises from her seat. "Just because I'm black, you think my mama's in jail?"

Zack interrupts sternly, "Okay. That's enough." He waits for Rainy to sit down again and then he turns and nods to me.

I'm standing by the wall near the door where I entered.

I don't want to intrude on this gathering, which to me feels like a family trying to work things out. I feel like the intruder, the one who doesn't belong.

"Miss Livingston," Joy asks when she sees me, "are we gonna make posters?"

"Can I make them? I'm good at art," says Rainy.

Lisa announces that she is too sad to make anything.

"You can't live on sadness, Lisa," says Zack in a steady voice. "You have to keep on going." He looks from her straight at me. "People suffer broken promises and dreams many times in their lives."

"Duh! We know that," says Bubba.

Then Zack lets me take over the class by stepping aside and gesturing for me to stand before the group.

Broken promises? Why was Zack looking at me when he said that? I feel heat rush to my face. I will not let his comment bother me. I have kids to teach. I march over to the whiteboard and pick up a black dry erase marker. "Why don't we list the ways we can advertise our bake sale?"

"I want to make a poster," says Rainy. "I'm good at art."

"We could put them up on the bulletin board," says Joy.

"We need everyone to see them," says Bobby. He expands his hands to show just how wide he wants this coverage to be.

"Duh!" says Bubba. "We need an airplane to fly in the sky with an announcement."

The class laughs. Except for Darren. He is drawing something in his notebook. With his head lowered, he moves his red pen across the page to make bold lines.

"We can make flyers and pass them out," says Dougy. "Go all over town and hand them out at places like McDonald's."

"And I want to make a poster," Rainy tells us again.

"Okay, Rainy can make a poster." On the whiteboard I write Poster Poster and place Rainy's name by the word. As I write, Rainy's eyes brighten. and place Rainy's name by the word. As I write, Rainy's eyes brighten.

"Do we need another poster?" I ask. "How about one for the church's bulletin board?" I've seen the bulletin board in the main building on Sundays when I've attended the eleven o'clock service with Aunt Regena Lorraine.

No one says anything.

"Any takers?" I ask.

You could hear a toothpick drop; this silence is un-believable. "Darren, you could do that." Zack's voice swells with affirmation.

The kid actually looks up at Zack.

"Okay, I'll make it," he tells Zack, carefully averting his eyes from mine.

I am about to fall down onto the fellowship-hall floor.

Zack hot-glued a piece of blue plaid flannel to the bulletin board by the restrooms. The flannel was Joy's idea and both Miriam and Zack agreed it was a fine one. On the bulletin board we will place the poster Rainy made announcing that The Center will hold a bake sale in two weeks. Darren's poster, clearly made by a boy with superb talent, will be tacked to the bulletin board by the sanctuary.

Bubba and Rainy cleaned up the fellowship hall under Miriam's supervision as the other children left the building with their parents and guardians. When Darren's grandmother came to pick him up, she shook my hand and told me that Darren loved The Center and its programs. I wanted to say with sarcasm, "Oh yes, I can see that he loves being here every day." But I didn't.

Rainy's foster dad came to get her just as Rhonda, Bubba's social worker, drove up to take him out to dinner at Burger King. She is pretty, this Rhonda. I have seen her around The Center before. Her smile makes me think of a river sparkling under a summer sun. I know the kids think she's cute.

"Is Zack still here?" she asked as Bubba fastened his seat belt.

I didn't know if I was bothered by her asking or if it was more the look of longing in her wide eyes.

"He's here." Bubba supplied the answer. "But don't go talking to him like you always do. I'm hungry!"

We all smiled, and Rhonda backed out of the parking lot. I felt something funny deep inside. It was pain, but not the usual kind. Rhonda spends a lot of time talking to Zack?

Now that all the kids are gone and The Center is quiet, I walk over to Zack. "How did you know?"

Questioningly, Zack looks up at me. "Know what?"

"That I was engaged."

"Oh." He studies the tip of the glue gun. I assume he's trying to get out of answering the question. "Did I say that you were?"

"Yes! You talked about broken promises in your little pep talk and looked right at me."

"Did I?"

I let out a sigh of disgust.

He looks at the board, avoiding my eyes. "I can tell."

"You can tell?!" What on earth does that mean? How can you tell that a person has been engaged? Does the air around her smell of post-engagement perfume? I have to know. I edge closer to him, careful to avoid the glue gun. "How can you tell?" Don't I still have my decorative fan covering half my face? Have I exposed too much of myself to this church crowd?

Zack focuses his gaze on me. "Your ring finger is tan except for where your ring used to be."

We both look at my ring finger as I hold my left hand out against the edge of the bulletin board. There is no mark, no untanned area. "Right," I say.

Who told him? Who knows I was engaged? The only people in Bryson City who know are Aunt Regena Lorraine, because she is family and she can't help but know, and Jonas, because he rescued the ring from the drain. Neither would have a reason to talk to Zack about my engagement to Lucas. I give a big sigh and then do what I used to do in grade school, and still do when the occasion calls for it. I walk away.

"Listen, Deena." His voice is sharp and stops me from taking another step.

"What?" I ask without turning around.

"Why is it such a terrible thing for people here to know about you?"

I spin to look at him. My head throbs with puzzlement. "What?"

"We aren't exactly perfect here. We handle our own bad luck, and we've gotten good at handling that of others. You can talk to us, you know."

Bad luck? I am jarred by the two words he has just used to describe my failed engagement. Bad luck? Bad luck? Bad luck means having to stop at three red lights in a row when you're late for work. Bad luck is the Atlanta Braves losing two games at the start of the season. Very bad luck is when both the entree and the salad have raw onions-onions you're allergic to. I am about to turn and walk away again, but then he smiles. Bad luck means having to stop at three red lights in a row when you're late for work. Bad luck is the Atlanta Braves losing two games at the start of the season. Very bad luck is when both the entree and the salad have raw onions-onions you're allergic to. I am about to turn and walk away again, but then he smiles.

"Deena," he says with clarity.

I like the way my name sounds on his lips. Gosh, I didn't know that my name could sound like that.

"We don't bite. We're not the raccoons or bears that live in the woods."

My eyes narrow as I say, "I know that."

"Do you?" He gives me a peculiar grin and returns to his task, adding another drop of glue to the flannel material.

With his attention no longer fully devoted to me, I feel free to go. Yet, even as I walk down the hall, farther and farther away from him, my shoulders straight, my mind is still with him. I want to understand what he's saying, where he's coming from. I want to believe that he would listen to my story of woe about Lucas and show enough empathy for me to fill all my new stainless-steel cake pans. I want to open up and tell him.

At my car, the realization hits me that he cleverly kept from telling me how he knew that I'd been engaged. He gave away none of his own secrets. Yet he wants me to trust him?

The truth is, I am afraid to find out whether these people bite or not. I know this about myself, and yet I cannot seem to change it. I have already been hurt enough.

I get into my Jeep and gun the engine. I will not be putty in Zack's basketball-playing hands.

twenty-five.

At Southern Treats, a little coffee shop beside the railroad tracks, I meet the elderly owner, who introduces herself as Mrs. Dixie. She is dressed in black with a string of milky pearls swaying from her narrow neck.

I have been to Heaven's Railway, the bookstore, and Yum Yum, the Chinese restaurant, to ask if I may display a few of my brochures. The employees behind the counters at both places said the exact same thing: "I don't think that would be a problem." Then they took a dozen brochures, smiled, and continued to wait on customers. I hoped my brochures ended up somewhere where customers could see them, but I did suspect that they very well could end up in the trash bin behind each location.

Mrs. Dixie holds one of the Southern Treats menus toward me until she realizes that I'm not there for coffee and pie. Standing at the front entrance of the store by windows framed in pecan-colored curtains, she opens my cake brochure. She studies it as I watch three patrons inside the tiny shop sip on cappuccino in delicate white cups.

Adjusting her glasses, she looks me over. "So you make cakes?"

"Yes." I attempt to stand straight.

"That's all?"

"For now," I say.

She flips the brochure over, removes her glasses, then looks at me. "Cakes." She has an impish voice, a cross between the squeal of a piglet and the cry of a calf.

"Yes."

"Do you make pies?"

"No."

"Hmmm." She flips her glasses back on and turns the brochure over once more.

"I mean, I can. I have. I studied at the Atlanta School of San Sebastian."

Apparently, she is not impressed by where I went to school.

So much for Sally's theory that Atlanta is looked upon as the New York City of the South. "Hmmm." She twists her necklace in her fingers. "I like pie."

"Oh, I do, too." I say this using my gushing tone. Immediately, I feel foolish.

"Chocolate." She raises her eyes to look at me. "That's my favorite."