Passionate Pleasures by Bertrice Small

eight until he was sixteen, he had spent his summers at Mohegan Camp for Boys in the Adirondacks. The summer he was seventeen he had accompanied his mother to Europe for three months. His father had joined them in Tuscany in mid-August.
    Timothy Blair had loved his parents. They weren’t at all disappointed when he decided to teach English. And they were proud when he gained the position of assistant headmaster of Kensington Academy. His father hadn’t retired until he was eighty, and he hadn’t died until a year ago. His mother had died three years earlier of bone cancer.
    It was after she died that Tim had moved in to watch over his increasingly frail but still mentally acute father. He had been living previously in a condo he owned. He had, on his father’s advice, sold it and simply put his profit in bank CDs.
    The law firm in which his father had been a named partner saw to the probate of his parents’ will. And there Timothy Blair suddenly found himself, rattling about in a large apartment, stuck in a dead-end job. It didn’t matter to him that he had money in the bank, and would have a helluva lot more when he sold his folks’ apartment. He was bored, and bored was not good. And then one of the lawyers in his dad’s old firm, a man with whom he played squash once a week, told him of a job opening out of the city.
    “My cousin, Joe, and his wife live in this cute small town called Egret Pointe. The principal of their Middle School has to retire. She’s expecting quintuplets. They’re looking for a new principal. Think you might be interested?”
    “Why would you ask?” Tim said.
    “Hey, buddy, you’re bored. I can tell,” Ray Pietro d’Angelo said. “We both know you’ll never be headmaster at Kensington. Your folks are gone. You need a fresh start. Egret Pointe is a nice town. My cousin, Joe, is on the school board. Want me to give him a call?”
    Why not? Timothy Blair had thought to himself. It couldn’t hurt to interview. He didn’t have to take it if they offered. “Sure, go ahead, Ray.”
    “Hey, as my wife would say, what can it hurt?” Ray replied with a grin.
    And so Timothy Blair had driven out to Egret Pointe in late June to interview.
    He had liked the school board. They had liked him. As the assistant headmaster of Kensington Academy he had the experience the school board needed. He was young enough to appeal to the kids and the parents. With a Master’s in school administration and management, and a doctorate in English literature, he had possessed far more qualifications than they could have hoped for, and they offered him the job on the spot. He accepted without hesitation because deep down something told him this was the absolute right thing to do.
    He returned to the city and gave his notice. His headmaster was surprised but understood. He was smart enough to know that he was eventually going to lose Tim Blair. Tim was too smart to be content in an assistant headmaster’s position forever. Good opportunities didn’t come around that often. He wished his former assistant luck. And now here Timothy Blair was, two months later, sitting in the living room of a little house on a street called Wood’s End Way in a town called Egret Pointe.
    Rowdy whined, looking toward the door. “Okay, old boy. You want your walk,” Tim said. Standing up, he went to fetch the dog’s lead, the pooper scooper, and bag. There was still plenty of light as they walked down the street. Neighbors were out watering lawns, sitting on porches.
    “Good evening, Mr. Blair.”
    “Welcome to Egret Pointe, Mr. Blair.”
    “That’s a fine-looking dog, Mr. Blair.”
    Voices called to him as he and Rowdy strolled by. “Thank you,” he replied. “Good evening. Say thank you, Rowdy.” Rowdy tilted his head, his floppy ears cocked, and he barked.
    “Why, isn’t that just the cutest thing?” a woman on a porch said.
    How on earth did they know his name already? Tim wondered. And then he remembered Mrs.