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do something extra special.”
    â€œWe could play eraser tag,” Colleen Murphy suggested.
    â€œPerhaps.” Ellen sighed. The last time they’d played eraser tag in the classroom, they’d tipped over a desk and Annie Benson had skinned her knee. It would be safer to read them a Dr. Seuss book, if Billy would shut up long enough to listen. “All right now, is everyone settled?”
    Thirty-one heads nodded in unison and Ellen smiled. They were good kids, but a seven-hour school day was much too long without the regular breaks for recess. Actually, buttoning and snapping and zipping up thirty-one sets of winter clothes was a trial in itself. They waddled out onto the playground like little stuffed bundles for ten minutes, barely mobile until the bell rang and she had to go through the whole process again in reverse. The alternative was trying to have recess in the classroom without breaking either the furniture or their necks.
    â€œBe good for Mrs. Heino now.” Ellen turned to the lunchroom monitor, an elderly woman with a hearing problem. When Ellen first started at Garfield Elementary, she’d asked the principal whether Mrs. Heino’s hearing loss had occurred before or after she’d taken the job as lunchroom monitor. But Mr. Eicht had no sense of humor, nor did the rest of his staff. Ellen wondered whether it had something to do with enduring the endless Minnesota winters year after year.
    â€œMrs. Heino?” Ellen raised her voice. “You can send Billy to get me in the lounge when everyone’s through eating.”
    Mrs. Heino nodded and Ellen beat a hasty retreat. She had ten minutes, perhaps fifteen if Mary Christine Fanger dawdled over her food.
    When the current year had opened, Ellen had been delighted to find that the first and the sixth grades had common lunch periods. That meant she’d see Rob Applegate in the teachers’ lounge every day. Since he was the only male teacher, and single, and she was the only female teacher under forty, it seemed natural that eventually they’d get together.
    Twenty-eight years old, Ellen hadn’t been out on a date since her junior year in college, when her roommate’s fiancé had buttonholed one of his friends to take her to their engagement party. Ellen’s escort had danced with her dutifully, but the moment the party was over he’d dropped her off at her dorm and she’d never heard from him again. Men just didn’t seem to be interested in tall, lanky women with glasses. Of course, she had plenty of men friends. She helped them write their term papers and study for their exams, but they’d never shown any signs of wanting a closer relationship.
    Rob Applegate was different. A thirty-six-year-old bachelor who lived in an apartment over his mother’s garage, he was as tall as she was, and almost as skinny. Alma Jacobson, who taught third grade and knew everything about everyone in Thief River Falls, said he didn’t have a girlfriend, but that his mother was hoping he’d get married before she was too old to enjoy her grandchildren. And he seemed to like Ellen, always stopping by her room to ask how someone’s younger brother or sister was doing.
    One day over coffee in the teachers’ lounge, Rob had mentioned that he didn’t like to see women in slacks. Ellen had never worn them to school again. And when he’d said that his favorite color was aqua blue, she’d gone right out and bought an aqua-blue sweater even though she hated the color. She’d carried flowers to his mother when Mrs. Applegate had gone into the hospital for gallbladder surgery, the card signed by the whole staff so it wouldn’t look obvious. And she’d roused herself out of bed to drive to the Lutheran Church every Sunday because his brother was the minister. She’d even volunteered to teach a Sunday school class, although the last thing she wanted was to face more children on