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it.
        Hilary
had realized quickly that Tresa was developing a schoolgirl crush on her
husband. It wasn't the first time. Women young and old were drawn to Mark, but
he'd never shown any inclination to cheat. She hadn't seen Tresa's emotions as
a threat, because she knew the girl too well and didn't believe Tresa would
ever try to act on her feelings. Her affection for Tresa made her forget her
first rule of teenagers, which was that they weren't girls growing up to be
women; they were women in girl's clothes. She also never expected that Tresa's
fantasies alone could get her husband into trouble.
        Then
Tresa's mother Delia found her daughter's diary.
        When
Tresa wasn't dancing, she was writing. Mark was her English and art teacher.
He'd encouraged her to write short fiction, and he and Hilary had both read
several of her stories, in which she'd created a teenage detective who was a
lot like herself. What neither of them realized was that Tresa had been writing
other stories too. On her computer, she'd invented an imaginary diary in which
she related the details of her passionate sexual affair with her teacher. It
was erotic and explicit. She described their trysts, how he touched her, how
her body responded, the things he told her, the things she told him.
        It
was Tresa's sexual awakening on the pages of her diary, and it was convincing
enough to be real. When Delia Fischer found it on Tresa's computer, she leaped
to the obvious conclusion: Mark Bradley was having sex with her
seventeen-year-old daughter.
        Delia
confronted Tresa, but the girl's evasive denial persuaded her mother that Tresa
was covering up the truth of the affair. She didn't confront Mark about their
relationship; instead, she went directly to the principal, the school board,
the police, and the newspapers. Faced with allegations of criminal sexual
misconduct, Mark's own denials meant nothing. No one believed him. The intimate
detail in the diary spoke for itself. The only thing that saved him from
prosecution and jail was Tresa's stubborn insistence that the diary was a
fantasy, that there had never been any sexual relationship between herself and
Mark. Without her testimony, there was no case to bring to court.
        Even
so, Tresa's and Mark's denials didn't change many minds in Door County about
what had really happened between them. When Tresa talked about Mark, everyone
who listened to her could tell that she was in love with him. Her face glowed
when she talked about him. To her mother, and to the school authorities, that
meant she was protecting him.
        Mark
escaped without criminal charges, but the principal, teachers, and parents of
Fish Creek High School weren't about to leave him in front of a classroom. As a
second-year teacher, without tenure, he had essentially no rights under the
union contract. At the end of the year, he got what he knew was coming. The ax
fell. The nominal excuse was budget cuts, but everyone on the peninsula knew
the real reason. They all knew what kind of man Mark Bradley was, and no one
was going to let him take advantage of another teenage girl.
        In
the wake of Mark's dismissal, Hilary had wanted to quit, too, hut that would
have left them with no income at all. She also didn't want to give anyone at
the school the satisfaction of seeing them turn tail and run, as if somehow
that would justify the hostility towards them, like an admission of guilt. She
stayed. But since that time, it had been a long year of being shunned. She was
nearing the end of her third year in the district, and she knew her own tenure
decision would come down soon. Even if they granted her tenure, she and Mark
were struggling with the question of whether they wanted to leave. He had no
job prospects. She was tired of living under constant suspicion.
        What
kept them where they were was the fact that they loved their home on Washington
Island. They loved Door County. They'd moved from