Got Your Number

a time. Ironic, considering she hadn't seen a member of her own family in...hmm. A long while. In fact, some might look at her involvement with the Rescue relocation program and label her a fake. Or worse, a fake fighting an unwinnable battle.
    Some things just can't be fixed, Roxann, no matter how much glue you put on 'em.
    At the age of eight, holding the teacup her mother had given her, now broken into a dozen pieces, she'd tearfully fended off her father's cynicism with an entire jar of Elmer's paste and a roll of Scotch tape. But lately she'd begun to wonder if she were fooling herself. After all, she hadn't been able to drink out of that cup again.
    A lifetime ago—sixth grade, to be precise—a school counselor had asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. "A judge," Roxann had answered without hesitation. Wearing a black robe and wielding a wooden mallet to protect the good people from the bad people had seemed like the most perfect job imaginable. But somewhere between puberty and maturity, she'd decided to bypass the flawed legal system and put her summa cum laude political-science degree to no good use whatsoever by driving around the deep South, whisking fleeing women and their children to their next checkpoint.
    No black robe, no red cape, no laser-firing gold-plated bracelets. Just a woman, a van, and a suitcase full of wigs. This is your life, Roxann Beadleman! Applause, applause. Not exactly what she'd had in mind in middle school.
    So what am I doing here?
    Everything in her body quieted, like the stillness after an echo, but no response materialized. She angled the rearview mirror and studied herself—wide-eyed, pale, and still sporting rebel hair. The last time she'd worn her hair long was 1980, b.d . (before divorce). Before her father's lawyer had wrangled her away from her mother. The day of the custody judgment, she'd cut a lock of her long hair to give to her mother, and the gap in the dark mane her father adored struck her as so wickedly satisfying, she'd simply kept whacking. Her parents had been appropriately horrified, and she'd kept her hair short ever since. As if she had something to prove—then and now.
    Roxann bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, attributing her bout of self-doubt to the heat and to the newspaper article and to being fired. What she needed was time to think. She pointed Goldie in the direction of the Y. Maybe a cathartic run on the track would help her work through the mess that had become her life while she was otherwise occupied.
    In college, her plans had seemed so simple and so right. Devote her time to a worthwhile cause, make enough money to get by, share her life with a righteous man...then again, in college, there had been Carl.
    Dr. Carl Seger, professor of theology. She hadn't seen him since graduation, but over the years his face had had a way of floating into her mind when she needed to remember that goodness did exist. He was uppermost in her mind because he'd left a message on her machine a few weeks ago—a shock. Her foolish heart had fluttered, then zoomed back to earth when he explained in a businesslike voice that he was calling because her name had come up during an alumni board discussion about this year's recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award. But they didn't want to draw undue attention to her if it would somehow compromise the program or her anonymity. Then his voice had changed—he had his own selfish reasons for wanting her to come back to the Notre Dame campus to accept the award during Homecoming week. He...missed her.
    She'd left the message on her recorder for days and replayed it, oh, about two dozen times. But in the end, she hadn't returned the call—as much as she yearned to see him again, she couldn't very well do it under the guise of accepting an award that she didn't deserve, even if she was only one of two people who knew why.
    Dr. Carl...a renaissance man. Handsome. Wise. Noble. And in the end, his nobility meant they couldn't be together. Deep down she knew she'd always measured the men in her life and, to some extent, her own behavior, up to Carl, the moral compass. And suddenly, sadly, she remembered— Carl was her "type."
    She offered polite nods to familiar faces as she walked through the gym, but stopped short of engaging in conversation. With her mobile lifestyle, she usually didn't go out of her way to form friendships—girlfriends were complicated, and goodbyes were messy. A blast of laughter from