Queen bee and the turk, p.1
Queen Bee and the Turk, page 1
Copyright © 2024 by Daphne MacLeod
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Contents
Dedication
Introduction
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
26. Chapter 26
27. Chapter 27
28. Chapter 28
29. Chapter 29
30. Chapter 30
31. Chapter 31
32. Chapter 32
33. Chapter 33
34. Chapter 34
35. Chapter 35
Pronunciation Guide
Music Titles
Movie Titles
About the Author
Dedications
To my mother who instilled, in all six of her children, the love of reading. We love and miss you.
To my dad that always supported my crazy ideas even the goose in the science fair.
To all the teachers out there just trying to get through the day, it is never too late to chase a dream even one you didn't know you had.
To my friends, both old and new, who listened to my crazy ideas and encouraged me to write them down, I can't tell you how much it means to me that you believed in me and tolerated all my silliness.
To my immediate and extended family…surprise! I wrote a book.
Finally, to my husband. Thank you for sticking by me for the last 25 years. Alaskan girls aren't easy. (Another book idea!)
Oh and…got you back!
Seni seviyorum.
I love you.
A portion of the proceeds of the sale of this book will be donated to the charities below. If you would like to donate directly to these charities please scan the QR codes provided.
Teşekkürler
Thank you.
Introduction
Hello! I just wanted to take a quick moment to explain about the birth of the book you are about to enjoy. I started writing in May of 2022 in reaction to listening to a terrible audiobook in which I naively thought that I could write better. A few other things occurred at the same time but the one that inspired this book, and subsequent books thereafter, was my new addiction to Turkish dramas. Along this journey I realized that writing makes me happy. Really happy. Not only the writing but whole writing community has been so incredibly supportive from online writing support groups to the romance book club at my local independent book store.
Ten years ago, my husband surprised me with the funds to be able to go back to school to earn another teaching credential so I could once again teach. I haven't been able to figure out a way to pay him back then I had the brilliant idea of surprising my husband with the possibility of earning some extra money with my writing to help pay our for our daughter's college. Until the day this book launches, my husband thinks I've been looking for bracelet ideas and reading advance reader copies. In my defense, those tabs were also open on my laptop.
Many people in my life inspired my ideas for the book series as I've been told many time to write what you know. I also wrote who you know. Please understand it is with love and admiration that your essence has found its way into these pages. (please don't be pissed)
I hope you enjoy Beatrice and Ihsan's story. If you would like to support my efforts to continue their story, please consider leaving a review on any platform you'd like. I hope you had just as much fun reading this book as I had writing it.
All this to say, when you feel inspired and the universe gives you opportunities, SAY EVET! (that's "yes" in Turkish)
If you'd like receive my newsletter and keep up to date on future releases, visit www.daphnemacleodauthor.com.
Content Warning – This book refers to issues of school violence, PTSD, and child abuse.
Chapter 1
BEATRICE FREDRICKS
“Three strikes, Matthew, I’m done. I’ve struck out on life.”
The path in the space between my couch and the coffee table has become the stage for my command performance.
“Hold on. What are you talking about? You started in the middle of the second scene, sweetie,” Matthew replies from the square on the laptop screen. Living in Hollywood has him using movie set vocabulary. “Start from the top.”
“Strike one: my mom doesn’t know me. When I visit, she panics as if I’m an intruder in her room. She’s barely recognizable. It’s more painful to be with her than without her.” I turn sharply at the end of my path to emphasize the points on my list. “Strike two: there is no one special holding me here. We both know I’m not dating. Who wants to deal with all of this? I couldn’t ask them to. Oh, but wait. Just when I think that’s enough the universe says, ‘hold my beer, let me show you what I've got.' Which brings me to strike three: I can’t teach here anymore. I can’t walk into the school and pray that I walk out at the end of the day. Did you know the district is calling the hostage standoff ‘the intruder incident’? I can’t look my students in the face and know their lives could depend on me,” I say, finally voicing all my woes for the first time out loud to anyone. This past week resembles a dumpster fire on top of a train wreck covered in hot mess sauce.
“I know something is wrong if you’re making sports references and not movie ones. Have you checked for a fever or rash?” His face gets closer to the screen as if searching for the red skin specks himself.
“Matthew, this is serious,” I say, trying to convince him that this is a life-changing moment.
“Rashes are serious.”
I continue ignoring his attempts to derail me. “My parents traveled the world twice over by the time they were my age and I have been stuck in the fire swamp barely escaping getting burned.”
“There you are, Bee. You were almost unrecognizable. All the panicking and baseball talk. Wait, was it Bull Durham, Moneyball, or Field of Dreams?”
“A League of Their Own,” I answer sheepishly. “But that’s beside the point.”
“Shouldn’t you be talking to Brandon, I’m usually the Schroeder brother you call for gay comic relief.”
He’s right, Brandon would have understood a lot better but these days Brandon is occupied. Very happily occupied. How do I tell Matthew that strike two was actually Brandon without telling him it was Brandon? I could handle my mom and stupid Brandon’s feelings but strike three, that was it.
But when push came to shove, Matthew was always good for help in desperate situations. And this situation felt like the most desperate of all. I haven’t seen him in person since he moved to Los Angeles a year ago to work for a publicist. From the excitement I hear in his voice during our weekly online movie nights, LA has been good for him, and he’s been good for LA. He fits in with the LA scene with his six-foot-two, lean, slightly muscular stature, and his short dark brown hair with the perfect amount of wave that is on its best behavior most days.
“Because you’re on the outside. You already escaped.”
A week ago I spent three hours hunkered down in my classroom calming my frantic students, waiting for the “all clear” without any clue about the emergency. After several texts between my teacher tribe, I was informed a man entered the office with a gun demanding his child be released to him. Immediately, the school nurse ducked into the health office and called 911. The “Mr. Roadrunner is in the building,” announcement initiated the lockdown. It escalated into a hostage situation where the enraged man blocked off exits and corralled the front office staff. With the blares of sirens and emergency vehicles racing down the street echoing in my ears, I finally decided it’s time to throw in the towel. No amount of training prepares you for the real thing. Three hours is a lot of time to think about all the decisions you’ve made in your life. It’s like riding a hobby horse for years and then they throw you on the back of a thoroughbred and smack it on the ass. So here I am, asking my dearest friend to help me plan my escape.
“Matthew, I need to leave. I can’t think about my life a lesson at a time anymore. Hell, I need to have a life. I need to change…everything.” I couldn’t stop the desperation in my voice. At least I stopped short of whining.
“Woah, Bee. Inhale, sweetie. We got this. I tell people all day long what they should do, and I can do this for you, too,” he takes a minute to think. The outline of his lean, muscled arms break into frame as he runs his fingers through the blonde spot above his ear. A not-so-subtle reminder of the beauty in imperfection.
“What is anchoring you there? Is there anything in San Antonio that you can’t find somewhere else.”
His plain brown eyes gleam of ‘up
I look around my home for any clues to answer his question. The macrame plant hangers that I made with my class and my childhood pictures hanging there since I was little are not keeping me from leaving. This was my childhood home, but this was my mom’s house. This was her life, not mine.
“My mom’s house.”
“You can always live somewhere else. Would you be willing to sell it?” Matthew replies.
Mom won’t ever be returning and I don’t have the time or know how or really the desire to make major changes in the house. It’s filled with her memories and I’m just the caretaker of them. The easiest and most dramatic change would be to scrap it and start from scratch.
“I would.”
“Is there anything else?”
“Changing everything includes teaching. That is not my path anymore. I have options, right?” I plead.
“Of course. I just need to know your parameters,” he says.
Matthew has always loved using me as a project. He does everything in his power to get me out of the house, out of my head and out of my comfort zone. Sometimes, he was actually successful; dragging me to college parties where I became the drink cup monitor or the potted plant human support person.
“What is your money situation? Do you have savings?”
“I’m a SINK, single income, no kids. So, I’m better off than most.”
“We can work with that,” he says with hope and confidence in his voice. “If you are serious, you need to take the first step. You need to resign.”
A giant gulp involuntarily drains down my throat. That is the r-word.
“I could take a sabbatical,” I say, losing confidence in my earlier convictions.
“Stop! You are not giving yourself an out. You just made a big deal about retiring. You even made sports references for God’s sake. You can’t give yourself a safety net. You are at the contemplation stage of change. It’s time for action. Look at that pit and have no idea if there is a net at the bottom. Be divergent or whatever.”
He is speaking my love language with the movie reference. Calling Matthew was the right move. Something must have stuck during the three semesters he spent as a psychology major.
“Resigning not retiring. I’ve only been in the system six years. But you’re right. Suck it up because there is no crying in baseball!” I shout, channeling my inner Jimmy Dugan.
After saying our goodbyes, I push Matthew’s fading face down to the keyboard, walk into my bedroom, stand with my back toward my bed and fall into the covers à la nineties teen movie style, blindly onto the mattress. My mind wanders to Brandon as it usually does.
Brandon is the founding member of the “‘Bee Team,” as the group lovingly calls it. The Schroeder brothers were both the love and curse of my collegiate life. I met Schroeder brother number one, Brandon, when he knocked on the piano practice room door one evening. I was trying to work out some accompaniments for my side gig, piano accompanist for my former high school choir director, Mr. Davis. It was the first time in my life I really understood what speechless meant. I opened my mouth and my vocal cords were paralyzed.
How was I supposed to communicate with this incredibly good-looking man when we clearly did not live on the same planet?
He towered over me with the same two inches over six feet as Matthew, his younger brother. With floppy, dark, curly hair, a smooth strong jaw, piercing blue eyes and an almost overly buff body of a rugby player, his casual friendliness and grit he showed to learn the piano endeared him to me. He did not just want to pass the elective class he needed for his degree, he really wanted to play. In most cases, I would have dismissed him but his magic charm seeped into my blood and I was defenseless. It also rubbed my funny bone to watch his giant body sitting over the piano keys and watching them best him. Besides the brown hair, he looked remarkably like the piano player from the "Peanuts" cartoon. The Schroeder name was just a perfect coincidence until Matthew called me Lucy and then it hit too close to home.
The University of San Antonio music building never saw someone so enthralled as Brandon was the day I brought him into the recital hall. His eyes grew to the size of teacup saucers and he shushed me as if he was an old grandma in church. I understood his reverence as the wood acoustic paneling framed the grand floor to ceiling Casavent Fréres organ. It was my church.
Matthew was the free gift with purchase. A gift, as they say, that keeps on giving even into post graduate adulthood. Schroeder brother number two invaded my social circle when I spotted him wearing Elton John glasses at Brandon’s class recital, not for attention, but to distract Brandon from a rare case of stage fright. Little did I know that after that recital, Brandon wasn’t finished with me. To my surprise, we cultivated a friendship during those lessons. We enjoyed each other’s sense of humor, taste in classic movies and retro music. If I had all the typical physical attributes that attracted the opposite sex, I like to think that it could have been more. But my thickness in all the wrong places didn’t allow me such privileges. Instead, I fell in love with Brandon and reveled in what attention I was allowed, friendship.
I couldn’t have asked for better friends my first semester of college. They made this “townie” participate in everything the university had to offer, from the campus freshman scavenger hunt to building floats for the Dîa en la Sombrilla festival during Fiesta San Antonio. Although he said it was to help all the student organizations on campus, I suspect Matthew was adamant we participate because he wanted to ride the float. I swear, any excuse to wear a boa. I didn’t realize how impressionable eighteen was. All over campus, bronze hearts are scattered so passersby can rub them and be granted a miracle. I mapped the path to my classes based on how many hearts I could touch, to increase my chances that Brandon would suddenly realize he’s in love with me and come sprinting across campus and lay a giant breath stealing kiss on me. Alas, I remained still breathing with untouched lips. According to my math, the universe owes me. It can start right now, while I'm stuck at home waiting for the next shoe to fall.
After the decision not to return to school for the six weeks left of the academic year, parents were given a few days where students could return books or gather anything from classrooms they needed. It would take a lot more time than six weeks to rebuild the sense of safety in that building. Familes were offered to enroll their children in other schools or attend online classes. Either way, it felt weird. The librarian finally gave up empty book boxes she hoarded like a psycho hobbit so I could bring home the things that I truly valued: letters from students, picture frames with images of fun spirit days with my teacher besties and a triangular prism desk decoration of the motto “You Got This” in a skinny font that I got from a Secret Santa. I stared at it a moment and placed it in the box in between a couple of half dead plants that hadn’t been watered since the lockdown.
Because of the small amount of stuff I was packing into my car, none of my comrades knew I was leaving for more than just the summer. I left all the classroom supplies I had ever purchased or recycled in my room and decorations I used to inspire slash/annoy my students on the walls. As I turned to say my farewells to my classroom, the sadness I thought I would feel turned to excitement with a giant dollop of apprehension.
Most teachers are still in shock and walk around with tunnel vision just to cope. There is an unspoken understanding that we just aren’t ready. For anything. The feeling of dread is almost physically measurable throughout the buildings. Friends that would normally greet each other with smiles and a witty comment, cast their eyes down and avoid conversation.
