Kari pushed the shopping cart across the Tops parking lot and clicked the key remote to open her SUV. One good thing about her sometimes-erratic hours at the clinic was that she often had time during the day for errands, like grocery shopping, which left her evenings free to be with the kids.
“Hey, Kari.”
Kari glanced over her shoulder. Clare Thomas waved from across the parking lot and walked over.
“Hi,” she said as the woman stopped beside her shopping cart.
“I wanted to tell you how glad I was when Myles said you’d given him permission to go to the trivia team meeting with Tanner on Sunday.”
Kari lifted a bag from the cart to hide her anger. She hadn’t done any such thing, and Myles shouldn’t have lied and said she had.
When she’d been called into work Sunday afternoon, Kari had asked Clare if Myles could come over and hang out with Tanner. The girls had been at a friend’s house, and Kari wasn’t sure she trusted Myles not to break his grounding. And he’d managed to do it anyway.
“I hope you didn’t mind Eli driving Myles home. He’s renting a place at the lake and had to go right by your house.”
Eli. So he was behind this. His way of helping was to encourage Myles to do things behind her back? Kari counted to five. She’d deal with him later.
“No, that was fine.” She’d hadn’t told Clare Myles couldn’t go with Tanner.
“I’d better let you go,” Clare said.
“See you.” Kari waved goodbye. She slammed the hatch door of the vehicle shut and climbed in the driver’s seat to head to her next, unplanned stop—the school. More specifically, Eli Evans’s office.
Eli hadn’t been able to get Kari Hazard off his mind all week. And the daily one-on-one with Myles hadn’t helped. He glanced at the teen, his dark head bent over the history book he was reading. While Eli was sure Myles wouldn’t appreciate the observation, he looked a lot like his mother. Granted, a masculine version of his mother.
“All done.” Myles slammed the book shut and started drumming his fingers on the student desk Eli had asked maintenance to move into his office. The teen’s dark-lashed eyes—his mother’s eyes—fixed on the clock slowly ticking away the hour remaining in the school day.
“Stop.” Eli shot Myles The Look, the one he had honed training airmen at Maxwell Air Force Base.
The teen’s fingers stilled.
“Good. I won’t have to make you drop and give me 20.”
“You can’t do that.” Myles’s voice wasn’t anywhere near as strong as his words.
“Try me.” The teen was right. In the months since he’d returned to Paradox Lake, Eli had found—often, the hard way—that the mindset and actions that had served him well in the Air Force didn’t always translate well to civilian life.
The guidance office door swung open, and Kari strode in. “Myles, go to the main office and wait for me.”
Despite the menace in his mother’s voice, Myles turned to Eli for confirmation before he left.
Kari pinched her lips together. Eli could sympathize with her frustration, but she should have established control over her son long before he hit high school.
Kari placed her hands palms down on the other side of his desk and leaned across. “Where do you get off undermining my authority? I didn’t tell him he could go to the trivia team meeting, whatever that is. And I certainly didn’t give you permission to drive him home.”
“Whoa! Please sit and lower your voice. Classes are still in session.”
She sat and grasped her purse in her lap. The flush of her anger accented her cheekbones in an attractive, natural way no amount of makeup, no matter how carefully applied, could have.
Eli had to walk a fine line. Although the teen trivia team—dubbed the 3Ts—had been formed by him and some of his colleagues, it was sponsored by a few community organizations and local churches. Not by the school. “I didn’t intentionally undermine you,” he said. “Mrs. Thomas accepted my offer to drive Myles home. I was dropping off a couple of other kids, too. Since she’d brought Myles, I assumed her okay was enough.”
Kari’s grip on her purse relaxed. “Are you telling me you didn’t mention the team to him on Friday, invite him to the meeting on Sunday?”
“I did tell him about the Paradox Lake 3Ts—that’s our team name—and told him to talk to you about it. I think it could do him a lot of good to get involved. We’re planning to do more than trivia meets.”
Her dark-lashed eyes widened.
“He’s looking for direction, guidance, and I think he could find it with the 3Ts or other organized activities.”
“Guidance I’m not providing him.” She gripped her purse again until her knuckles were white.
That was exactly what he thought, but he knew better as a man and an educator than to say that outright. “We’ve been talking this week, and Myles said all he does is go to school and watch his sisters after school and on weekends when you work. I’m sure—”
“He watches Piper and Mady the two afternoons I’m scheduled in the practice’s office and if there’s a delivery, not every day after school and on weekends.”
“If you’d let me finish, I was going to say I knew Myles was exaggerating. But you see the inconsistency in your work schedule might affect Myles. He needs consistency, time to chill, to hang out with the guys and not be on constant call.”
“Hanging out with the guys, the wrong guys, is what got him in trouble. I’m sure you read all about what he got himself into last school year and the beginning of this year.” She paused and cleared her throat. “Things were going better this semester.”
Until he started talking with me. Eli tented his fingers and rested his chin on his pointer fingers, waiting for her to say it. She’d made him into the enemy. It was the easiest way out, to blame someone else. He’d done it himself. Not that he thought she was intentionally to blame—just a little scattered. Like his mother. But Kari obviously had her son’s best interests at heart.
“Myles ran track this spring,” she said as if to disprove what Eli had said.
“With Tanner Thomas. Myles told me.”
One corner of Kari’s mouth quirked down. “He made the team when he was in seventh grade, but he didn’t run last school year.”
“That’s what I’m saying about hanging out with the guys in an organized activity being good for Myles.”
She pushed a thick black curl from her forehead. “And how many groups, clubs and sports teams did you belong to when you were in high school?”
She had him here. “None after I was booted from the football team junior year for failing grades.” Among other things. “You wouldn’t want to read my school record for the last two years of high school. I would have been a lot better off if I had been involved in something.”
“My son is not you.” She enunciated each word separately.
“No, he’s not. But he may be headed down the same road. It’s my job to help him make better choices than I did. I don’t want to think about where I’d be today if the armed forces hadn’t saved me.”
Kari blanched. “Don’t get any ideas about the military saving Myles. It didn’t save Myles’s father. It killed him.”
His chest tightened. He hadn’t lost a spouse, but he’d lost close friends in the Middle East, including his former fiancée. “I understand how you might feel like that.”
Her frown told him she didn’t believe him. The service hadn’t hardened him so much he couldn’t feel her pain. He held her gaze with his for a moment. No way could he miss the spark of anger in her dark-brown eyes.
“Okay,” he conceded. “I may not fully understand, but I still have to do what I believe is best for Myles. It’s my job.”
The bell signaling the end of the school day rang and stopped Kari from verbally drawing her line between Eli’s job as guidance counselor and her job as Myles’s mother. Right now, she couldn’t trust herself not to say things she might regret later. How could he understand? Sure, he’d served his country, like John, and most likely he’d seen comrades fall. But had he lost a spouse? Did he have children? The lack of any family photos in his office said no.
She rose. “I should go. I want to catch the girls before they get on the bus so they can ride home with Myles and me.”
“I’ll call their teachers.”
Kari gave Eli the girls’ teachers’ names reluctantly. It was peevish on her part. But he was right. Calling the teachers would be a better way of catching Piper and Mady.
Eli replaced the phone receiver. “Sorry. Their classes have been dismissed.”
“Thanks. I have time to get Myles and be home before the bus drops the girls off.”
“I’ll walk you to the office.”
Kari bit her tongue to stop herself from saying the first thing that had come to mind, that she knew her way to the office. Eli was being polite. And she had to admit he seemed to be doing what he thought was best for her son. She just didn’t agree with him.
He opened the door to the office.
“Hello, Kari, Eli.” Thelma Woods’s voice softened on his name. “If you’re looking for Myles, he left with Liam Russell and one of the other seniors after the final bell.”
Kari tensed. If Eli needed another example of her lack of control over her defiant son, Myles had provided it.
“He was supposed to wait here for his mother.” Eli spoke before she could, his voice low and curt.
Thelma gave Eli a little shrug. “He said you told him to wait here until school was over.”
“I’d better go while I still have time to get home before the kids,” Kari said.
“Call me if you need to. Any time,” Eli said.
Kari smiled and ignored Thelma’s raised eyebrow. The woman had an overactive imagination when it came to the personal lives of the school staff. Kari didn’t need her speculating that anything was going on between her and Eli except Myles.
Kari hurried down the hall, passing the high school sports trophy case on her way to the main door. She hadn’t been into sports much in high school, except for intramural bowling. But her late husband had been co-captain of his high school wrestling team and a state champion his senior year. Eli might be right about encouraging Myles to join more things.
Kari pulled into her driveway seconds ahead of the school bus. She stepped from her SUV and waited while the bus doors opened.
“Mommy!” Seven-year-old Mady hopped down and skipped over to her while Piper followed at a more dignified nine-year-old pace. Kari kept her gaze on the door. It closed. and the bus engine roared to life, leaving a cloud of diesel fumes as it pulled away.
“Mommy,” Mady repeated. “I got 100 on my spelling test. Can we have ice cream to celebrate?”
“After supper.”
The little girl’s smile dimmed.
“With whipped cream and sprinkles,” Kari added. No need to take her bad day out on the girls.
“All right!” Mady raced off to the house.
“Myles wasn’t on the bus,” Piper said before Kari could ask. “I saw him walk by with Liam, my friend Katy’s brother. He used to come over when you were working. He hasn’t in a while, not since you told Myles he couldn’t have anyone over when you’re at work. He knows I’ll tell on him.”
Leave it to Piper to have all the details and to appoint herself to police Myles. She looked down at her daughter. While Piper reporting on him had helped stop Myles from disobeying the house rules, she shouldn’t put the little girl in that position.
“Come on, Mom.” Piper hitched her backpack up on her shoulder and headed into the house.
After a final glance at the fading form of the school bus, Kari followed.
“Here you go.” Kari handed Mady and Piper dishes of ice cream with sprinkles and whipped cream. “As soon as you finish, right to your homework.”
Kari smiled at the girls’ chatter as she crossed the room to load the dishwasher. It was Myles’s job. The girls set and cleared the table, and he loaded the dishwasher. But, after the blow-up they’d had when he’d arrived home, she’d needed him out of her sight for a while. So she’d sent him up to his room to do homework after supper—without his cell phone.
“Mom, the phone,” Piper said.
Kari’s gaze darted to Myles’s phone on the counter before she realized the faint ring was the house phone, not his cell phone, nor hers. So it probably wasn’t one of the midwives from the clinic in need of a nurse for a birth. She released a sigh of relief. She was on call tonight but leaving the kids and going to assist with a delivery was the last thing she wanted to do.
Kari followed the faint ringing into the living room. Her pulse quickened. Could Eli be calling to check whether Myles made it home? The school had the home number. But why would he call? More, why would she want him to call? She didn’t even like the man.
When she reached the foot of the stairs, the ringing stopped, and she heard the low rumble of Myles’s voice. She froze. It startled her how much he sounded like John. Then anger thawed her immobility. Myles had the phone. Fists clenched, she looked up the stairwell with resignation. She couldn’t let him get away with this. Maybe Eli had been right, that Myles needed a stronger hand than hers. No! She’d handle Myles as she’d handled 100 other troubles when John was deployed…now that he was gone.
Kari dragged herself up the stairs to the inevitable confrontation. Beside her, tail wagging, their golden retriever, Scooby, whined in sympathy.
“Yes, boy, I couldn’t agree more.”