chapter SIX
AT THE SOUND OF THE BELL over the door ringing, Molly swiveled in her seat. She was ridiculously nervous. The new arrival was Richard Ward himself, tall, imposingly handsome, glancing around the sandwich shop until he spotted her at the table in the back corner. And, damn it, there was that loose-hipped walk that always stirred something in her.
She’d been the one to suggest they meet for lunch, completely separate from their kids. He hadn’t argued, hadn’t asked why.
She half rose when he reached the table, then sank back down. She wasn’t in the office. “The waitress left you a menu,” she said inanely.
He nodded and pulled out a chair next to her, not the one across the table. Their knees might bump. They would bump. He took up way more than his fair share of space, and that, too, unsettled Molly. She was a big enough woman; she was taller than most men with whom she dealt.
Oh, get a grip! You’re not an adolescent. But she was feeling a lot like one right now.
“Mr. Ward, thank you for coming,” she said with more composure. This is Trevor’s father. Trevor’s father, Trevor’s father. She’d chant it as many times as she had to. This was not a date.
A faint smile touched his mouth. “Don’t you think we’re past Mister and Missus?”
“Richard,” she amended.
He chose quickly from the menu and they both gave their orders. Then he regarded her gravely. “Has Caitlyn—no, Trevor says she prefers Cait—has she made a decision? Or are you wanting to tell me to butt out?”
“I’d have suggested coffee instead of lunch if I were going to do that.”
Now he outright grinned, and her heart damn near stopped. “Not option B, then.”
“Or A.” Molly looked down at her place setting. “Partly I’m back to apologizing—”
“No. Let’s not get mired there.”
He was being more generous than she deserved. She swallowed and met those dark eyes again. “Okay. Thanks. Really I only wanted to talk. Listen to you, since I didn’t the other night.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
Molly shook her head. “Cait and I agreed not to for now. She swears she won’t tell even her best friend. If she decides to get an abortion, she could move on more easily if no one knows but you, me and Trevor.” She paused. “Assuming Trevor will keep it quiet?”
“I think I can vouch for him.” He studied her for a moment. “He says now Cait won’t talk to him.”
She made a helpless gesture. “She’s hurt, scared, confused.... Do you blame her?”
“No. Neither does he. He said he guessed it was justice, after the way he dodged her.”
“Really?” she said, surprised. “That sounds…”
“Almost mature?”
Molly laughed. “I was trying to think of a really tactful way to say it.”
He smiled, too, mouth and eyes both. “Surely as a high school administrator, you must have a thesaurus worth of euphemisms at the tip of your tongue.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you.”
Their drinks came. Richard waited until the waitress was out of earshot. “Will you tell me about you and Cait? I asked Trevor if you were churchgoers, for example, and he had no idea. Is Cait’s father in the picture? Trevor thought you were divorced.”
Her first uneasy thought was, why does he want to know about me? Was there any chance some of this chemistry she felt went both ways?
Get a grip, she told herself again. Remember the way he stared at you that day when he had to wait for you to park. Inimical. Remember? If they’d been adversaries then, they were more so now.
“I am divorced, and have been since Cait was a little girl. She was four when her dad and I separated and five when the divorce went through. She gets birthday and Christmas checks from him, and that’s about it. He started out with more enthusiasm. You know, the usual every other weekend thing, but that became once a month, then once every few months, and then…” She shrugged. “Church? We go, but not as faithfully as we should. I didn’t grow up in a church. I started when she was little, thinking Sunday school was one of the things parents did.”
“Even though yours didn’t?”
He was sharp, she had to give him that. “I didn’t have a father. Don’t remember my mother well. She was killed in a car accident when I was seven. I grew up in foster homes after that. I guess you’d have to say I learned parenting from the book. Literally.” She was trying hard to make it light, almost if not quite a joke. “I have quite a library of Now Your Child is Eight, Now She’s Eleven books. Either I skipped a few chapters in the Now She’s Fifteen one or the author left out some essentials.”
The kindness in his eyes was almost unbearable. She had to look away from it. He waited a minute before responding. “When something like this happens, it makes you go back and rethink everything you’ve ever done, doesn’t it? Trevor surprised me by asking some things about my parents, so I guess he’s doing the same thing. You can’t help thinking the ‘why’ of this isn’t an accident. It can’t be as simple as a horny teenage boy and a girl with a crush on him. There has to be something bigger. Something we didn’t teach them. Some cosmic reason we didn’t.”
“Someone didn’t teach Trevor to use a condom,” she said sharply, then closed her eyes tight in shame. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I swore I wouldn’t do this.”
“Hey.” His big hand covered hers on the table and squeezed before releasing her. “I set myself up for that one.”
She opened her eyes to see that he was laughing, and for some reason she did, too. “The real lesson is, teenagers do stupid things. With the best will in the world, we can’t stupid-proof them,” she said at last, feeling a thousand times better.
“No, we can’t,” he said, wryly enough to remind her that he’d gotten his own girlfriend pregnant when he was a senior in high school.
She opened her mouth to say, yet again, I’m sorry, but closed it.
“I keep thinking, what if I hadn’t knocked over the garbage. What would Cait have done? Would she have told me?”
“What were her options?”
Their lunches arrived, and they both pretended enthusiasm. He reached for the ketchup, making her aware of the flex of muscles beneath the crisply ironed shirt. And, oh, damn, his knee did slide against hers.
Molly angled her legs away. “I don’t know. Go to a clinic, I guess. Find a way to get an abortion without telling me? Run away from home?” she said when they were alone again.
“How likely is that?”
“Not likely,” she said. “We were good friends until she fell head over heels for your son and decided I was the enemy because I wasn’t really happy about her boyfriend.”
“Understandably unhappy.”
He steered her skillfully back to telling him about her life. No, she admitted, there was no man around, no pseudo-dad Cait might have turned to. She didn’t say, I can’t remember the last time I went on a date. Never mind the last time she’d slept with a man. How did single mothers do that on any kind of regular basis? Especially without any loving extended family to serve as babysitters and backup? And, heck, it was harder now than when Cait was little. How did she justify having a sex life when she was steering her daughter to not have one? She did admit she’d been only twenty-one when Cait was born.
“Yes, she was an accident. I was a junior in college, and almost as blown away when I realized I was pregnant as Cait is now.” For the first time she thought about the fact that she and Richard had both experienced much of what their kids were now. It seemed like an especially cruel slap from fate.
“How did you handle it?” Richard asked. He’d been eating and listening, somehow keeping her talking with a question here and there. “I gather you did marry her father.”
“Yes. And although it was really hard, I managed to stay in school. I went straight on to grad school, too. That was when…” Whoa. She waved a hand. “Irrelevant. The one thing I can say is, once Cait was born I never once regretted her.”
“No, I felt that way about Trevor, too.” His mouth quirked. “Until the past couple of months. I can’t deny there’ve been a few moments of ‘What the hell did I do?’”
Molly laughed, as he’d no doubt intended. “What about you?” she said. “I take it your marriage didn’t last.”
“Not forever. We stuck it out for six years.” He was quiet for a moment, a frown gathering his dark brows together. He wasn’t looking at her, and she suspected he was seeing another time and place. “I have a daughter, too. Brianna. We call her Bree most of the time. She’s still with her mother.”
“How old?”
“Fourteen. I was appalled when I first realized Trev had hooked up with your daughter because I’m thinking, Wait. Don’t you realize she’s barely older than your sister?”
“You sound like you miss her.”
“Yeah.” He grimaced. “Truth is, sometimes I feel like I hardly know her. I’ve had her for occasional summers, a few weeks over the holidays....” He shrugged. “You know how it is. The older she’s gotten, the more of a mystery to me she is.”
Molly found herself wanting to touch him. It was probably just as well that his hand wasn’t lying there conveniently close. “I suspect most fathers feel that way when their daughters became teenagers,” she said gently.
His eyes met hers finally. The skin was crinkled at the corners. A smile that hadn’t reached his mouth. “You’re probably right. The sad part is, I thought I did know my son. Turns out I was wrong.”
“Maybe you did. Maybe he’s not the same person he was a year ago, or whenever you last spent time together. Or maybe the person he was is only submerged.”
“Submerged.” He shook his head. “How do you change that fast?” He seemed to be appealing to her, but didn’t wait for an answer, even assuming she’d had one. “No, it’s been even quicker than that. I was thinking back the other night. I must have talked to him for an hour toward the end of July. I heard all about his job—he worked at a Boys & Girls Club, supervising kids, coaching. Yeah.” He grinned ruefully. “Marvel at the idea, I don’t blame you. But that’s the kind of kid he was. Until…”
“Until what?”
“I have no idea. He won’t talk about it.”
They talked about that, too. He was easy to talk to, she couldn’t help thinking, and he seemed to be relaxing with her, too.
He told her that his ex-wife had remarried twice now, and that she’d separated from husband number three in August. That might or might not be related to Trevor’s current problems. “He never seemed that attached to the guy. Davis.” He said the name carefully, as if it left a taste in his mouth, but Molly couldn’t tell what kind. He wasn’t jealous, was he?
“Did Trevor have a girlfriend?” she asked. Oh, she hated to mention this, but… “Is there any chance he got her in trouble, too? That he was…I don’t know, running from it?”
Richard stared at her. “God. That’s an ugly thought.” But almost immediately, he was shaking his head. “That doesn’t make sense. No, he didn’t have a girlfriend, or, at least, not anyone serious. There was someone, but her dad got transferred to Houston and they moved the previous summer. And if he’d gotten another girl pregnant, surely he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave off the condom the next time he got in a girl’s…” He stopped, cleared his throat. “Sorry.”
She, who had winced at the words that almost came out of his mouth, gave what was probably a sickly smile. “Teenagers are stupid, remember?”
“Yeah, and he was clearly bewildered by the idea that pulling out wasn’t an adequate and recommended form of birth control.”
Silly to become self-conscious, but she did. She could talk about pregnancy with this man, but change the topic to sex—yes, the act itself—and she was instantly flustered. So aware of him, all man.
“Yes, he was. I haven’t asked Cait yet if she was fine with it at the time, too.”
The way he watched her was almost enough to have her squirming in her seat. She’d never seen eyes of such a dark brown—except his son’s. His hair was as dark, thick, wavy enough to keep it looking disheveled most of the time. With that lean face and stark cheekbones, he had the fallen angel look. Except she associated that with men who exuded sin, and somehow he didn’t. If she had to guess, it would be that Richard Ward had spent a lifetime disciplining himself.
“What about you?” she asked on impulse. “You haven’t mentioned a wife. Lucky woman, to have to put up with Trevor’s cheerful attitude.”
“No wife. I’ve never been sure…” He stopped himself, expression closing down. Yes, definitely disciplined. “If nothing else, I didn’t want the kids to see both parents with revolving spousal doors. They’ve adjusted with their mother. I figured, enough is enough.”
Did that mean he never intended to remarry? She didn’t know why that shocked her, as she wasn’t exactly in the market for a second husband, but…she wouldn’t rule it out, if she met someone. The right someone.
Tempted to roll her eyes like a teenager, she thought, Uh-huh. Sure. What you mean is, a completely trustworthy someone. Her standards this time around would be so exacting, she couldn’t imagine finding him.
And, oh, yeah, he couldn’t be someone wanting to start a family.
Richard Ward wouldn’t be, it occurred to her. He had two kids.
“You’re going to live alone, all so your kids don’t have to get to know a new stepmother?” Molly congratulated herself on her tone, casual, possibly a little amused.
“Let’s just say I’ve never gotten to the point of seriously considering it,” he said slowly, those dark espresso eyes on her face.
What was he thinking?
“So, do we have a timeline?”
“A what?”
“For a decision. You didn’t say how far along your daughter is.”
“Oh.” That kind. “She’s seven weeks now. So yes. Obviously, an abortion has to happen in the next few weeks.”
“Surely the sooner the better.”
“Yes.” She bent forward, her stomach cramping. How strange. Painful cramps had once been a way of life for her. Menstrual cramps, but stress-related stomach ones, too. Divorce had miraculously cured the second.
“Trevor wanted to know why the decision was Cait’s. Why isn’t it his.” Temper flooded her, but he shook his head. “I told him because it’s her body. That said…I ask that you think about him, too. He’s not ready to be a father.”
She was still sizzling. “I doubt you were, either. You need to stop pushing. I said I’d talk to you, not give you a vote.”
His eyes narrowed. “I seem to remember a promise that you’d listen to me.”
Oh, hell. “I’ve listened.”
“Have you?” He pulled out his wallet and tossed some bills on the table. “Seems to me that mostly you talked and I listened.” Their gazes met. “I’ve left enough to take care of the bill.”
And he walked out on her again.
Which she completely deserved, Molly admitted. What is wrong with me?
Excellent question.
* * *
TREVOR STALKED CAIT the next day. Only way to put it. He told himself she was asking for it.
Even so, she stayed surrounded by friends all day and almost got away after the last bell because she didn’t stop at her locker the way she usually did. She zipped out of class and shot across the commons for the front door like an Indy 500 driver with her foot to the floor. Fortunately, Trev had been careful to take the desk closest to the door himself in his last class, he clock-watched and, since he’d never even pulled out his binder to take notes, was able to launch himself through the door while the bell was still ringing. The two of them reached the double exit doors at almost exactly the same minute. They were the first there although the commons was now flooded with jostling bodies.
“After you,” he said, bowing and opening a door.
“Um…I was going to wait for Jenna.”
“You don’t have dance today.” He had her schedule down.
Her cheeks flushed. “I was going over to the school, anyway.”
Sure she was. “Then I’ll walk you.”
She gave another desperate glance behind him in hopes of spotting a whole crowd of her friends, no doubt, that would provide her with camouflage. Not happening. He had her in the crosshairs now.
“Is talking to me so bad?”
“I know what you want to say.”
“What’s that?”
“You want me to…” Her eyes got super wide at the same time as she shut up.
Wow, good thing. He shouldn’t have pressed her when there were other people around. Trevor took her arm and steered her toward the sidewalk. “Were you really going to dance?”
Her gaze slid his way. “I guess I don’t have to.”
“We can just walk, then. Cut through Terrace Park.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
She looked really hot today. Not that she ever didn’t. Her hair was the prettiest he’d ever seen, especially in the sun. And there was some sun today, the first in close to two weeks. Cait wore jeans, flip-flops that showed off toenails painted bright pink and a formfitting long-sleeved T-shirt. Also hot pink, which gave, like, a pink tint to her reddish-gold hair.
God, he’d had such a thing for her. He was still confused about how it could have gone so cataclysmically bad. Well, the pregnancy part he got; that was his fault. But the rest.
They were all by themselves when she spoke. “Abortion. That’s what you want me to do.”
His heart began to pound hard, as if he was about to go out on the court for a big game. “You can’t really want a baby.”
Her blue-violet eyes flashed at him. “Of course I don’t!”
“Then what’s the deal?” he asked reasonably. He thought.
“The deal is that we made a baby, okay? This isn’t like…like I shoplifted something I can get rid of in a Dumpster so no one ever knows I did it.”
“It’s hardly even some cells yet.” Trevor didn’t actually know. Didn’t want to know. And why would she?
“I think it might be a couple of inches long now,” she said in a small voice.
He looked down at her, scared by that voice. Even more scared by the expression on her face. She was sort of inward looking, her eyes soft.
“See, my mom got pregnant with me by accident. She was only twenty, a junior in college. She could have had an abortion, but she didn’t.” She stole a look at him. “Your dad doesn’t look like he’s very old, either. How old was he when you were born?”
“Nineteen. He was nineteen,” Trevor answered, feeling hollow.
“See?” Like that said it all.
“But you’re fifteen. You’re not nineteen or twenty. That’s really different. You’re not even close to graduating from high school.”
“I’m not talking about keeping the baby.” She wasn’t looking at him anymore. They’d almost reached the park. “Only…only having it, and giving it a chance. You know?”
“You’d keep going to school? Do you know how everyone would look at you?”
“I could maybe take second semester off. Or go to the alternative school.”
“Everyone would still know.”
She stopped dead and faced him. “So I should kill this baby just to keep people from talking?”
Kill this baby. Oh, man. He was so screwed.
“It’s not a baby yet.”
Cait ducked her head. “I don’t know.”
“We made a mistake. Mostly, I did,” he admitted. “This can ruin our lives. Yours more than mine. No one will ever look at you the same way again.” He paused. This was really crummy of him, but oh, well. “You’ll have to quit dance.”
She jerked, and he saw that it hadn’t occurred to her.
“Going back after a year would be really hard.”
“Not a whole year.”
“Close.”
“Why are you doing this?” Eyes drenched but angry, too, she looked at him. “No, forget it. I know why. It doesn’t feel good.” Her contempt ripped through him. “You didn’t care about me, and now I don’t care about you. So stay away from me.”
She turned back the way they’d come and started walking, faster and faster, finally breaking into an awkward run. Her flip-flops slapped against the sidewalk, her book bag bounced on her back. Feeling like he had a big, jagged rock in his chest, Trevor watched her go.
* * *
MOLLY STOOD IN THE MIDDLE of the restroom, crossed her arms and stared at the two boys. Aaron Latter had a bloody nose, Trevor an eye already swelling and discolored. The opposite one from last time, she noted clinically. Chuck Loomis, football coach, six foot three and beefy, stood between them, a meaty hand locked on each boy’s arm. Trevor at least stood straight. Aaron seemed to hang like a wet noodle. He held wadded toilet paper to his nose and was sniveling. A third student hovered by the urinals. He was a scrawny kid with a huge Adam’s apple, eyes wide and scared. Molly sorted through her mind for his name. She knew he was a freshman. Something Russian, or maybe Ukrainian… Something like Russ…Ruslan. Ruslan Balanchuk. Did he go by Russ? She had never actually spoken to the boy before. Had Chuck bullied him into staying?
“Ruslan…” She hoped she’d gotten the pronunciation right. “I gather you saw this fight.”
The boy bobbed his head, his nervous gaze flicking to the two taller boys. Trevor wasn’t looking at him, but Aaron had turned his head. Molly could imagine what he was trying to convey with his stare.
“Let’s step out in the hall,” she said. “Then you can go back to class. Chuck, if you don’t mind waiting with Trevor and Aaron.”
She escorted Ruslan through the swinging door. The hall, five minutes after the bell had rung, was deserted.
“What did you see?” she asked gently.
“Aaron was bad-mouthing Cait.” A lurid red tide rose from his skinny neck to his face as he likely remembered who Cait’s mother was. His accent was subtle; his family must have been here since he was a little boy. “He called Trevor names and said, um, that he’d done bad things to Cait. And then he punched him.”
“He punched first. You’re sure.”
He nodded hard. “Trevor kept saying, ‘Shut up. Don’t talk about her that way. You don’t know anything.’ He said it over and over. But Aaron was totally in his face.” His voice was gaining enthusiasm and speed. “He never did punch back. He just, kind of, grabbed Aaron and threw him away. He fell against one of the bathroom stalls, you know, face-first. That’s when his nose started gushing. And I opened the bathroom door and yelled, and Coach Loomis was going by.”
“Okay.” Molly smiled at him. “You did right. You might have been hurt if you’d tried to break it up yourself. There’s some hard feelings between those two.”
“The stuff he said about Cait…I mean, I don’t know why he would.”
She half laughed when she didn’t feel at all like it. “I can only imagine what it was. I’m sure he was only trying to get a rise from Trevor. I suspect it was all nonsense. Cait was his excuse.”
“Oh.” His face cleared. “Okay.”
She scribbled a hall pass and sent him on his way, then returned to the bathroom.
“Trevor, please go to the nurse’s office and get some ice on that eye. I’ll talk to you after that. Aaron, you come to my office with me.”
He launched into a scurrilous attack on Trevor’s motives and parentage. She raised her eyebrows. “Coach Loomis, perhaps you won’t mind escorting him.”
“With pleasure.”
Aaron had clamped his mouth shut by the time he got to her office. He sat sullenly refusing to talk to her or make eye contact until his mother retrieved him. Molly spoke to her alone, telling her the same thing she had Richard—if her son got in one more fight, he would be expelled. No recourse. “In the meantime, he’s suspended until Monday.”
Mommy argued and repeated things she’d no doubt heard from her son about Trevor, but Molly stood her ground.
“This time, Aaron is entirely at fault. He knows the rules. His behavior was unacceptable.”
Then she sighed and went to the nurse’s office, where she was startled to find Richard already sitting next to his son. Trevor’s head was down and he still held the ice pack to his eye, which must hurt like the dickens. Richard had an arm around him.
His eyes, dark and hot, met hers. He looked considerably less friendly than he had yesterday when she’d had lunch with him. He squeezed Trevor’s shoulder and then stood.
“Mr. Ward,” she said formally. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Trev called me.”
“Really.” She glanced at his son, who was peering at her through the one good eye. More déjà vu. “Trevor, how’s that eye?”
“It hurts like a mother…” Intercepting his father’s warning look, he didn’t finish.
“I’m sorry,” she said, taking the seat on the other side of him. “Please tell me what happened.”
“It wasn’t me.”
His father loomed, but to his credit didn’t say anything. Molly didn’t let herself look up at him.
“I know.” She smiled at his surprise. “Ruslan said Aaron was bad-mouthing Cait, you told him to stop and Aaron punched you. He said all you did was push Aaron away. That he fell against the bathroom stalls.”
“He said that?”
“Yes. Isn’t it true?”
“Did he tell you what Aaron said?” He sounded desperate. She saw him scan the office as if to be sure they were alone. “He said everyone’s talking about her. That she keeps having to go to the bathroom to puke. People think she’s knocked up.”
Molly was glad she was sitting. “Oh, no.”
“You didn’t know she was sick?”
“I know she’s nauseated every morning. But she seems okay in the evening. She didn’t tell me she was sick at school.”
“He said everyone knows she’s pregnant and I’m a…” Again he hesitated. “A you-know-what for fu…uh, screwing her and then dumping her.”
Molly didn’t say anything. She was still combating the dizziness. You did screw her. You did dump her. Not helpful. Not even the entire truth. Cait had her share of responsibility. She could have said no. Or, at least, you have to wear a condom. Or, better yet, you have to wait a month until I can get on birth control. And you have to wear a condom.
Water under the bridge. She was overwhelmed by the knowledge that disaster had struck. They shouldn’t have dawdled. If Cait was getting an abortion, she should have done it. Before the whispers started.
“Did you know people were talking?”
He shook his head. “But maybe they wouldn’t in front of me.”
“Or around her.”
She pulled herself together and stood. “Okay. She and I will talk tonight.”
There was hope on his face. “Do you think she’ll agree, you know…?”
“I don’t know,” she told him honestly. She didn’t. She didn’t know how she felt about it. No, not true—she did know. She felt as if she was being pulled apart. What was easiest for Cait, what would be right for her in the long run, what really was right…if there was any such thing. And then her own ache, the one she couldn’t seem to squelch that kept her from being clearheaded. Finally she looked at Richard, and saw lines of puzzlement on his forehead as he studied her. So he hadn’t figured her out yet. Imagine that.
How could he, when she was so confused herself?
“Mr. Ward…Richard. Perhaps I can call you tomorrow?”
He gave a clipped nod. “Trevor’s free to go?”
“Yes.” She looked at the boy. “Trev, it would have been better if you’d walked away, but I understand why you felt you had to defend Cait.” She hesitated. “I even appreciate that.”
He gave her a lopsided grin that must have hurt, because he winced. “But you’ll deny it if anyone asks?”
Despite the now ever-present ache, Molly laughed. “Something like that.”
The bemused lines on Richard’s face were still there, but now his eyes were warm. He nodded. “Molly.” And steered his son out.
She sank back into the chair with a groan. Dear God, now what?