I focused on Libby, took in her familiar features—her dark hair, dark eyes, and oh, so familiar compassion in her expression—and shrugged.
“The situation isn’t good. The sister works long hours and she’s barely making ends meet. My investigator tells me that the parents left them with huge debts that she had to mortgage both the business and the family home to pay off. But now she’s got these huge debts on top of the expense of running the business and their daily expenses. So she’s never home and JT is left to run wild. He stays up late at night, apparently eats whatever he wants, and hangs out with these kids whose parents are less than interested in their extracurricular activities. It’s not a good situation and I can’t see it ending well.”
“Then do something.”
“But what do I do that doesn’t cause JT to resent me for the rest of his life?”
“There’s the question.” Libby took my hand and held it gently between both hands. “You aren’t dad. You’re not a bishop in your church embarrassed by your wild sons. You’re just a guy trying to do the right thing. JT will see that.”
“And if he doesn’t? If he resents me for taking him away from the only home, the only friends, he’s ever known? For taking him away from his sister?”
“He will.”
I groaned. “You’re supposed to be reassuring me, here, remember?”
“Do you want me to lie? Or do you want the truth?”
I thought about it for a minute, then sighed. “The truth.”
“He will resent you. Especially if you aren’t careful with the way you present the whole thing to him. But if you do it right, he’ll come around sooner rather than later.”
“And how do you know?”
She stood and pressed a soft kiss to my jaw. “Because I know you. You are a good man, and both JT and his sister will see it sooner rather than later.”
~~~
I flew back to Texas the next afternoon, holding on to my sister’s words and hoping that she was right in her statements. Maybe if I went to Penelope first, if I told her the truth, maybe she could help me find a solution that would work for all three of us. Maybe she would even help me explain the situation to JT. If I had her on my side…but then I walked into my first period class Monday morning.
“Gentlemen!” I called as I walked to my desk, dropping my leather case on the top of the desk as I gestured to three boys standing at the back of the room. “Please take a seat.”
The boys quickly sat as the bell rang, the last student rushing through the door as I walked over to close it. I turned again and surveyed the room, silently counting heads as I walked back to my desk. There should have been fifteen kids in the room. There were only fourteen.
“Where’s JT?”
It was more a rhetorical question than one I expected an answer to. But one of the boys who’d been standing at the back of the room when I walked in immediately answered.
“He’s in the principal’s office. He got in trouble over the weekend.”
“What kind of trouble?”
Fourteen pairs of eyes widened as they stared at me. And then the room erupted with chatter, everyone trying to explain all at once. I held up a hand, gesturing for silence.
“One person only, please.”
The first boy—Charlie, a football player JT usually sat beside—knelt in his seat like he was giving a presentation on Shakespeare rather than spreading gossip.
“He went to Sean Wallace’s party Friday night and got smashed. Then he wandered around the town square—apparently singing “Stitches” at the top of his lungs as he went. The cops hauled him in and his sister had to go pick him up at the county jail Saturday morning.”
Anger had begun to burn deep in my chest with Charlie’s first words and it just grew as I listened to the story and heard the other kids titter with laughter. I wanted to smack every one of them, Charlie for spreading gossip and the others for thinking it was funny. But I knew what I really wanted was to find Penelope and get a proper explanation from her lips.
I held up my hand again and silenced the class.
“Enough gossip. Get out your books. I want you to read the first chapter of ‘Of Mice and Men.’”
The students groaned, but they did as they were told. I waited long enough to make sure each of them had their books out. I stepped out of the classroom and crossed the hall to Mrs. Needham’s history class.
“Would you mind keeping an eye on my class? I need to step out for a few minutes.”
“Of course,” she said, clearly happy to do it. Maybe she was relieved to finally be able to repay me for all the times I’d done the same for her over the last month or so.
I didn’t stop to ask. I rushed out of the building, jumping into my second hand pickup, the rev of the engine satisfying as I jerked it into reverse and sped toward the town square. I pulled out my cellphone as I drove, punching in a quick text that I sent to my lawyer: