Put it in motion.
To hell with diplomacy. To hell with being nice. If she was going to let my son run around drinking and getting himself arrested, she better believe I was going to march in and take control. I wasn’t going to sit back and watch JT ruin his future just because I didn’t want to hurt some pretty girl’s feelings. Penelope’s custody of JT was a fucking joke and I wasn’t going to let this go on a minute longer than I had to.
I pulled to a sliding stop outside the bakery and burst through the front doors, ready battle.
Chapter 5
Penelope
I was kneading bread dough with all the energy I could conjure, exhaustion sitting so heavy on my shoulders that I could have just laid on the worktable and gone to sleep right there. I have never been so angry in all my life. And anger is a very exhausting emotion. To pace the floors half the night only to find out JT had been arrested and was being held down at the county jail was bad enough, but fighting with him all weekend, trying to get him to talk to me about what had led to his behavior, was even worse. It was almost a relief to drop him off at school this morning.
And then he was standing in front of me and I knew just by glancing at his face that I was in trouble.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
I stood back from the table, an irrational part of me convinced that Mr. James was about to jump over it to pummel me with his very capable looking hands.
“Excuse me?”
“You let him go to a party where there was alcohol?”
“I didn’t know there would be alcohol. I assumed Sean’s parents…” I stopped myself, suddenly realizing that I had no reason to defend myself to this man. What happened when JT was off campus was really none of his business.
“Why do you care what happens to my brother when he’s not in your classroom?”
Mr. James’ eyes narrowed. “What kind of guardian allows an underage child to drink?”
“He wasn’t drinking at my house. And he’s being punished, believe me.”
“He could have been injured. He could have gotten behind the wheel—“
“He doesn’t even have his driver’s permit yet.”
“But, still, he could have been hurt.”
“And that’s my problem. Not yours.” I moved around the table, glancing through the door that separated the front counter from the kitchens before I shut it. Then I turned back to Mr. James. “You sure seem to spend an awful lot of time obsessing over my little brother. Is there something going on there that I should know about?”
His eyebrows rose. “Are you accusing me or inappropriate behavior?”
“Why are you here? Don’t you have a class you should be teaching?”
“I want to know what happened Friday night.”
I turned my back to him, sticking my hands under the facet to wash the sticky dough off of them. “It’s really none of your business.”
“He wasn’t in class this morning.”
“That’s probably because Susan wanted to talk to him about his behavior. He was still wearing his football jersey when he was arrested, so she felt that he should suffer the consequences of acting disrespectfully while representing the school.”
I don’t know why I explained that to him. It really wasn’t any of his business.
I had gone to Susan and asked her to speak to JT. I thought that if the school got involved, perhaps it would get through to JT in a way that I hadn’t succeeded at just yet. But I hadn’t expected a visit from his English teacher.
“Did Susan speak to you?”
He didn’t answer me. I glanced at him. He was staring down at the table where my mound of dough was resting before the next round of kneading. I watched him, noted the anger that seemed to roll off of him in waves. But I also noted the wide set of his shoulders, the way his sports coat fit him almost perfectly, the way his jeans…I shook my head and turned back to the sink, shaking my hands a little before I grabbed a paper towel to dry them.
“He’s ruining his future with this behavior.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
“Going to juvenile detention—“
“He’s not. The cop who picked him up is a friend of the family. He didn’t book him. He just held him in the county jail overnight in an attempt to scare him.”
“So he doesn’t have to go to court?”
“Not this time.”
Again the silence.
“Why does it matter so much to you? Surely you’ve had other students who were bigger trouble makers than JT. Why are you so interested in him?”
“I have my reasons.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I think I have a right to know what’s going on. It’s not normal for a teacher to take so much interest in one student like this.”
“I’m not a pedophile, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
The thought hadn’t actually entered my thoughts, but now that he’d put it there…I shuddered, my skin crawling as images I didn’t want to entertain shot through my mind.