Redemption

“You’re going to board up the windows?” he asked. “And you want Jason to clear up the broken glass?”

She shot him a level glance. “He broke it, didn’t he? He needs to learn that there are responsibilities that go along with his actions.”

“And if he cuts himself in the process?” Deliberately, he was making this difficult, but the woman was persistent and he was rising to the challenge.

“What if he burns himself cooking on your stove, Mr. McPherson?” She pursed her lips and then lifted a brow as if she awaited a reply.

“Well, you have me there, ma’am,” Jake answered. “The difference is in who takes the blame for his injury.”

“In the case of the windows, he takes the blame, sir. Both for the damage he wrought on the school, and for any harm he comes to in the resolution of the problem.”

“He’s only nine years old,” Jake said, intent on continuing the argument, the best one he’d had in a month of Sundays. This woman knew how to hold her own.

“He may never reach his tenth birthday if he doesn’t learn some rules of decent behavior,” she said firmly. “He has half the parents in town out for his hide. There isn’t a boy in school safe from his fists, and the little girls have suffered ink splattered on their dresses and skinned knees from being pushed down in the schoolyard.”

Jake was silent, absorbing her words. If it was indeed as bad as all that, the boy had to be taken in hand.

“I’ll agree to him cleaning up the mess,” he said grudgingly. “As soon as he’s eaten his supper, I’ll send him on over.”

She gritted her teeth. He saw her jaw clench and noted the militant gleam in her eyes as she defied him again. “He’ll do it now. I won’t be eating my supper until the windows are boarded up and the school is back in shape for tomorrow. He can just do without his meal until that’s been accomplished.”

“Do you always get your way, Miss Merriweather?” Jake asked, fuming inwardly, yet aware that the woman had a point.

“Only when I’m right.” The words were a taunt, delivered with a smug smile. Then she clutched her reticule and stiffened her spine. “Now, will you tell him to come along with me? Or shall I go out into your kitchen and drag him out the back door?”

“It’s against the law to manhandle a child who is not your own,” Jake told her.

“I have the right to discipline the children in my classroom,” she reminded him. “The school board has put that into my contract.”

He might as well let the creature have her way. She was going to go over his head if he didn’t give in gracefully. Or at least without a fuss.

He raised his hand from the arm of his chair and waved toward the closed kitchen door. “He’s on the other side of that, ma’am,” he told her. “I’ll warrant his ear is glued to it, in fact.”

“Call him in here,” she said, moving to plant herself halfway down the hallway. “He needs to know that you’re aware of what he’s done.”

“Oh, I doubt there’s any question he hasn’t already heard every blessed word you’ve spoken, ma’am,” Jake said harshly. Then he raised his voice a bit. “Jason, come on out here.”

The door opened after a few seconds and the boy sidled into the hallway. His face was pale now, and Jake felt a moment’s pain at the look of confusion his son wore.

“You’ll go with Miss Merriweather and clean up the mess you made, Jason. You’ll help her board up the windows, and then you’ll do extra chores to earn money for the new glass it will take to repair the damage.”

Jason’s eyes widened. “I have to pay for new windows, Pa?”

“You broke the old ones, didn’t you?”

For a moment a look of despair came over the small freckled face, and Jake felt a pang of guilt. When had the boy gotten so far from his reach? Then Jason’s head lifted and a look of defiant pride touched his features.

“Yeah, I broke them.”

“‘Yeah’ is not an appropriate word to use, Jason,” Alicia said quietly. “You may change your statement, please.”

He shot her a resentful look, then turned as if to seek out Jake’s opinion in the matter. When nothing was forthcoming from his father, the boy nodded.

“Yes, ma’am, I broke them,” he said, and for a quick moment Jake thought he saw a bit of himself in the boy. Given to impetuous behavior, frustrated by authority and determined to flaunt his shortcomings in the face of others, he was indeed a problem.

But one, it seemed, Alicia Merriweather could handle.

CHAPTER TWO

JASON MCPHERSON WAS A capable child, Alicia admitted silently. Obviously aware of the purpose of a broom and dustpan, he swept up the broken glass without a murmur, then dumped the shards into her wastebasket. If he still wore the chip on his shoulder, at least it didn’t appear to be quite so large a chunk of wood, she thought.

“I’m finished, ma’am,” he told her as he returned the tools to the cloakroom.

“No, Jason, you’re not,” she said, contradicting his statement. From the quick look he shot in her direction, he’d expected the reprimand, and she noted the taut line of his jaw.

His sigh was exaggerated. “Now what do I hafta do?”

“You know very well what comes next, young man. You had your ear plastered against that kitchen door when I told your father what I expected of you.”

He shifted uncomfortably, standing first on one leg, then the other, as if he readied himself for flight. “I suppose you think I’m gonna carry in all that wood you got layin’ out in the yard.”

“No,” she said, disputing his idea. “You’re going to go out there with me and hand me one board at a time while I nail them in place. If it rains tonight, I don’t want the schoolhouse open to the elements.”

“Elements?” he asked, his look skeptical. “You mean the weather?”

“You know what I mean,” she told him. “You can’t play dumb with me, Jason. I know exactly how intelligent you are.”

His shoulders slumped and she decided it was a ploy, a means to get her sympathy. It would never work. He was slick, but she was ahead of the game.

“Come along,” she said, walking briskly toward the door, hammer in hand, a small brown bag of nails in her pocket. Outdoors, the sun was hanging low in the sky, and she looked upward, thankful that the clouds were not heavy as yet. The idea of working in a downpour didn’t appeal to her, and sending Jason home all wet and soggy might only irritate his father more.

Although that seemed to be an unlikely thought. The man could not be more irritable if he truly put forth an effort.

Jake McPherson had a reputation around town. A widower for well over two years, he had become a recluse, mourning his wife, folks said. And well he might, Alicia thought. The woman had no doubt been a saint to put up with him. A more miserable man would be hard to find.

Yet there had been something about him that appealed to her. Some spark within the man had spanned the gap and touched off an answering response in her soul. Pity? Doubtful, although she respected his need to mourn his wife. Respect? No, not that, for he’d allowed himself to become a hermit and had kept his son apart. Not only from those in the community who might have helped the boy, but from himself.

He’d built a wall of grief and stubborn pride. Even his own child could not surmount the obstacle of Jake McPherson’s hibernation. And yet she’d been drawn to him…perhaps as one weary soul to another.

The hammer was a tool she was familiar with, but the boards she nailed in place were heavy and, as a result, her fingers bore the brunt of several blows that she knew would leave bruises behind.

“You’re not very good at this,” the boy observed as she held the last board in place and took a handful of nails from the bag. “I guess women have a hard time doing man stuff, don’t they?”

She turned her head, caught by the scorn in his remark. “‘Man stuff’? Hammering a nail is something only the male gender is proficient at? I think not,” she said stiffly, holding the nail firmly and raising the hammer. The head caught the nail off-center and the hammer careened onto the board, bouncing off her thumb in the process.

Alicia’s murmur of pain was not lost on Jason, and he leaned forward, as if to offer sympathy. Instead, his words only served to insult. “If I couldn’t do any better than that, I’d find someone else to do the job.”

She inhaled with a shuddering gasp, the pain in her thumb holding all her attention. Extending the hammer in his direction, she turned the tables on the boy. “Here you go, sonny. Have at it.” She placed the bag of nails in his palm, the hammer handle in his other hand, and she stepped back from the partially covered window.