Unexpected Mommy

“When I get back here, I expect to find you exactly where I left you,” she said. “And I expect to find the person responsible for chopping off Mary’s hair writing an apology to Mary.”

Several boys snickered. Jenny scowled.

“On second thought, perhaps all of you should be writing that apology,” she said firmly. “Even if you didn’t cut her hair, you all stood by and watched it happen. That makes you accessories. I’ll explain exactly what that is when I get back. Then you can read your letters aloud. They had better ring with sincerity or every one of you will spend the next month in detention. Maybe longer.” She scowled. “Maybe the whole semester. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” a redheaded girl muttered dutifully. Her hands were folded neatly atop her desk and her expression was as solemn and innocent as a saint’s.

“Yes, ma’am,” several others mimicked.

Jenny sighed and decided to let the taunt pass.

“You may start now.” She waited until heads were bent and pencils were scratching over paper before taking Mary to the principal’s office and explaining the morning’s catastrophe.

Patrick Jackson peered at Jenny over the ugly black frames of his thick glasses, then glanced at Mary and sighed heavily. “I just knew something like this was going to happen the minute I heard the board had approved your transfer to this school. I would have fought it, but it would have been a waste of time. Even though you’ve been trouble ever since you hit town twenty years ago, your family has too much influence for me to win.”

She ignored the reference to her family and to her inauspicious beginnings as a resident of Los Piños. Some memories were destined to die hard.

“This is hardly my fault,” she protested, instead. “I wasn’t even in the classroom yet.”

“My point precisely. The bell had rung. Where were you?”

Jenny stared at him incredulously. “In here with you listening to yet another explanation of my duties, along with a few off-the-cuff remarks about my lack of suitability as a teacher,” she shot back.

That gave him a moment’s pause. He settled for regarding her sourly. “And who’s with your class now?”

“No one,” she admitted.

“Obviously you learned nothing from what happened this morning.” He shook his head. “It’s just as I expected. You are not cut out for this.”

Jenny barely resisted the urge to utter a curse that would have blistered the man’s ears. After all, Mary had been traumatized enough for one morning. She didn’t need to see her brand-new teacher lose her temper and punch Mr. Patrick Johnson in his bulbous nose.

She stood a little straighter and said with quiet dignity, “If you will call Mary’s mother and explain what happened, I will get back to my other students.”

“Go, go,” he said, waving her off. “I’ll speak to you again at the end of the day.”

She beamed at him. “I’ll be looking forward to it.” He’d have to catch her first, she thought as she gave Mary’s hand a last reassuring squeeze and bolted from the office.

As she raced down the hall, she listened for the sounds of renewed chaos erupting in her classroom. Instead, it was absolutely silent as she approached. She found the quiet worrisome, but she was grateful nonetheless.

Inside, Jenny scoured the room for signs of mischief. It appeared, though, that she’d gotten her message across. No one had budged so much as an inch in her absence.

“Is everyone finished writing that apology?” she asked, perching on the edge of her desk and surveying the students.

“Yes, ma’am,” the same little redhead replied eagerly.

“Yes, ma’am,” the others taunted in a singsong chorus.

“Enough!” Jenny said. “Who’d like to go first?”

Naturally it was that accommodating little redhead who replied.

“Fine,” Jenny said. “Your name is?”

“Felicity Jackson.”

Jenny winced. “Any relation to our principal?”

“He’s my father,” the child said proudly.

Of course, he would be, Jenny thought with a sigh. “Okay, then. Thank you, Felicity. You may go first.”

Felicity’s essay was less of an apology than a well-crafted crime report. Bless her little suck-up heart, she readily mentioned not only the precise details of the insult that had been perpetrated on her classmate, but the name of the boy responsible: Petey Adams.

Before Jenny could say a word, a boy—almost certainly the boy in question—flew out of his seat and aimed straight for Felicity, clearly prepared to knock the breath clean out of her. Jenny stepped in his way with seconds to spare. With one arm looped around his waist, she plucked him off his feet.

“Petey, I presume.”

“You can presume anything you danged well want to,” he said with a defiant tilt to his chin and fire flashing in his startlingly blue eyes.

Something about that chin and those eyes looked disturbingly familiar. Jenny had the uncomfortable feeling she ought to recognize Petey, especially since his last name was Adams, the same as her own.

“Petey, you and I will discuss this incident when the rest of the class goes to recess,” she informed him. “In the meantime you have two choices. You can remain in your seat and behave, or you can spend the morning in the principal’s office. It’s up to you, but I should warn you that Mr. Jackson is very eager to get his hands on the person responsible for Mary’s haircut.” She smiled at the boy. “What’s it going to be?”

The defiance slipped just a notch. “Might’s well stay here,” he muttered eventually.

“Good choice,” she said, and released him to return to his seat. “Perhaps you’d like to read your apology to the class.”

“Didn’t write one,” he said, glaring at her. “You can keep me here till I’m an old man and I still won’t write one.”

The belligerence took her aback. “You did hear me give the assignment, didn’t you?”

“I ain’t deaf.”

“Then you are deliberately choosing to defy me?”

He squared his little shoulders and stared straight back at her. “Yep.”

She had to admire his spunk if not his insubordination. She had a whole new respect for the teachers forced to deal with her through the years. How she handled Petey Adams was absolutely critical to gaining the respect of his classmates, with the possible exception of Felicity, who obviously craved the approval of all authority figures more than she wanted the friendship of those her own age. She was definitely her father’s child.

“Okay, Petey, we will discuss this matter during recess.”

He shrugged indifferently.

Jenny turned to the other students and called on them one by one to read their apologies. Fortunately there were no further incidents. Still, by the time recess came an hour later, she was so tense her shoulders ached. She made arrangements for the third-grade teacher to supervise her students on the playground, then returned to meet with Petey.

He regarded her with hostility. Jenny sighed. She took a moment to look over his file, which she’d retrieved from the office on her way back from the playground. He was new to Los Piños. His mother had died less than two years before, his grandfather just months ago. He was all alone with his dad, who’d taken a job as foreman of a ranch near White Pines.

Jenny recalled all too vividly her own sense of being lost and alone after her parents’ divorce, when her mother had brought her from New York to this strange new place. She kept a tight rein on her sympathy, though, as she looked up and faced the boy seated in front of her.