Unexpected Mommy

Petey sighed heavily. “Yes, sir.”

“That’s better. Now look at me.”

Another heavy sigh greeted that order. Chance would have smiled, but he figured it would take the edge off the stem displeasure he was trying to convey. “Now,” he repeated emphatically.

His son finally darted a glance up at him. The defiance had begun to slip ever so slightly. His eyes shimmered with unshed tears. Chance fought the urge to gather the boy in his arms. It was moments like this that were the hardest tests for a father. He was torn between the discipline he knew needed delivering and the comfort and promise of unshakable love that were also required.

“I’d like an explanation,” Chance told him, pleased with his calm neutral tone when minutes ago he’d wanted to shake the kid for doing something so crazy. Jenny Adams had painted an all-too-vivid picture of that distraught child with a severed braid in her hand, tears spilling down her cheeks. He winced every time he thought about it. He’d been so sure he’d taught Petey girls were to be protected, not taunted or hit. Maybe he’d been remiss in not mentioning that their hair was off-limits, too.

“An explanation ’bout what?” Petey replied.

The innocent act tripped Chance’s temper all over again. “About what the dickens possessed you to cut off that girl’s braid,” he snapped, then sucked in a sharp breath. In a calmer voice, he added, “You had to know it was wrong.”

“I suppose.”

“Suppose nothing. It was wrong. It was downright cruel, in fact. It’s the exact kind of mean-spirited act I’ve told you to protect girls from, isn’t it? Even little girls fuss about their looks. Did you think for one second about how she would feel with her hair all lopsided?” He shook his head. “Obviously not. Now tell me why you did it. You must have had a reason.”

Petey still looked as if he was about to cry. Once again Chance had to force himself not to kneel down in the dirt and take the boy in his arms. Mary Rose Franklin was the one deserving of sympathy here, not the perpetrator of the crime. An image of Jenny Adams’s disapproving expression stiffened his resolve. He didn’t intend to give her or anyone else the ammunition to accuse him of being a lousy dad.

Keeping his expression stern, he repeated, “Son, I’d like an explanation now.”

“Timmy McPherson dared me,” Petey said miserably. “He said if I ever wanted to have any friends at all in Los Piños, I’d do it.”

I should have guessed as much, Chance told himself. It was all too typical for kids that age to set each other up to take a fall as some sort of test. “I assume you weren’t counting on Mary being one of those friends,” he said wryly.

Tears leaked out of Petey’s eyes and spilled down his cheeks. “I didn’t mean to make her cry. Honest, Dad. I just wanted to be friends with Timmy and the other guys. I’m the new kid. I didn’t want them to think I was a total geek or something.” His chin jutted out. “It’s not like her hair won’t grow back.”

Chance cringed at the logic. “You don’t make real friends by doing things you know perfectly well are wrong,” he said. “Have you apologized to Mary yet?”

Petey looked even guiltier. “Not really. Ms. Adams assigned us to write an apology in class, but I didn’t do it. I told her I wouldn’t.”

Chance sighed. “Why not?”

“Because it wasn’t my fault, not really. It was Timmy’s idea,” he explained. “And then that Felicity girl ratted on me, just so she could get Ms. Adams to like her.”

“Tattling’s not the issue here,” Chance pointed out. “And Timmy wasn’t the one who chopped off Mary’s hair, was he? You always have choices, son. You could have found a more sensible way to make new friends. I think maybe you’d better go inside and write that apology now. As soon as I get cleaned up, we’re going to take it to Mary and hope and pray that she and her parents will forgive you. And if you ever hope to see a penny of your allowance again, you’d better pray that whoever fixed your classmate’s hair did it cheaply.”

Petey stared at him in dismay. “You’re going to make me go to her house? I have to talk to her parents, too? And give them my allowance?”

“Yes.”

“But, Dad—”

“We’re going,” Chance said with finality. “Have that note ready by the time I’m dressed or I’ll start adding days to the week I already intend to ground you.”

“Dad!” Petey wailed.

“Save your breath, son. I’ve let you get away with too much since your mama and granddaddy died. It’s going to stop and this is as good a time as any to be sure it does.”

“This is all Ms. Adams’s fault,” Petey grumbled, then added vehemently, “I hate her. If you loved Granddaddy, you’d hate her, too. She’s one of them. She deserves to have bad things happen in her class. Maybe they’ll even fire her for being a crummy teacher.”

This time Chance did kneel down. He put his hands on Petey’s shoulders and forced him to meet his gaze. “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk again, okay? One thing has nothing to do with the other,” he said, ignoring the fact that only moments earlier he, too, had been thinking of her as the enemy. He didn’t want to consider what kind of nightmarish behavior Jenny Adams would have to face in her classroom if he encouraged Petey to make her part of his grandfather’s vendetta. No fourth grader in Los Piños would get an education this year.

“But she lives at White Pines,” Petey protested.

“For the moment,” Chance said grimly, solidifying his resolve to settle things with Harlan Adams the very instant he could come up with a workable plan. Dragging it out would take its toll on all of them.

He looked Petey in the eye. “I repeat, one thing has nothing to do with the other. She is your teacher and you will respect her in the classroom and that is final. Understood?”

“No,” Petey said, his chin jutting again. “Her father is a thief. That makes her no good, too. Why should I have to listen to anything she says?”

Obviously Hank had been very thorough in imparting his resentments to Petey. Chance couldn’t see any long-term benefit in allowing Petey to grow up with so much hate. If there was a score to be settled, he would be the one to do it

“Okay, let me put it another way,” he said quietly. “I am telling you that you will show respect to her in that classroom. I am your father, and if you don’t obey me, there will be hell to pay. Is that clear?”

Petey blinked several times at his father’s fierce tone, then bobbed his head once.

“Excuse me. I didn’t hear you.”

“Yes, sir,” Petey mumbled.

“That’s better. Now get inside and write that note. We’ll be leaving here in twenty minutes.”

Petey’s expression was sullen, but he did as he was told. Inside, Chance watched him for a moment, his head bent over a piece of paper from his notebook as he began slowly writing the ordered apology. Chance suspected it would be lacking in sincerity, but the point was getting Petey to go through the motions. He had to understand there were consequences for bad behavior.

Chance had learned about consequences at an early age. His father had been tough as nails, impossible to please and erratic about the rules Chance was expected to follow. It had kept Chance in a constant state of turmoil. He wouldn’t do the same to Petey. He intended to make sure Petey understood exactly what the boundaries of acceptable behavior were.

When Jenny Adams had been telling him how to discipline his son earlier, he’d been every bit as resentful as Petey was now. But the truth was, her words had been a wake-up call. Petey needed more parenting than Chance had been giving him. Ever since their arrival in Los Piños, he’d been too caught up in this obsession with getting even with Harlan Adams. That was no excuse for neglecting his son or letting him get so carried away with his own brand of retribution. Now that Petey knew his teacher was Harlan Adams’s daughter, there was no telling what the boy would try to make her the target of his anger.

Chance resolved then and there that Jenny Adams would never have another reason to question his ability to teach his kid the difference between right and wrong. If they met again—and they surely would—it was going to be because of his plan to ruin Harlan Adams. If a few sparks happened to ignite between them in the process—and they were dead-on certain to—so much the better.

Somehow, though, he intended to keep Petey out of the middle of things. Given how well Hank had primed the boy, though, that was likely easier said than done.

* * *

The fireworks between Jenny and Chance were nothing compared to the explosion that night at the dinner table when Jenny repeated Chance’s declaration about White Pines. Harlan might have been in his eighties, but he hadn’t slowed down and he wasn’t inclined to take any threat to the sanctity of his home lightly.

“That darn fool,” he said viciously, slamming his fist on the table so hard the dishes bounced. His skin turned an unhealthy shade of red and a sheen of perspiration broke out on his brow. “Obviously Hank spent his whole sorry life filling that boy’s head with lies. Now he’s dead and the rest of us are left to clean up the mess he’s created.”

Jenny exchanged a worried look with her mother, Janet, who appeared ready to leap from her chair and go to her husband’s side to calm him down. Jenny’s younger half sister, Lizzy, stared at him, clearly stunned by their father’s outburst.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything,” Jenny said, regretting her impulsive relating of the entire incident. She should have known it would upset to her father. Being accused of cheating his brother out of an inheritance was not something Harlan Adams would take lightly. “I’m sorry.”

He reached out and patted her hand. “Of course you should have told me. No point in keeping quiet about it. Obviously this Chance Adams intends to create a ruckus sooner or later. Leastways now I can be prepared for it. There are plenty of folks in town who were around at the time. They’re familiar with the details.”

“Then you really did have a brother?” Jenny asked, though that much at least seemed obvious from her father’s agitated reaction.

“I did,” he said tersely.