"Since it's a school issue, we need to talk to Ricky's father directly," the principal said. "This is unusual for Ricky. He's normally a good boy, but he's been hanging around with a couple of troublemakers."
Jayne convinced them to wait one day before calling Sam into the office, so she could have a chance to talk to him first, in an effort to keep things from spreading—the nip-it-in-the-bud approach—and they agreed. She hoped Sam would remain calm...
Which he didn't.
"So help me, I'll ground that kid until he's out of high school!" Sam bellowed.
"That's not the way to handle this," Jayne said. "Ricky's probably trying to impress his friends. The principal said he's hanging around with some troublemakers." She saw the hard look on Sam's face and wondered what he had in store for Ricky.
But she also had to face Becca with the truth. She hadn't planned to tell her about her past yet, but there was no putting it off. But as soon as the school year would be out, she'd assure her that they'd be moving back to her old neighborhood, away from all the Laurens, and Susans, and Rickys, to a place where Becca had friends. But the one thing Jayne knew for sure. It was pointless to try to build a life with Sam.
CHAPTER 12
After everyone in the family, including Flo, had put in their two bits, whether Sam wanted to hear it or not, Sam came to several conclusions. Grounding Ricky would only add fuel to the fire, making him clean every stall in the stable would get the stalls cleaned, but wouldn't make Ricky feel bad about what he'd done, and taking away his allowance would make him feel like a victim, illogical as it was. He needed to appeal to Ricky's conscience. He knew Ricky had one, although over the past couple of months he'd begun to wonder where it had gone.
Sam also knew Ricky was suspicious about what was happening, when he sat Ricky in front of the computer and Googled multiple sclerosis.
"Why are we looking this up?" Ricky asked, as Sam was scrolling through the websites while searching for one in particular.
"You want to be a doctor don't you?" Sam asked, clicking on the link he was looking for.
Ricky's foot swinging in agitation, he said, "Yeah, but what's that got to do with multiple scler... scler...?"
"Sclerosis. Multiple sclerosis. MS," Sam said. "You'll see." Sam pulled up a site that listed a barrage of symptoms, an especially good site because it had photographs. "This would be a good area of study for a doctor because there are many people with MS and there's no cure."
"How long is this gonna take?" Ricky asked, annoyed.
"Not long," Sam replied. "Okay, to give you an idea of what MS is like, we'll start reading here..." He pointed to the screen and started reading aloud to get Ricky's attention. "Individuals with multiple sclerosis often have difficulty with movement, thinking, and sensation. Early symptoms may include numbness or tingling, weakness in one or more limbs, walking and balance difficulties and visual disturbances."
Ricky listened half-heartedly, his foot continuing to swing in agitation, but when Sam scrolled down to several photographs showing people as the disease progressed, and read the captions, Ricky became a little more attentive. "What are tremors?" he asked, his eyes fixed on the image of a woman in a wheelchair.
"That's when a person starts shaking and can't stop," Sam replied. "They lose control of their muscles, like something stops the signal between their brain and the muscle and the muscle doesn't know what to do, so it shakes."
Ricky seemed to think about that for a few moments. Then he focused on another picture, and said, "What's spas... stis... spas..."
"Spasticity is when the muscles continually expand and contract, like when I keep opening and closing my hand, and the muscles get stiff and tight and that makes it hard to move or dress or walk, and eventually the person ends up in a wheelchair. Then as the disease progresses, they have trouble swallowing, because that can happen in their throat, and their speech gets so slurred you can't understand them."
After he'd given Ricky a chance to digest that, he said, "There's a little girl at your school whose mother is so disabled from MS she has to live in a special home, but before the little girl's mother went to the home, the little girl took care of her mother, fixing her breakfast before she went to school and dinner when she came home, and washing their clothes, and taking care of the house, and doing everything she could to make her mother comfortable, and this was when the little girl was even younger than you."
Ricky's foot stopped swinging and he turned to Sam, and said, "Does she see her mother?"
"Not often," Sam replied, holding Ricky's gaze, trying to read something in the expression on his face. Compassion? Empathy? He didn't see anything, except perhaps that of a kid asking a question. "The mother doesn't want her daughter to see her getting worse because it makes the little girl sad. The little girl also thinks her mother's coming home someday."
"Will she?" Ricky asked, a frown on his brow showing some concern. Or maybe just curiosity, since his foot was swinging back and forth again, though not as vigorously.
"No," Sam replied. "With MS, you just keep getting more and more disabled until one day you can't talk or eat or breathe, and you die."
The foot stopped. "You said she goes to my school. Who is she?" he asked, turning back to look at the monitor.
Sam looked askance at Ricky, and replied, "Becca."
Ricky continued to stare at the monitor, saying nothing, but his bottom lip trembled slightly, which he caught between his teeth, and he batted his eyes, which may or may not have been to stem the emergence of tears, and he said, "Can I go now?"
Sam felt like shaking the kid, he was so unfeeling, yet, he couldn't blame it on Susan. She might have been screwing another man while they were married, but she'd been a model mother when Ricky was dying and needed a transplant, and after he'd gone through chemo and gotten the cord blood transplant, Susan had been at Ricky's side almost constantly. But the person Ricky was now seemed to have no feeling for anything or anybody, except maybe Sophie. Which was self-serving because Sophie had a little hero-worshiping going with Ricky.
"Yeah, you can go," he replied, disappointed that Ricky didn't seem more disturbed. But before Ricky left the room, Sam said, "Do you know why Jayne went to prison?"
Ricky looked at him with a start, clearly surprised that Sam knew he knew about Jayne. When Ricky didn't reply, Sam said, "Jayne drove two men to a convenience store to buy cigarettes and didn't know they planned to rob the store. After they did, they got in the car and told her to drive away, and she did because she didn't know what they'd done. The police stopped them and she was arrested with the others and sent to jail for five years."
Ricky stared at him, brows drawn, as if trying to assimilate it. Then he said, in a challenging tone, as if he wasn't sure he believed Sam, "Why did she go to jail if she didn't know and didn't do anything wrong?"
Sam hated for Ricky to learn at such an early age that sometimes the system failed, but there was no way around it. "Not everyone on the jury believed her because one of the men who robbed the store was Becca's father. Jayne didn't know he was a really bad man until that night, and then it was too late. Jayne was pregnant with Becca at the time, so Becca was born while Jayne was in prison, then Becca was taken away from Jayne even though Jayne wanted her very badly. Becca was adopted out, but then her adoptive father died, and her adoptive mother's in a nursing home now, so Becca hasn't had a very good childhood."
After a few moments, Ricky said, "Now, can I go?"
Sam was tempted to carry out all the punishments that seemed ludicrous earlier—send Ricky to muck out every damn stall on the ranch, ground him until he graduated from high school, take away his allowance indefinitely… Instead, he took an extended breath and let it out slowly, in an effort to keep from yelling at the kid, and said, "Yeah, I guess." But after Ricky left the room, Sam had an almost uncontrollable urge to punch his fist through the wall, even if it was solid log.
***
Jayne intercepted Sam as he was w
alking from the winery to the lodge, and said, "How did it go with Ricky?" She'd been thinking about how Sam should have approached the issue with Ricky and Sophie at the spring, but there seemed to be no right way. Confronting Ricky would make him angry and defensive. Ignoring everything wouldn't make it go away.
"I had a pretty straight talk with him about keeping it in his pants until he's married," Sam replied, "and I told him if he respected Sophie he wouldn't have asked her to do what she did, even if she was the one who started it. As for Becca... Rick and I went online and Googled MS, and I told Ricky about Becca and her mother. I hoped it would lay a guilt trip on Rick, but it fell flat, so when he gets home from school I'm going to do what I originally planned. When he's through mucking out stalls, and staring at the wall in his room when his friends are doing other things, and not having a dime to his name for the next six months, he might give some thought to what he did. He'll also tell me who the other boys were. I plan to talk to their parents."
"Don't bother," Jayne said. "His teacher said the parents are as difficult as the boys. But after school today I'm going to tell Becca why I went to jail and answer any questions she might have, including those about her father. I don't agree with what you and the others are doing, hiding the truth about the boys' conceptions from them, but it's your decision, so I'd never say anything."
"Actually, I don't agree either," Sam said, "but for now, it's easier to let things be."
"It's hard to tell kids things you know will hurt them," Jayne said. "I put off telling Becca last night by convincing myself I should see how Ricky responded after you talked to him."
Sam gave a cynical guffaw. "Which was like a kid whose been pandered to way too much. I'm pretty damn pissed with him at the moment. He's screwing up my life along with Becca's, yours and his own. One kid, giving us all hell. Maybe I should think about sending him to live with Susan. Maybe her stud would pound some sense into his head."
"You know you won't do that," Jayne said. "Besides, I doubt Susan would take him. She'd have to be a fulltime mother again."
"You're right on both counts," Sam said. "It was just a thought. But right now I'm fresh out of ideas. All I know is you're not walking out of my life. I love you, and you will marry me. I just haven't figured out how to make it happen."
Jayne eyed him steadily, as she said, "Would you wait for me if we raised our kids alone? I could move to the neighborhood where Becca's mother lived, maybe even into the same house if it's still available, and you and I could get together on occasion, more often when the kids are in high school and want to be with their friends, then, in seven years, after Ricky and Becca have graduated from high school, we could get married."
"Seven years is a long time," Sam said. "I don't want to wait that long."
Jayne realized Sam had just laid it all on the line. He had everything to offer a woman. A home, love, security. Being sterile didn't matter either; lots of women had no desire to have kids of their own. But before Sam could answer, Grace came rushing over to meet them, and said to Sam, in an excited voice, "The school just called and said Ricky was in a fight and is in the principal's office, and you need to pick him up."
Sam let out a string of expletives and rushed for his truck.
And Jayne headed for the lodge and her office to make up an ad to post on the internet for her position. If Sam couldn't wait seven years to marry her, then so be it. Becca would not be staying where her life would be more miserable than it had been before.
CHAPTER 13
Sam slammed the door to the truck, rushed into the school, and was immediately directed into the principal's office and told that the principal would be there shortly. On entering the room, he was even more annoyed to see Ricky with an ice pack on his eye, and holding a cloth to his bloodied nose. "You'd better have a damn good explanation for this!" he said, in a voice that made Ricky flinch.
"I didn't hit them below the belt like you said not to do," Ricky said, looking up at Sam while holding the icepack against his eye so it wouldn't fall off.
"I never told you to hit anyone at all," Sam snapped. "You'll be suspended now. What in hell is going on with you? I've about reached my limit, and don't give me any crap about some guy starting it first. You know school rules about fighting." He wasn't even interested in hearing Ricky's side. The kid was going to hell in a hand basket.
"But the other guys did start it," Ricky said, dabbing at his nose, "and I'm glad I knocked Ira's tooth out."
"You what?!"
"I knocked Ira Magoon's tooth out. Well, I didn't knock it clear out, but it was real loose, so maybe it'll fall out, but he was punching me hard where you told me not to hit guys, and it made me mad so I gave him an uppercut and punched him in the mouth and smashed his tooth, and I hope it falls out."
"Shi—" Sam cut it off, along with the other words that would have followed, when the principal walked into the room.
"Mr. Hansen," the principal said, "I'm afraid we'll have to suspend Ricky for three days for fighting, since we can't allow it at school."
"Yeah, I understand," Sam said, glaring at Ricky, "and I guarantee, after three days on the ranch he'll be ready to go back to school and won't be fighting again. Come on," he said to Rick, "you might as well get started mucking out stalls."
Sam went to grab Ricky's arm, when the principal said, "There's a little more to it, Mr. Hansen. You might want to sit down."
Sam clenched his jaws. More to it? How much more trouble could one nine-year-old kid cause? He lowered himself to a chair facing the principal's desk and waited.
The principal braced his arms on his desk, leaned forward, and said, "A couple of boys who tend to be troublemakers were harassing the new girl, Becca Hamilton—her mother works for you at the ranch—and Ricky confronted them. I don't know who threw the first punch, but they all ended up with bloodied noses and black eyes. The other boys have also been suspended."
"Wait a minute," Sam said, when the realization of what happened finally dawned. "You said Ricky was standing up for Becca Hamilton?"
"Yes," the principal replied. "Becca told me her side of the story and it seems that the boys had been saying derogatory things about her mother. Ricky took exception to it and told the boys to shut up or he'd punch their lights out, and the bigger of the boys told him to go right ahead. According to Becca, the boy raised his fists to strike, and that's when Ricky hit him. The smaller boy joined in against Ricky, and Ricky seems to have taken them both on. When the recess monitor got there, they all had bloody noses."
Sam looked at Ricky, who was staring at the floor, and said, "I'm sorry Rick. I thought you'd been fighting for other reasons. You did the right thing."
The principal sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. "Actually, Ricky didn't," he said. "Fighting is strictly forbidden on school grounds."
"That might be," Sam said, "but my son still did the right thing. Go ahead and suspend him, since it's school policy, but just for the record, I'm real proud of him."
The principal looked at Ricky, and said to him, "Well, sometimes things are best settled off school grounds, and it's always better to do it without fighting, but you may also have something to tell your father about how it all started."
Ricky hung his head, while staring at the floor, and said nothing.
"Mr. Nelson asked you to do something, Rick," Sam said, feeling a blend of anger and pride for his son. Anger because Ricky started the whole mess. Pride because he took action to stop it, even if the action broke school rules. "So, tell me. How did it start?"
Ricky shrugged. "I mighta said something about Becca's mother to Ira and Kyle."
Sam eyed Ricky and waited to see if he'd tell him more, and when he didn't, he said, "Well, you see how it ended up hurting a lot of people, including yourself, but mostly it hurt Becca. And Jayne's not real happy about this either."
Ricky looked at Sam, alarmed. "She knows?"
"Yeah, she knows," Sam said. "On Friday, Becca came home from s
chool crying and wouldn't tell Jayne why because she didn't want to get you in trouble, so Jayne drove over here to talk to your teacher, and as soon as your teacher told her that some boys were teasing Becca about her mother being a jailbird, Jayne knew exactly where it started, and so do you." Seeing the look of remorse on Ricky's face, Sam felt the first flicker of hope that, after weeks of Ricky being a total pain in the butt, he was finally turning around. "So then, tell me how it all started."
Ricky looked at him, and said, "Ira and Kyle told Becca they were gonna tell the other kids about her mother if Becca didn't give them her lunch, so I told them if they didn't leave Becca alone I'd beat their faces in and make them eat dirt for lunch. Then Ira said I was a wimp and couldn't make a girl eat dirt, and he'd do whatever he wanted and I could try and stop him. That's when he raised his fists to punch me, and I got him first. Then Kyle started punching me too. But when I was through, Ira said he wouldn't bother Becca anymore, and Kyle does whatever Ira does. Can we go now?"
Sam looked at the principal, who said to Ricky, "Yes, you may go."
As they were leaving, the principal said to Sam, "Today we sent notes home with the students about bring-a-parent-to-school day, which will be this Friday. Each parent can talk five minutes about what they do. Ricky will be off suspension by then so maybe he could bring you and you could tell the students about the legend of the spring. Becca can bring her mother too if she'd like, although under the circumstances maybe it would be best if she didn't."
Sam looked at Ricky, who wore a troubled frown, and he knew Ricky was thinking about how it would be for Becca with the other kids bringing parents to school and Becca's mother now known as the jailbird because of him. Sam hoped Ricky would feel remorse and learn a valuable lesson that he'd carry with him throughout his life. He also hoped Becca would find some forgiveness in her, even if Ricky had done her a terrible wrong because, for the first time in weeks, Sam felt there was some hope that he and Jayne could make a family, if this was handled right. So in the car on the way back to the ranch, he said to Ricky, who was staring out his side window, obviously in deep thought, "I'm not going to make you apologize to Becca."
Living With Lies Trilogy (Books 1, 2, and 3 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) Page 58