“How can you say that?” Charlotte Dickerson stood. She’d been sitting in the front row on the other side of the aisle from Kristen and Sam. She pointed at Brian. The conference room grew silent once more. “My son’s dead, and you’re saying it’s his fault? That that Wilmington boy and the father who beat him aren’t responsible for getting my Bubba shot? You think just because Bubba teased other kids and was bigger than they were, he deserved to die?”
“Of course not.” The fear of that day clogged Brian’s throat until he had to force his next words out. “I’m so sorry for what’s happened to your family. To all of our families. Cade’s still alive, but he’s mostly lost to his mother and me still. We’re not sure how much of who he was we’ll be able to get back, and neither are Nate Turner’s parents. But at least we have our children with us still. I can’t imagine…” He cleared his throat and wiped a finger down his nose to brush away the moisture seeping from his eyes. “I can’t let my mind go to a place where it was my son or my wife who’d died that day. It’s a terrible place that I’ve been to before, when I thought I’d lost Sam in New York. I think a part of me will always be there, to the point where I’ve been letting the fear of it damn near destroy my family. The way this town is using fear to hurt one another now.”
Charlotte was openly weeping, sobbing, her husband standing up to curl her body into his while he glowered at Brian, and then the board.
“He’s right,” Chuck Dickerson bellowed loud enough for the people in the very back of the auditorium to hear. “Charlotte and me will have our day in court to deal with what happened to our boy. But what you folks are doing here, wanting to assign blame to people at the school, so you can wash your hands of this town’s responsibility for taking a long, hard look at each of our lives… Well, that’s just bullshit. And it don’t do no one any good in the end. Going after Ms. Hemmings or Mrs. Baxter won’t bring Bubba back or fix any of the other kids who were hurt. It won’t change the fact that the Wilmington family’s lost their boy, too, probably forever.”
“Well, I for one think Chandler Elementary has a lot to answer for.” James Turner stood up from the row behind the Dickersons, where he and Beverly were sitting. “Where was Ms. Hemmings or Roy Griffin or Mrs. Baxter when that Wilmington bastard gunned down my son? We entrusted teachers and our school staff with our children’s safety, and this is what we get? Nate couldn’t make it through a morning at school today. Rumor has it your boy’s flunking out, Brian. Lord knows what Sally Beaumont and the other kids in Mrs. Baxter’s class are going through, not that Beverly and I would know. We’ve got our hands full dealing with Nate and trying to pick up the pieces of our own lives. And you, Ms. Hemmings, you think you’ve got nothing to do with any of this?” James drilled Kristen with a killing glare. “Except for how every school policy and procedure was followed to the letter? Well, that’s just great. I hope it helps us and Nate sleep at night, as nicely as it does you.”
“I’ve hardly slept a full hour a night since the shooting, Mr. and Mrs. Turner,” Kristen said. She looked to Chuck and Charlotte. “Mrs. and Mrs. Dickerson. My heart’s breaking for all of the families and children who’ve been hurt by this tragedy. I’ve tried to speak with all of you individually, including the Wilmingtons and the Beaumonts. The only parents who’ve welcomed my attempts to discuss the situation have been Mr. and Mrs. Perry. And I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve shared with them. Our school should have been a safe place for your boys and girls, and I hold myself personally responsible that it wasn’t in this instance. But my staff and I did what we thought possible to protect our students, including tracking potentially volatile behavior in instances where we thought there might be a threat to the student body. Nothing, absolutely nothing Troy ever did suggested that he was a cause for concern, or that he’d bring a weapon to school. So now we know that we need to do better, and we will. None of which will make up for what’s happened. But I hope you and the board will give us a chance to work harder for you and this community. We’re already implementing new bullying intervention procedures and programs, as well as a peer counseling initiative that would make it easier for a student to talk about interpersonal problems before they escalate to such a dangerous level.”
“You should start by expelling all the bullies from school,” Dan Beaumont said, standing up from one of the back rows near Pete. “Bubba Dickerson should have been out of Chandler Elementary a long time ago.”
“My son wasn’t a bully,” Charlotte insisted, her sadness hardening into the kind of bitter anger that Brian had been swallowing for months. “You shut your mouth.”
“Who are you kidding, lady?” Dan stomped down the center aisle. “My Sally told me what happened in the bus lane that day. How Cade and Nate had to pull Bubba off of Troy. Your son had been tormenting that poor kid all year.” He rounded on Kristen. “And where were you when all this was going on?”
“Supervising the hundred kids or so who take the bus to school every morning, Mr. Beaumont,” Kristen replied. “I’m sorry to say that I don’t have enough staff to supervise each and every one of them personally. When I became aware of something going on between the boys on Troy’s bus, I intervened and was told nothing was wrong. Until I saw differently with my own eyes, or one of the students changed his story, there was wasn’t anything more I could do.”
“So my son’s dead because you’re understaffed?” Chuck Dickerson ranted. “If that’s the best you got, lady, then maybe you don’t need to be working at our school any longer.”
“Your boy’s dead because he was an asshole,” Sally’s father said. “He finally picked on the wrong skinny, defenseless kid, and Troy decided to fight back.”
“You son of a bitch.” Chuck was climbing over people to get to Dan.
“Enough!” Brian stepped between the two men, his hands planted on Chuck’s overmuscled chest. The man had been known to bench-press 550 on a light day. He could plow right through Brian if he wanted to. “This isn’t going to solve anything or bring Bubba back, Chuck. Don’t do this to your wife.”
Pete had arrived at Dan’s side. He had a firm grip on the other man’s arm, keeping him from taking on Bubba’s father.
“Kristen and Roy and the rest of the staff at the school aren’t the problem here,” Dan spit out, struggling against Pete’s hold. “You are, Chuck, and your wife, and Troy’s lousy excuse for a father. You raised these boys to be monsters. Then you cut ’em loose amongst the rest of our kids and our community, and you didn’t give a damn what they’d do, did you?”
“I’m going to kill you.” Chuck tried to shove his way to Dan again. He reared back and swung his fist, connecting just below Brian’s right eye.
“Brian!” Sam yelled as he went down and the meeting disintegrated into chaos.
“Order!” Mike hammered his gavel as Chuck tackled both Dan and Pete. “Order, this is completely unacceptable.”
Kristen helped Brian to his feet. Then, to her credit, she waded into the battle, pulling Chuck away while Pete tried to neutralize Dan.
“Please!” a distraught female voice said, both soft and shrill, and hysterical in a soulless way that somehow captured everyone’s attention.
All four men were standing now, bloody and bruised and trying to breathe in enough air to stop wheezing. As one, Brian and Chuck and Dan and Pete turned to stare at the woman who’d slipped unnoticed into the auditorium at some point during the proceedings, to stand in the shadows by the EXIT sign.
“Please,” Edna Wilmington begged. Troy’s mother’s gaze roamed from one corner of the room to another, finally landing on the men standing at its center, then shifting to the board itself. “Please stop this. We’re all hurting. My son…” She pressed her hand to her mouth. “I can’t tell you how badly he’s hurting for what he’s done. For hurting other children that way…” She dropped her hand, clenching it with her other one. “The way I’ve let my husband hurt him and me for so long. It’s my fault.” She sobbed the words, he
r pain so honest and awful, none of them could look away. “Please, the only way this stops is if we stop hurting each other. For our children’s sake. We have to stop.”
Edna broke down then, her legs visibly giving out. She’d have sunk to the floor, but Sam had reached her side. Brian hadn’t seen his wife move, but there she was catching Edna close and helping her to a nearby seat. After kneeling in front of the other woman and exchanging a few soft words, Sam walked slowly back toward the center aisle. But instead of collapsing into her own seat, she continued to Brian’s side and took his hand, staring evenly at Dan and Chuck until both men lowered their gazes to the floor. James Turner was still scowling from his seat beside his wife, but for once he kept his silence.
Brian turned toward the front of the room. He squeezed his wife’s hand, knowing what being at the center of the conflict, not to mention seeing him knocked on his ass, must be doing to her nerves. But that hadn’t stopped her. Nothing had stopped her the entire day, no matter how exhausted she must be. He’d never been prouder.
Kristen returned to the speaker’s podium.
He could feel the weight of everyone’s attention settle onto them as he and Sam and Chandler’s assistant principal stared down the board and waited for someone to say something.
Julia Davis reached for one of the mics.
“Thank you,” she said to all the parents standing in the center aisle, representatives in their own way of the families and lives that had been irreparably damaged by the shooting. Her gaze fell to Edna Wilmington, then swept to Mike Johnson, who sat mutely in his superintendent’s spot. “I think the rest of the board would join me in thanking all of you, including Ms. Hemmings, for your honesty in sharing what you know of what happened the day of the shooting, as well as how it’s affecting our town, our school, and our families.”
Every member of the board nodded, each of them waiting for Julia to continue.
“I find myself agreeing with Brian Perry and Chuck Dickerson. While we do need to get to the bottom of the details of that day, so we can learn from our mistakes and better protect our children and staff, I don’t see how assigning blame will accomplish any of that. An investigative task force has been formed to audit Chandler Elementary’s student discipline and crisis procedures, and I’ve been appointed its chair. Until the time that we have a final report on whether all safety measures in place were appropriately followed, it’s my recommendation that this board redirect its energies on moving our community forward in every way that we can. Including assisting our citizens who have been hurt so deeply, as well as preventing further tragedies like this one from taking place.”
The audience began murmuring again.
The board members whispered among themselves, each of them nodding toward the superintendent.
“Then if there’s no counter to Councilwoman Davis’s recommendation”—Mike raised his gavel, as if to call the session to a close—“I hereby—”
“Wait.” Keeping his wife by his side, Brian stepped to Kristen’s podium and swiveled her microphone until he could speak into it. “I wanted to say one final thing before we leave tonight, to the council and everyone here. As I said, Sam and I have unfortunately been through something like this before…”
He felt Sam stiffen beside him. Her hand tried to pull free of his, but he held her close. He needed his wife to hear this most of all.
“And what we’ve learned from every mistake we’ve made since that experience is that the only way through trauma this horrible is to focus on healing. On healing ourselves and our families and the others who’ve been hurt in our community. Being honest. Talking. Leave the rest of it for the media and the politicians to sort out. But our school and our community’s parents and kids and families have to start talking about this for real. We have to stop pointing fingers and stop blaming each other.”
He glanced toward Chuck and Dan. Both men nodded, one after the other. Pete clapped a supportive hand on each of their shoulders.
“If we don’t protect each other,” Brian continued, “and listen to each other, and even let ourselves misbehave if we have to, and then give ourselves a safe place to come back to once we’re done, our community will never recover. Nothing’s going to take us back to a place where we thought school shootings couldn’t happen in Chandlerville. So we have to let that Chandlerville go, and figure out what we want our town to be now. My wife’s helping me realize that about my own family. It’s taken me too long, but I’m finally starting to understand what she’s been trying to tell me about our experience after 9/11—we can’t go back, and we’ll tear each other apart trying to. We can only go forward, from wherever we are now, trying to deal with what we have to… together.”
He glanced down at Sam.
If you don’t know how to break… she’d challenged him earlier that day.
Brian looked back at the board.
“We’re broken,” he confessed to his wife and his community. “Badly broken. As people, as families, and as a town. And if we can’t face that and accept our responsibility for fixing it, Chandlerville doesn’t have a chance in hell of becoming whole again.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Wow,” Sam said. She and Julia had slumped into a pair of the Davises’ Ethan Allen kitchen chairs. “You’ve had a busy night of rescuing assistant principals and fighting for Chandlerville’s soul.”
Julia snorted. “Tell me it hasn’t really been only six hours since I said almost the same thing to you.”
The school board meeting had broken up almost as soon as Brian finished speaking, the room roaring with motion and talking and neighbors reaching out to neighbors and then to their community representatives—not to cast more blame, but trying to figure out what the next step should be.
Brian had pulled Sam’s hand to his lips and given her a chaste kiss, admiration in his eyes, and love and… passion, before letting her go. She’d mumbled to Kristen that she’d be waiting in the parking lot and fled the auditorium and the panic of feeling the room shrinking around her and the air being sucked away by too many bodies.
It had taken an extra trip across town to deliver Kristen to her condo before Sam could return to the lane. She’d called Mallory to check on her boys, who’d been watching a video with Polly. Her friend had heard the exhaustion in Sam’s voice and insisted that Sam head straight to Julia’s and crawl into bed—Brian would pick up Cade and Joshua soon enough. Sam had made a brief stop at her own house first, though. She and Julia had pulled into the Davises’ driveway at practically the same time, just after eight, with Julia looking as run-down as Sam felt.
“You and Brian were something else tonight.” Julia massaged her temples, closing her eyes. “Kristen Hemmings, too. Roy’d better watch out. He’s got competition for his job when his contract’s up next year. My money’s on Kristen being Chandler’s next principal. She kept her cool, stuck to her guns, and handled every outlandish thing Mike threw at her. We couldn’t be in better hands with her volunteering to serve on the task force on the school’s behalf.”
“She’s pretty awesome.” Sam sat up straighter. “That’s why I went over to her place before the meeting to ask her for help.”
Julia lowered her hands to the table. “With what?”
“A waiver from the county, so I can homeschool Cade for the rest of the semester while following Chandler’s curriculum, so he can graduate with his class—assuming he’ll do the work he has to do to pass.”
“Really?” Julia’s surprise morphed into a proud smile. “You’re going to be a teacher again.”
“I asked if Kristen could work it out so I could do the same for Nate.”
“Really?” Her friend’s reaction this time was so deadpan, Sam laughed. Julia reached for her hand and squeezed. She headed to the coffeemaker in the corner. “Good for you. But I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the Turners to warm up to the idea. Not after tonight.”
“I know.” Sam’s heart was breaking for Nate. He’d s
eemed so… lost after his and Cade’s fight. “But I’m not giving up.”
“James Turner has called someone on the board to rant every day since the shooting. Beverly might be your way in. I’m not certain what she thinks herself, versus what she’s agreeing to in order to keep the peace at home.”
“Yeah, but—”
Before Sam could tell her friend about the fight she and Brian had broken up between the boys that afternoon, the butler’s door from the dining room swung inward and Walter staggered in. Sam glanced at the clock as he walked toward his wife. Walter had started early tonight. He usually waited until around nine to mix up the first of the several Jim Beam and Cokes he drank before he collapsed on the couch to sleep them off.
“It took you long enough to get home.” He gave Julia’s cheek a sloppy kiss that had Sam touching her own and remembering the firm softness of Brian’s lips. “It’s almost eight. Where you been all this time? I’m hungry.”
Julia ignored him for the few seconds it took her to finish setting up the coffee. She rounded on Walter and shoved him to the side, opening the freezer to pull out what Sam could hardly believe was permitted in the Davis house. Julia handed her husband a frozen dinner and turned him in the direction of the microwave that sat on its own shelf, custom-built above the halogen stove top.
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