She didn’t have long to wait to find out. When she arrived at school the following afternoon, the Cody who got into the car was a very different child from the one she’d dropped off earlier that morning.
“How was school, buddy?” she asked when he got into the car.
He looked out the window and muttered something.
“What did you say?” She turned in her seat to face him.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Well, how was school?”
He shook his head but did not look at her.
Uh-oh, she thought as she drove from the curb. This doesn’t bode well …
“So what did you do today?” she asked.
“I don’t want to talk.”
“Why not, baby?”
“Because I don’t and I’m not a baby,” he yelled. He still hadn’t looked at her.
Oh, God. Her hands began to shake and she clutched the wheel in an effort to make them stop.
She did not try to engage him in conversation the rest of the way home, and once they arrived, she drove in through the service entrance at the back of the property.
“Those cars out front, they’re all there because …” Cody said accusingly. “Because …”
It was then that Dallas realized he was crying. She stopped the car and turned off the ignition, then got out and opened his door. She unbuckled his seat belt but he made no move toward her.
“Cody, what happened today at school?” When he didn’t respond, she asked, “Does it have something to do with your dad?”
“They said he did things … with other ladies. Justin said his dad saw it on the computer and he heard his dad tell his mom.” Huge, fat drops ran down Cody’s face and Dallas’s heart began to break in half.
“Justin’s daddy said my daddy was a very, very bad man.”
Dallas had never felt so helpless in her life. She got into the backseat and rubbed Cody’s back, then coaxed him into her arms. How could she possibly explain this to her son?
“I’m never going back to school, Mommy. Not ever. Nobody can make me.” He hiccupped loudly. “Not even you.”
“All right, sweetie.” Silently cursing Emilio for his stupidity and his carelessness, Dallas held her son tight and let him cry it out. “It’s going to be all right. …”
But even as she promised, Dallas wondered if, for Cody, anything would ever be right again.
Coming Home is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2010 by Marti Robb
Excerpt from Home Again copyright © 2010 by Marti Robb
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming mass market edition of Home Again by Mariah Stewart. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52034-0
www.ballantinebooks.com
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books by this Author
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Copyright
The Chesapeake Diaries: Coming Home Page 31