by Nora Roberts
“A business.” This time Tod’s laugh was long and delighted. “You? Don’t pull my leg so hard, it hurts.”
Now Cam’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t doubt Tod Bardette of East Texas would be joined by others of his friends and acquaintances in laughing at the idea of Cameron Quinn, businessman.
“We’re building boats,” he said between his teeth. “Here on the Eastern Shore. Wooden boats. Custom jobs,” he added, determined to play it to the hilt. “One of a kinds. In six months, you’ll be paying me top dollar to design and build you a boat by Quinn. Since we’re old friends, I’ll try to squeeze you in.”
“Boats.” The interest in Tod’s voice picked up. “Well now, you know how to sail them, guess maybe you’d know how to build them.”
“There’s no maybe about it.”
“That’s an interesting enterprise, but come on, Cam, you’re not a businessman. You’re not going to stay stuck on some pretty little bay in Maryland eating crabs and nailing planks. You know I’ll make this race worth your while. Money, fame, and fortune.” And he chuckled. “After we win, you can go back and put a couple of little sloops together.”
He could handle it, Cam promised himself. He could handle the insults, the frustration of not being able to pack and go as he chose. What he wouldn’t do was give Bardette the satisfaction of knowing he was ruffled. “You’re going to have to find another skipper. But if you want to buy a boat, give me a call.”
“If you actually get one finished, give me a call.” A sigh came through the receiver. “You’re missing the chance of a lifetime here. You change your mind in the next couple hours, get in touch. But I need to nail down my crew this week. Talk to you.”
And Cam was listening to a dial tone.
He didn’t hurl the receiver through the window. He wanted to, considered it, then figured he’d be the one sweeping up the glass, so what would be the point?
So he hung up the phone, with careful deliberation. He even took a deep breath. And if whatever he’d put in the washing machine hadn’t chosen that moment to spin out of balance and send the machine hopping, he wouldn’t have slammed his fist into the wall.
“I thought for a minute there you were going to pull it off.”
He whirled, and saw his father sitting at the kitchen table, chuckling. “Oh, God, this caps it.”
“Why don’t you get some ice for your knuckles?”
“It’s all right.” Cam glanced down at them. A couple of scrapes. And the sharp pain was a good hold on reality. “I thought about this, Dad. Really thought about it. I just don’t believe you’re here.”
Ray continued to smile. “You’re here, Cam. That’s what matters. It was tough turning down a race like that. I’m grateful to you. I’m proud of you.”
“Bardette said he had a honey of a boat. With his money behind it . . .” Cam pressed his hands on the counter and stared out the window toward the quiet water. “I could win that bastard. I captained a crew to second in the Little America’s Cup five years ago, and I took the Chicago-Mackinac last year.”
“You’re a fine sailor, Cam.”
“Yeah.” He curled his fingers into fists. “What the hell am I doing here? If this keeps up I’m going to get hooked on soap operas. I’ll start thinking Lilac and Lance are not only real people but close personal friends. I’ll start obsessing that my whites aren’t white enough. I’ll clip coupons and collect recipes and go the rest of the way out of my fucking mind.”
“I’m surprised at you, thinking of tending a home in those terms.” Ray’s voice was sharp now, with disappointment around the edges. “Making a home, caring for family is important work. The most important work there is.”
“It’s not my work.”
“It seems it is now. I’m sorry for that.”
Cam turned back. If you were going to have a conversation with a hallucination, you might as well look at it. “For what? For dying on me?”
“Well, that was pretty inconvenient all around.”
He would have laughed, the comment and the ironic tone were so typically Ray Quinn. But he had to get out what was nibbling at his mind. “Some people are saying you aimed for the pole.”
Ray’s smile faded, and his eyes turned sober and sad. “Do you believe that?”
“No.” Cam let out a breath. “No, I don’t believe that.”
“Life’s a gift. It doesn’t always fit comfortably, but it’s precious. I wouldn’t have hurt you and your brothers by throwing mine away.”
“I know that,” Cam murmured. “It helps to hear you say it, but I know that.”
“Maybe I could have stopped things. Maybe I could have done things differently.” He sighed and turned the gold wedding band around and around on his finger. “But I didn’t. It’s up to you now, you and Ethan and Phillip. There was a reason the three of you came to me and Stella. A reason the three of you came together. I always believed that. Now I know it.”
“And what about the kid?”
“Seth’s place is here. He needs you. He’s in trouble right now, and he needs you to remember what it was like to be where he is.”
“What do you mean, he’s in trouble?”
Ray smiled a little. “Answer the phone,” he suggested seconds before it rang.
And then he was gone.
“I’ve got to start getting more sleep,” Cam decided, then yanked the receiver off the hook. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Hello? Mr. Quinn?”
“Right. This is Cameron Quinn.”
“Mr. Quinn, this is Abigail Moorefield, vice principal of St. Christopher Middle School.”
Cam felt his stomach sink to his toes. “Uh-huh.”
“I’m afraid there’s been some trouble here. I have Seth DeLauter in my office.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Seth was in a fight with another student. He’s being suspended. Mr. Quinn, I’d appreciate it if you could come to my office so matters can be explained to you and you can take Seth home.”
“Great. Wonderful.” At his wits’ end, Cam dragged a hand through his hair. “On my way.”
The school hadn’t changed much, Cam noted, since he’d done time there. The first morning he’d passed through those heavy front doors, Stella Quinn had all but dragged him.
He was nearly eighteen years older now, and no more enthusiastic.
The floors were faded linoleum, the light bright from wide windows. And the smell was of contraband candy and kid sweat.
Cam jammed his hands in his pockets and headed for the administration offices. He knew the way. After all, he’d beaten a path to those offices countless times during his stay at St. Chris Middle.
It wasn’t the same old eagle-eyed secretary manning the desk in the outer room. This one was younger, perkier, and beamed smiles all over him. “May I help you?” she asked in a bouncing voice.
“I’m here to post bail for Seth DeLauter.”
She blinked at that, and her smile turned puzzled. “I beg your pardon?”
“Cameron Quinn to see the VP.”
“Oh, you mean Mrs. Moorefield. Yes, she’s expecting you. Second door down the little hallway there. On the right.” Her phone rang and she plucked it up. “Good morning,” she sang, “St. Christopher’s Middle School. This is Kathy speaking.”
Cam decided he preferred the battle-ax who had guarded the offices in his day to this terminally pert newcomer. Even as he started toward the door, his back went up, his jaw set—and his palms went damp.
Some things, he supposed, never changed.
Mrs. Moorefield was sitting behind her desk, calmly entering data into a computer. Cam thought her fingers moved efficiently. And the movement suited her. She was neat and trim, probably early fifties. Her hair was short and sleek and light brown, her face composed and quietly attractive.
Her gold wedding band caught the light as her fingers moved over the keys. The only other jewelry she wore were simple gold shells at her ears.
Across
the room, Seth was slumped in a chair, staring up at the ceiling. Trying to look bored, Cam assumed, but coming off as sulky. Kid needed a haircut, he realized and wondered who was supposed to deal with that. He was wearing jeans frayed to strings at the cuffs, a jersey two sizes too big, and incredibly dirty high-tops.
It looked perfectly normal to Cam.
He rapped on the doorjamb. Both the vice principal and Seth glanced over, with two dramatically different expressions. Mrs. Moorefield smiled in polite welcome. Seth sneered.
“Mr. Quinn.”
“Yeah.” Then he remembered he was supposed to be here as a responsible guardian. “I hope we can straighten this out, Mrs. Moorefield.” He stuck his own polite smile into place as he stepped to her desk and offered a hand.
“I appreciate your coming in so quickly. When we have to take regrettable disciplinary action such as this against a student, we want the parents or responsible parties to have the opportunity to understand the situation. Please, Mr. Quinn, sit down.”
“What is the situation?” Cam took his seat and found he didn’t like it any more than he used to.
“I’m afraid Seth physically attacked another student this morning between classes. The other boy is being treated by the school nurse, and his parents have been informed.”
Cam lifted a brow. “So where are they?”
“Both of Robert’s parents are at work at the moment. But in any case—”
“Why?”
Her smile returned, small, attentive, questioning. “Why, Mr. Quinn?”
“Why did Seth slug Robert?”
Mrs. Moorefield sighed. “I understand you’ve only recently taken over as Seth’s guardian, so you may not be aware that this isn’t the first time he’s fought with other students.”
“I know about it. I’m asking about this incident.”
“Very well.” She folded her hands. “According to Robert, Seth demanded that Robert give him a dollar, and when Robert refused to pay him, Seth attacked him. At this point,” she added, shifting her gaze to Seth, “Seth has neither confirmed nor denied. School policy requires that students be suspended for three days as a disciplinary action when involved in a fight on school premises.”
“Okay.” Cam rose, but when Seth started to get up, he pointed a finger. “Stay,” he ordered, then crouched until they were eye to eye. “You try to shake this kid down?”
Seth jerked a shoulder. “That’s what he says.”
“You slugged him.”
“Yeah, I slugged him. Went for the nose,” he added with a thin smile, and shoved at the straw-colored hair that flopped into his eyes. “It hurts more.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“Maybe I didn’t like his fat face.”
With his patience as frayed as Seth’s jeans, Cam gripped Seth by the shoulders. When Seth winced and hissed in a breath, alarm bells went off. Before Seth could evade him, Cam tugged the arm of the oversized jersey down. Nasty little bruises—knuckle rappers, Cam would have called them—ran from Seth’s shoulder to his elbow.
“Get off me.” His face heated with shame, Seth squirmed, but Cam merely shifted him. Scrapes were scored high on Seth’s back, red and raw.
“Hold still.” Cam moved his grip and laid his hands on the arms of the chair. His eyes stayed on Seth. “You tell me what went down. And don’t even think about lying to me.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I didn’t ask you what you wanted. I’m telling you to spill it. Or,” he said, lowering his voice so only Seth could hear, “are you going to let that punk get away clean?”
Seth opened his mouth, closed it again. He had to set his jaw so it wouldn’t wobble. “He was pissed off. We had this history test the other day and I aced it. An idiot could’ve gotten an ace, but he’s less than an idiot and he flunked. So he kept hassling me, dogged me down the hall, jabbing at me. I walked away because I’m sick to death of ISS.”
“Of what?”
Seth rolled his eyes. “In-School Suspension. It’s boring. I didn’t want to do more time, so I walked. But he kept jabbing and calling me names. Egghead, teacher’s pet, and all that shit. Didn’t let it bother me. But then he shoved me back against the lockers and he said I was just a son of a whore and everybody knew it, so I decked him.”
Shamed and sick, he jerked a defiant shoulder. “So I get a three-day vacation. Big deal.”
Cam nodded and rose. When he turned around his eyes were nearly black with fury. “You’re not suspending this kid for defending himself against an ignorant bully. And if you try, I’ll go over your head to the Board of Education.”
Shocked to the core, Seth stared up at Cam. Nobody had ever stood up for him. He’d never expected anyone to stand up for him.
“Mr. Quinn—”
“Nobody calls my brother a son of a whore, Mrs. Moorefield. And if you don’t have a school policy against vicious name-calling and harassment, you damn well should. So I’m telling you, you better take another look at this situation. And you better rethink just who gets suspended here. And you can tell little Robert’s parents that if they don’t want their kid crying over a bloody nose, they better teach him some manners.”
She took a moment before speaking. She’d been teaching and counseling children for nearly thirty years. What she saw on Seth’s face at that moment was hope, stunned and wary, but hope nonetheless. It was a look she didn’t want to extinguish.
“Mr. Quinn, you can be certain that I will investigate this matter further. I wasn’t aware that Seth had been injured. If you’d like to take him down to the nurse while I speak with Robert and . . . others—”
“I can take care of him.”
“As you wish. I’ll hold the suspension in abeyance until I’ve satisfied myself with the facts.”
“You do that, Mrs. Moorefield. But I’m satisfied with the facts. Now I’m taking Seth home for the rest of the day. He’s had enough.”
“I agree with you.”
The child hadn’t looked shaken when he’d come into her office, she thought. He’d looked cocky. He hadn’t looked shaken when she’d told him to sit down and called his home. He’d looked belligerent.
But he looked shaken now, finally, with his eyes wide and stunned and his hands gripping the arms of the chair. The thin, hard shield he’d kept tight around him, a shield neither she nor any of his teachers had been able to so much as scratch, appeared to be deeply dented.
Now, she decided, they would see what they could do for him.
“If you will bring Seth into school in the morning and meet with me here, we’ll resolve the matter.”
“We’ll be here. Let’s go,” he said to Seth and headed out.
As they walked down the hall toward the front doors, their footsteps echoed hollowly. Cam glanced down, noted that Seth was staring at his shoes.
“Still gives me the creeps,” he said.
Seth shoved at the door. “What?”
“The way it sounds when you take the long walk to the VP’s office.”
Seth snorted, hunched his shoulders and kept walking. His stomach felt as if a thousand butterflies had gone to war inside it.
The American flag on the pole near the parking lot snapped in the wind. From an open window behind them, the pathetically off-key sounds of a mid-morning music class clamored. The elementary school was separated from the middle by a narrow swatch of grass and a few sad-looking evergreen bushes.
Across the small outdoor track stood the brown brick of the high school. It seemed smaller now, Cam noted, almost quaint, and not at all like the prison he’d once imagined it to be.
He remembered leaning lazily against the hood of his first secondhand car in the parking lot and watching girls. Walking through those noisy hallways from class to class, and watching girls. Sitting in the butt-numbing chairs during brain-numbing classes. And watching girls.
The fact that his high school experience came back to him in a parade of varying female forms
made him almost sentimental.
Then a bell rang shrilly, and the noise level through the open windows behind him erupted. Sentiment dried up quickly. Thank God, was all he could think, that chapter of his life was over.
But it wasn’t over for the kid, he remembered. And since he was here, he could try to help him through it. They opened opposite doors of the ’Vette, and Cam paused, waited for their eyes to meet. “So, do you figure you broke the asshole’s nose?”
A glimmer of a smile worked around Seth’s mouth. “Maybe.”
“Good.” Cam got in, slammed the door. “Going for the nose is fine, but if you don’t want a lot of blood messing things up, go for the belly. A good, solid short arm punch to the gut won’t leave as much evidence.”
Seth considered the advice. “I wanted to see him bleed.”
“Well, you make your choices in life. Pretty good day for a sail,” he decided as he started the engine. “Might as well.”
“I guess.” Seth picked at the knee of his jeans. Someone had stood up for him, was all his confused mind could think. Had believed him, defended him, and taken his part. His arm hurt, his shoulders ached, but someone had taken his part. “Thanks,” he muttered.
“No problem. You mess with one Quinn, you mess with them all.” He glanced over as he drove out of the lot and saw Seth staring at him. “That’s how it shakes down. Anyway, let’s get some burgers or something to take on the boat.”
“Yeah, I could eat.” Seth swiped a hand under his nose. “Got a dollar?”
When Cam laughed and punched the accelerator it was one of the best moments of Seth’s life.
The wind was out of the southwest and steady so that the marsh grasses waved lazily. The sky was clear and cheerfully blue, the perfect frame for the heron that rose up, out of the waving grass over the glinting water, then down like a flashing white kite to catch an early lunch.
On impulse, Cam had tossed some fishing gear into the boat. With any luck they’d have fried fish for dinner.
Seth already knew more about sailing than Cam had expected. He shouldn’t have been surprised by it, he realized. Anna had said the boy had a quick mind, and Ethan would have taught him well, and patiently.