Читать книгу Wolf Creek Father - Penny Richards - Страница 10
ОглавлениеColt scraped the fingers of both hands through his light brown, sun-bleached hair, rested his elbows on the desktop and clutched his aching head. The minute Allison Grainger was out of his sight, his anger had more or less dissolved. He resented her audacity, but he couldn’t deny that what she’d said, combined with what Ellie had told him, brought sharp focus to something he’d known for a while: he had a problem.
He wasn’t totally oblivious. He’d heard the whispers that accompanied the kids wherever they went. The people he considered true friends, like the Gentry brothers, had come straight out and told him pretty much what the teacher had—that he’d best get them in check before it was too late. As hard as it was to swallow, he knew they were all right. Something had to give. He didn’t want Brady to be illiterate or Cilla to be a shrew. Patrice certainly hadn’t been, and Colt didn’t think he was too cantankerous...except maybe when he dealt with the oh-so-prim Miss Grainger.
Why was he such a hopeless parent? He loved his kids. Would die for them. He tried to balance his time at home with work and gave them pretty much whatever they wanted, but according to Miss Grainger, they wanted boundaries. In other words, rules. Oh, he’d made lots of rules through the years. The problem was that he was much better at enforcing the laws of the land than he was at enforcing his own regulations.
He admitted to being bad about threatening them with dire consequences if they misbehaved but not following through. He knew he was too lenient and should punish them when that happened, but the thought of them being unhappy was more than he could stand, especially since he was their only parent. He supposed that leniency was his way of trying to make up for the loss of their mother.
Patrice had died when Brady was born, forcing Colt to take on the role of both parents. His son had been reasonably easy until he started school, but as Miss Grainger had told him time after time, he had a problem learning, which frustrated Colt and made Brady angry. Too often that anger drove him to disobedience.
Cilla, just five when her mother died, was definitely Daddy’s girl. Like her brother, she hadn’t been much of a problem until she’d begun to grow up. In a lot of ways, she seemed too old for her twelve years, and in others she was very immature.
In recent months, her moods had begun to fluctuate from childlike joy to pouty moodiness. Colt knew enough about the fairer sex to know that it was because she was fast approaching the time when she’d become a woman in the truest sense of the word. He had no idea how to explain the physical and emotional changes she was going through, so he just ignored them—and her—as best he could until her disposition changed back to something he could deal with. It seemed that women were born knowing how to deal with those emotional things men were not so good at.
There were times, though, like today, when he was forced to face his shortcomings. When that happened, he tried to put himself in their place and imagine what it must be like to grow up without a mother to confide in, talk to or look up to.
Wallowing in self-pity wouldn’t get him anywhere. The handwriting was on the wall. Looking the other way wouldn’t work this time. He knew Homer Talbot thought Allison Grainger was tops when it came to teachers, so it made sense that he would not want to lose her, which meant Colt would have to take charge of his progeny at last.
How are you going to do that? You haven’t been able to do it in seven years.
He had no earthly idea, but he thought he knew where to go to get some no-nonsense advice.
When Dan Mercer, Colt’s deputy, returned from running some errands, Colt left the office in his care and went to get Ellie’s take on things. Thankfully, the café was all but empty. Ellie was filling saltshakers. The expression on her face when she looked up told him she’d already heard the news.
“You’ve heard.”
She nodded and gestured toward an empty table. “From several folks, actually, including Allison.”
“Do you think she’s telling the truth?” Colt asked as he pulled out a chair for her.
Ellie glared at him over her shoulder. “Her story matches Sarah VanSickle’s.”
Colt planted his hands on his hips and tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling.
“Sit,” Ellie said.
He sat, and buried his face in his hands.
“Colt, look at me,” she commanded, circling his wrists with her fingers and tugging his hands down. His troubled gaze found hers. “You have to know...even I’ve told you...that the kids are...less than angels.”
A bitter laugh sputtered from his lips. “So it seems.”
“Well, then, the time has come for you to do something about it.”
“What? I don’t have a clue about what needs to be done.”
“Well, first you should stop letting them take advantage of you.”
“How do you figure?” he asked, scowling.
It was Ellie’s turn to laugh. “Everyone in town knows you’re tough on criminals and soft on your kids.”
His eyes widened in disbelief. That was exactly what he’d just been thinking. “So it’s a topic of dinner discussions, is it?”
“You know as well as I do that everyone’s circumstances are the topic of dinner discussions at one time or another,” she said with a little shrug.
“I’m all they have,” he said, as if that explained everything. “And they’re all I have of Patrice. Priscilla still misses her mom, and I hate to make things tougher on her by—” he spread his hands in a vague gesture “—being too strict. And Brady has never known what it is to have a mom, and as his only parent, I don’t want to be an ogre.”
“And they instinctively know that and use it to their advantage.”
“How could they know?”
“Children are like a wild animal stalking its prey,” Ellie said with a wry smile. “They instinctively know the weakest link. Even Beth is a master of it. It’s just a part of their makeup. I don’t want to make you angry,” she said, “but—”
“I have to get them under control,” he said.
“Yes.”
They sat in silence for several moments, while Colt digested the situation. It didn’t sit well. “Your sister said she would give up her teaching position before she spent another year with them.”
“She told me,” Ellie said in a gentle voice. “She’s a good teacher, Colt. A good person.”
“If you say so.”
Ellie smiled. “I do, and I think I’m in a position to know. Have you ever tried talking to Brady and Cilla about why they’re so disruptive?”
“I’ve had talks about them not misbehaving, but no, I’ve never tried to get to the root of why they do it.”
“Gracie has a theory,” Ellie told him. “And both Allison and I think she’s onto something. She believes they sabotage your associations because they don’t want to share you. I think she’s right.”
“That’s crazy,” Colt said with a hint of irritation.
“Is it? I started thinking back over the past year, and every time you’ve shown interest in a woman, they’ve done something to ruin things.”
It was true that something had gone wrong with each attempted relationship. Now, looking back, the kids were somehow the culprits in every case. Holly Jefferson. Leticia Farley. Jocelyn Cole. All of them had cried off, citing that they had too little in common and it would be silly to try to take things further. Rachel Stone was the exception. He and the lady doctor had soon realized that while they liked each other a lot, there was no romantic spark between them.
“If you plan to marry at some time in the future—”
“I do,” he said.
“Then you’d better make it clear to the kids that marrying again is your intention no matter what they think, how they feel about the woman or if they approve.”
“Isn’t that being a bit insensitive to their feelings?”
“Do they care about yours?” Ellie retorted. She reached out and gave his hand a friendly pat. “I don’t mean to sound cold, Colt. You should tell them that they must trust that you won’t fall in love with someone who will mistreat them or you.”
“I’d hope I’ll be smarter than that.”
“Allison made a good point, too.”
A muscle in Colt’s jaw knotted at the teacher’s name. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear anything she had to say about children. “And what profound statement did Saint Allison contribute?”
Ellie gave him a strange look. “She pointed out that children don’t always understand that you can love more than one person at a time,” Ellie said, “or that there are different kinds of love.”
Colt conceded that she had a point.
“The main thing to remember is that you’re the adult. You set the rules and the tone from here on out. If they don’t follow them, then there are consequences. And stick with those consequences!” she added, giving his hand a light slap. “Don’t let them butter you up to get on your good side. Believe me, they might not like it now, but they’ll thank you later.”
Boundaries, again. He blew out a deep breath and said the word aloud. It tasted like ashes in his mouth.
“What?”
“Your sister claims that children need boundaries, that they ache for boundaries.”
Ellie smiled. “She’s right. They do.”
“It’s a tall order, Ellie,” he said, rare uncertainty in his eyes.
“Perhaps,” she agreed, nodding, “but there’s far more to being a parent than doing your part in their conception. It means molding and shaping them into good people and productive citizens, and giving them the necessary skills to cope with whatever comes along. With God’s help, you can do this.”
God. Colt’s relationship with the Almighty was a topic he didn’t want to address. He’d once been a devoted Christian, but when God hadn’t answered his prayers to spare Patrice, Colt had turned his back on everything spiritual, though he still tried to live a decent, honest life.
“Who would have believed I’d be raising a couple of kids alone when Patrice and I got married?”
Who would have thought that circumstance would force him to cross the boundary into a woman’s role? But someone had to.
* * *
Colt thought about his conversation with Ellie all the way home. He had to admit that what she said made sense, and so did Gracie’s theory about why the kids were so unkind to the ladies he’d courted. Ellie agreed with her sister’s claim that children needed limitations, and as much as it galled him, and as uncertain as he was that he could set and maintain those restrictions, his gut told him they were right. He wanted to have children people liked, children whose behavior he could be proud of. It was no fun wondering when he would hear about another of their escapades.
He’d also talked with the young women he’d courted, and when pressed, they’d each acknowledged that Cilla and Brady were the real reasons behind their breaking things off.
The onus was definitely on him. It wouldn’t be easy, and it wouldn’t happen overnight, but he was nothing if not determined. Or maybe that was hardheadedness, something he’d passed on to his children.
Colt’s gaze sought the small white house situated at the edge of town. Smoke billowed from the open parlor windows. A giant fist seemed to grab his heart. Fire! Gripped with sudden panic, he broke into a run, sorting impressions as he went. No tongues of flame licked at the curtains, and he didn’t hear the pop and crackle of burning wood. The house didn’t appear to be on fire, so what was going on?
Breathing heavily, he pulled open the screen door, flinging it against the outer wall and rattling the windows in their frames. A thick fog of smoke and the stench of charred bacon assaulted him. Narrowing his burning eyes and waving his hand in front of his face in a futile attempt to dissipate the acrid air, he made his way to the kitchen. A quick look around the room told him he’d been right. There was no fire. Thank heaven.
Cilla stood at the open back door, an old apron of Patrice’s tied around her waist as she fanned the air with it, as if the feeble effort might clear the room faster. Brady stood bent over with his palms on his knees, hacking and coughing. A cast-iron skillet lay in the yard beyond the covered porch, where Cilla must have thrown it, its charred contents scattered about. The neighbor’s mutt approached a piece of the bacon, nudged it with his nose, whimpered and backed away. Colt wondered if it was still hot or if even the dog found it unpalatable.
“What happened?” he asked, nearing the two culprits.
They both looked at him, smoke-induced tears streaming down their cheeks. “I was trying to fix you some supper,” Cilla said, her blue eyes, so much like her mother’s, filled with remorse and trepidation.
Newly aware of how they played on his sympathies, and with the unexpected declaration coming so close on the heels of his talk with Ellie, little warning bells began to sound inside his head. Why was Cilla attempting to cook when she seldom had before? Was this one of those attempts to “butter him up,” as Ellie suggested?
“Why?” he asked, taking them each by the arm and ushering them out into the fresher air of the summer day.
Wide-eyed, Brady looked at Cilla, who was dabbing at her watering eyes with the hem of the apron. Colt waited.
Cilla finally looked at him, a limpid expression in her eyes. “I was going to fix you some bacon and pancakes since it’s your favorite and you hardly ever have them.”
Oh, yes. Definitely buttering him up. Colt hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his denim pants. “That’s mighty nice of you,” he said, “but why today of all days? Are we celebrating something?” He looked from one child to the other with feigned nonchalance.
“Uh, no, not really. We just thought it would be a nice thing to do, since you work so hard and everything.”
Never one to put off an unpleasant chore—unless it came to his children—Colt decided it was time to get on with it. No more dillydallying. After all, he was turning over a new leaf as a parent. “Then is anything wrong? Did something happen?” he asked with an inquisitive lift of his eyebrows.
Cilla stared into his eyes for long seconds, and turned to her brother with a sigh. “He knows, Brady.”
“Who told you?” Brady demanded, whipping up a healthy indignation.
“Miss Grainger.”
“That mean old tattletale!” Brady cried, his voice strident with outrage. Cilla gave an unladylike snort.
“Let’s go sit under the oak tree,” Colt said, gesturing toward the shaded area. “Maybe the house will air out enough to go back inside in a bit.”
When they were settled beneath the gnarled limbs of the tree, Colt stretched out his long denim-clad legs and crossed them. Where should he start? He decided to approach the situation the way Patrice would have. The trouble was, he had no notion of how she might have handled things.
“It’s way past time the three of us had a talk,” he said, deciding to jump in feet first.
“About what?” Cilla regarded him with wide-eyed innocence.
Colt pinned her with a look that said without words that she knew what was coming. She dropped her gaze and plucked at the apron still tied around her waist.
“We need to talk about you and Brady and the fact that the two of you are gaining quite a reputation. And not a good one, I might add.”
The children darted glances at each other.
“First let me explain that my position in town is an important one. It makes me look bad when the two of you are mixed up in one unpleasant incident after another.”
“What does it mean that you look bad?” Brady asked.
“It means that the whole town thinks that I’m a bad father. They think I don’t care about you enough to teach you how to behave, and that I’m allowing you to be hurtful, disrespectful and destructive.”
“But you do care!” Brady cried.
“Well, you know it and I know it, but folks in town think I’m letting you grow up with no discipline and no instruction on how to be good people.”
“That’s silly!”
“Is it?” he challenged. “Actions speak louder than words, son, and all they know is what they see, which doesn’t make any of us look good.”
“How are we destructive?” Brady asked.
Colt looked directly at Cilla. “Miss Grainger’s glasses are ruined. They can’t be fixed, so she’ll have to have new ones, and I’ll have to pay for them.”
Cilla’s gaze dropped to the hands clasped in her lap.
“And her hat was ruined in the scuffle.” He gave his daughter a look that said without words that he knew exactly how the hat had been damaged. “I’ll have to repay her for it and a new pair of gloves. The worst thing, though, is that she might have been hurt badly if her head had struck the corner of the counter.”
No one spoke for a while. Finally, Colt asked, “Do either of you even know why you do what you do?”
Cilla and Brady exchanged hangdog looks.
Cilla finally spoke. “When you come home at night and you’re in the same room with us, it doesn’t feel as if you’re really here,” she said, staring at the hands twisting in her lap. She glanced up and met his troubled gaze. “Sometimes it’s like you’ve gone off in your mind somewhere. When you scold me for something, you pay attention to me,” she confessed, looking up at last. “For a little while, anyway.”
Colt felt a stabbing pain in the vicinity of his heart. This was much worse than he’d thought. He attempted a light tone that fell far short of the mark.
“See? That’s what I mean. Everyone in town is right. I don’t pay enough attention to you. I need to change that.” He looked at his son. “Brady, why did you shove Miss Grainger?”
Brady stuck out his lower lip.
“Did she do something to upset you?”
“She said she was disappointed because I haven’t been reading this summer.”
“And so you pushed her?” Colt asked in an incredulous tone.
Brady nodded.
“Well, she should be disappointed,” Colt said, though the admission galled him no end. “I told her that I’d work with you on your reading this summer, and I haven’t been very consistent with it. It’s something we need to fix.”
“Pa! It’s summer,” the boy wailed.
“I understand that, but Miss Grainger is concerned about you falling behind in school. She wants your reading to improve so all your grades will get better. She told me that you get disrespectful when she tries to explain things to you, and you don’t listen. True?”
Brady nodded. “I don’t like it when she points out my mistakes in class. Everyone stares at me.”
Colt racked his brain for what their mother might have told them. “Behaving badly doesn’t change things,” he said at last. “You still feel bad and Miss Grainger feels frustrated. She has a job to do, and she’s doing her best to help you. If you don’t do your part, how can you expect to do better?”
The boy shrugged.
He turned to Cilla. “What’s your excuse for jumping into the fray?”
Her shoulders drooped. “I don’t know!” she cried. “I just get really angry sometimes, and I don’t have anyone to talk to about how I feel.”
Colt started to say that she had him, but they’d already established the fact that he wasn’t really there for her. “Explain what you mean,” he said.
Cilla gave a shake of her head, the loose dark curls, so like her mother’s, bouncing with the movement. “The girls at school talk about how they do things with their mothers, and it makes me sad and angry because I don’t have a mother to do things with. And Miss Grainger makes me madder than almost anyone, because she’s so sweet and happy all the time. She’s never sad. She never gets mad. Sometimes I just want to see if I can make her lose her temper.”
Colt could attest that the pint-size schoolmarm had a temper to equal anyone’s, but had learned to handle it...for the most part. Feeling like a total failure, he found himself wishing he’d never opened this Pandora’s box, but he knew he couldn’t stop now. There was still a lot to get into the open, a lot to understand.
“One more thing, and then we’ll talk about how we’re going to change things.”
“Sir?” they both said, sitting straighter.
“What about the bad things you’ve said and done to the ladies I’ve been squiring around town?”
“Who says we do?” Brady challenged, a belligerent tilt to his chin.
“I’ve talked to them all, and every last one says the two of you treated them differently when I wasn’t around. What about it, Cilla? You say you miss having a mother, so why do you try to come between me and every woman I show interest in? Don’t you want me to be happy?”
“We don’t want a stepmom!” Brady blurted. “They’re mean.”
“Who says?” Colt threw his son’s words back at him.
“Bobby Petty has a mean stepmother and mean stepsisters,” Brady responded, his expression grave.
Out of the mouths of babes, Colt thought. “It’s true that some stepparents can be unkind and unloving, but not always.”
When Brady didn’t answer, Colt continued. “Ben and Daniel Gentry both have new parents. They both seem pretty happy with the situation. Besides, do either of you think that I’d marry someone who didn’t care for you, or that I could even love someone like that?”
Brady shrugged. Cilla said, “She’ll have babies and you’ll like them better.”
Colt dragged a work-roughened hand down his face. “It’s true that I might have other children, but that doesn’t mean I would ever love either of you less. Love is something that grows the more you give.” Hadn’t Patrice often said as much?
Pinning them with a serious look, he said, “I want the two of you to listen to me. I do plan to marry someday, if I find a woman to love who loves us all, so you’d both better get used to that idea. Squiring a woman around doesn’t mean I’ll marry her, and doesn’t mean I won’t. Courting is a time when two people try to find out if they could be happy spending the rest of their lives together. So far, I haven’t found that woman, but if I had, and you’d driven her away, I’d be very disappointed in you. I’m onto your tricks now, so no more.”
“Yes, Pa,” Cilla said, her habitual look of innocence firmly in place.
“Okay,” he said. “Right here and now, the three of us are going to make a pact. I’ll do my best to be here for the two of you and you’re both going to stop behaving like brats. If you don’t, there will be consequences. Your bad behavior has to stop, and I mean from this moment on. Got it?”
Cilla opened her mouth to say something, but Colt reached out and tipped her head back, silencing her with a hard, unyielding gaze. “I mean it, Cilla. It ends right now, and I warn you not to try me on this. Now go wash up and comb your hair.”
“Why?” they asked in unison.
“We’re going to go to Miss Grainger’s house, and you’re both going to apologize for what you did.”
“Aw, Pa!” Brady cried. Cilla looked as if she’d like to argue, but for once, held her tongue.
“This isn’t negotiable. Now go.”
Cilla and Brady exchanged another stunned look and nodded. What on earth had gotten into their pa?
* * *
The first thing Allison did when she stepped through the door of her little house after leaving Ellie’s was to change into a faded navy skirt and a simple blue-patterned blouse that had seen better days. She left the top couple of buttons undone and rolled the sleeves up past her elbows. The pins holding her hair were digging into her scalp, so she took it down, ran a brush through it and covered the curly mass with a triangle of fabric to protect it from dust while she cleaned.
Cleaning was her cure-all for working through problems, sorrow or anger. She was out back, beating rugs that didn’t need it, when she saw the trio headed in her direction. Even without her glasses she knew who it was. Dismay skittered through her. Knowing it was too late to escape inside and pretend she wasn’t at home, she stood there, shoulders back, the rug beater clenched in her hand.
Was it her imagination or did the sheriff’s gaze linger on her exposed throat just a bit too long to be proper? Though she was dressed modestly, Allie felt the urge to hide from his piercing look.
“Miss Grainger,” he said, as he and the children stopped in front of her back porch.
“Sheriff. What can I do for you?”
Colt shifted his weight to one booted foot and hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. “I can see that you’re busy, so we won’t take much of your time. Cilla and Brady have something to say to you.” He gave the children a pointed look.
“I’m sorry, Miss Grainger,” Brady said. “It was wrong for me to push you. I didn’t think that you might get hurt.”
Allison saw genuine remorse in his eyes. Brady was not really a bad child, just a troubled one. “I accept your apology, Brady. We all act without thinking sometimes.”
“Even you?” he asked, looking up at her with a frown.
Allison thought of the way she’d stormed into Colt’s office with no thought but to give him a piece of her mind. “Even me,” she told him with a slight smile.
Cilla had yet to raise her gaze from the ground in front of her. Colt gave his daughter’s shoulder a nudge, and her chin came up to a haughty angle. “Sorry, Miss Grainger,” she quipped with one of her phony smiles.
“Priscilla...” The warning from her father was a low growl.
The girl gave a deep sigh, and the light of battle left her eyes. “I really am sorry, Miss Grainger. It was wrong of me to step on your glasses...and your...hat.” She gave a slight shrug. “I guess I was just taking up for Brady.”
The simple statement explained so much that Allison hadn’t understood before. In that split second, she realized that Cilla’s terrible conduct always came on the heels of an incident with Brady. It all made perfect sense. Cilla created a new calamity to take the attention from her little brother. While Allison couldn’t condone the girl’s actions, she applauded her devotion to Brady.
“I understand,” she said with a nod. “My sisters often fought my battles, too.”
With apologies made and accepted, she looked at Colt, whose face wore a bewildered expression.
“Well, we’ll let you get back to work now,” he said, placing a big hand on each child’s shoulder. “We’ll talk...later.”
Allison nodded. She would need to tell him this new insight into the situation. Surely it was something she could use to her advantage with changing Cilla’s attitude.
* * *
Colt was hardly aware of walking back home. His mind was still trying to come to terms with the picture of Allison Grainger without her prim-and-proper teacher persona in place.
He hoped he hadn’t made her uncomfortable with his staring, but wearing a simple skirt with a minimum of petticoats and an unadorned shirt, she looked nothing like her usual self.
He hadn’t been prepared for the pale perfection of her throat and shoulders or the soft contours of her bare arms, all spattered with freckles, as if someone had taken a paintbrush laden with gold dust and splashed it with carefree abandon over her creamy skin.
And her hair! Freed from the tight confines of her habitual knot and tied back with a scarf, the curly mass cascaded halfway down her back. Sunshine had given it a fiery, breathtaking radiance. He doubted she was aware how tempting the unassuming disarray was. And then there were the little spiral curls around her face that clung to her damp cheeks and forehead, just begging a man to brush them back....
Whoa! He caught his thoughts up short. What on earth was he doing, looking at the prudish teacher as a woman? Well, of course she was a woman, but she wasn’t the kind of woman he was interested in. He’d never been overly fond of redheads, except maybe for Ellie, and her hair was more auburn than red, and she was off bounds, so she didn’t count. Miss Grainger was his enemy, his nemesis. Well, maybe nothing so strong as that, but at the very least she’d been a constant irritant since he’d moved to Wolf Creek.
“What are you muttering about, Pa?” Brady asked, as Colt stomped up onto the porch.
“Nothing,” he snapped.
Cilla looked at her brother with raised eyebrows and preceded the men into the house. Colt gave them milk and sandwiches for supper. He helped them clean up the kitchen and told them to go to the store before it closed to see what Gabe might have for them to do to pay off their debt.
“What’s wrong with him?” Brady asked as they made their way down Antioch Street.
“I don’t know,” Cilla said, “but he sure is crabby.”
Colt was still crabby when he went to bed. He fell asleep along toward morning and dreamed of pressing his lips to each and every one of the freckles adorning Allison Grainger’s straight little nose.
When he woke the next morning, he was crankier than ever.
