Yet shipping him back to his mother was looking better by the day, he thought grimly.
With one swift, encompassing glance, he took in his son, who held an ice pack to one eye and sat slumped low in the chair. His head was bowed. He didn’t raise it to look at his father, not even when the woman standing beside him said, “Mr. Ward.”
Son of a bitch, Richard thought, ashamed to feel ready to kill the messenger as well as the creature that inhabited his son’s body, but unable to smile at her and say, “Great to meet you.”
Unlocking his jaw took some effort. “Ms. Callahan.”
Her voice was familiar; they’d spoken on the phone briefly last week after Trevor’s first fight. She had a hell of a voice, with a husky timbre that would stir any man’s interest. Beyond that initial reaction, he hadn’t given it much thought. Ms. Callahan—the Ms. was said with militant emphasis—was likely a rigid, cast-iron bitch. On the phone she’d been terse and had nothing helpful to say. He’d been able to tell she was disappointed to have to admit that she had as yet been unable to assign responsibility for the fight to either boy.
“However,” she had declared, “unless a fight begins with a clearly one-sided assault, both students need to be penalized. We have zero tolerance for fighting.” That time, she’d suspended Trevor and the other boy each for two days.
If she expelled Trevor now, what the hell was he supposed to do with him?
They were in her office before he really saw her and then it was a mild shock. Molly Callahan was young to be in administration—surely not older than her mid-thirties. She was also…okay, not beautiful, but something. Sexy, he decided, if you discounted the steely glint in her gray eyes. Tall for a woman, maybe five-ten. Possibly a little plump by current standards, which weren’t his. Generous hips, even more generous breasts, sensational legs that weren’t stick-thin and wavy hair of a particularly deep shade of auburn. Natural, if her creamy skin was any indication.
She circled around her desk and gestured toward a chair. “Please, have a seat, Mr. Ward.”
He stiffened at her tone of voice. He was not one of her students.
“I gather Trevor was involved in another fight,” he said curtly.
“Trevor unquestionably started this one. For no apparent reason. The other young man accidentally jostled Trevor in a crowded hallway. He turned around swinging. One of our teachers observed the entire altercation and described the ‘flare of rage’ on Trevor’s face as frightening. Perhaps you can explain what’s going on with your son.”
His jaw had gone into lockdown again as she spoke. For the first time it occurred to him that he might be ill equipped to be a full-time parent. He had never, not once, gone to a parent-teacher conference. Yeah, he admired report cards, but he hadn’t been there to set rules for homework, to do flash cards, to fold his arms and say, “You knew what you had to do this week to earn that trip to the zoo, and you blew it, buddy.”
Not my fault.
No, it wasn’t, but resentment that he hadn’t had the chance welled up in him until he was all but choking on it.
Ms. Callahan’s ill-disguised disdain and dislike rubbed him the wrong way.
“Trevor is a seventeen-year-old boy. If you’ve looked at his records, you’ll find that at his previous high school—an urban high school with a significantly larger class than here in West Fork—he was in the running to become valedictorian. Colleges were scouting him for both football and basketball. Here he’s transferred for his senior year, and it appears West Fork High School is already failing him.” Richard knew he wasn’t being fair, but right this minute he didn’t damn well care. He didn’t appreciate anything about Ms. Callahan’s attitude.
Her back was so stiff he could tell it wasn’t meeting her cushioned office chair. Her lips thinned. “Trevor has been uncooperative and unpleasant since the day he started class. I need to know if he was angry at having to leave his former school to come here. Was he, for example, sent to live with you as a disciplinary measure, Mr. Ward?”
“No,” he said shortly, if not altogether honestly. “His mother has recently separated from her current husband.” Her third. “I believe Trevor was reasonably fond of him, but hadn’t lived with him so many years the attachment was deep. I’m aware that moving to a new school for your senior year is hardly ideal, but he didn’t object.”
They glared at each other. Her eyes, Richard decided, were closer to gunmetal gray.
“In other words,” she said icily, “you’d like to blame the teachers and students here for somehow, in a startlingly swift few weeks, driving your son to rage that inspires him to attack another boy without provocation.”