“You wouldn’t know it to look at you, though. Her dying hasn’t made one ripple in your life, has it, Dad?”
There was a loud bang, the slamming of a door, and it made Beth jerk in reaction. Moments later, footsteps came down the stairs. Through the open door, Beth saw Joshua stop at the bottom of the stairway, push a hand through his hair and close his eyes briefly. He looked haggard. She felt sorry for him. Not as much as she did for his son, though.
“Good morning, Josh,” Maude called.
Josh looked their way, his glance sliding from Maude to land on Beth. Sighing, he came out to join them on the porch.
“I’m sorry about all that,” he said. “Not a very pleasant way to start the day for you.”
“For you, either,” Maude said.
“Or for Bryan,” Beth said. Josh shot her a look, his lips thin.
“Join us for a cup of tea, Joshua. One of my homemade medicinals. Just the right blend to sooth your nerves.” Maude was pouring before she finished speaking, and Beth noticed for the first time that she had set three cups on the tray table, where there were usually only two. And there was a white plastic lawn chair against the wall.
Josh sank into it and accepted the cup Maude handed him. “If I can’t even get the kid to go to school…” He sighed, sipping the tea, not finishing the thought. “This is good, Maude. How did you know I’d need my nerves soothed this morning?”
“Made it for Beth—chamomile and honey. I thought she seemed a little edgy yesterday.”
“I was not edgy.”
Maude shrugged. “You’re always edgy when there’s a male of the species within twenty feet of you, girl.” She winked at Josh. “Thinks you’re all up to no good, I guess.”
“Most of us are.” He smiled a little, his eyes actually teasing her as he took another sip of his tea. “This is really hitting the spot.”
“Maude has a tea and a platitude for just about every imaginable occasion,” Beth said. “But I imagine you already knew that.”
“You’d be surprised how little I know about her,” he said.
“No, I wouldn’t.” She dropped the statement, then let it hang there while he tried to figure out what it meant. Bryan’s footsteps came tromping down the stairs, across the floor and into the kitchen. Joshua sighed, his eyes clouding with real worry, and Beth took pity. “I do some private tutoring, you know.”
“Do you?” He looked her in the eyes, and she got the feeling he had already known that. Probably Maude had filled him in. “If that’s an offer, Beth, I accept. Assuming I can convince Bryan to go along with it.”
“He seemed willing enough yesterday, when I spoke to him about it.”
His brows bent together. “He talked to you about tutoring him?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Agreed to start at noon today.”
“Well, why the hell didn’t he just say so, instead of arguing with me?”
Beth tipped her head to one side. “Maybe because you didn’t ask.”
His face darkened. “So this is all my fault?”
“Not all, Joshua. But of the two of you, he’s the one who just lost his mother. And you’re the adult. The only one in the world who can swoop in and pick up the pieces of his broken life for him.”
“Don’t you think that’s what I’ve been trying to do?”
He stopped himself there, literally seemed to bite off the rest of his tirade before it could spill out, held up a hand, closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s stress, and I’ve got no business taking it out on you. Are you all right?”
He was searching her face now, his expression remorseful and almost…tender. As if he thought she were so fragile an angry word or two from him could reduce her to tears. “Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know.” He dragged his gaze away from hers. “Listen, if you have suggestions, advice, I’d be more than happy to hear it.”
“I don’t know a damn thing about being a parent.” She looked away, thinking of Dawny, the hole in her heart yawning wider. “But I know a little about teenagers. I taught in a public school for seven years.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said.
She frowned at him. “Funny, I had the feeling you did.”
“No. I don’t think Maude mentioned it. What did you teach?”
“English Eleven and Twelve, mostly. I offered to tutor Bryan in English Twelve, so he would only have History and Spanish to catch up on. He’ll be fine, if he does the work.”
Josh settled back into his chair, seeming to relax a little. “So you think I should let him take the semester off, so long as he sticks with the tutoring?”
“I think you should consider agreeing to that, yes.” She sipped her tea. “But don’t count on it lasting. Once he meets some of the local kids, makes a few friends and has time to get bored out of his mind, he’s going to decide to go back to school. If you let me tutor him until then, he won’t be behind when he does.”
He nodded slowly. “For someone who doesn’t know much about parenting, you’re pretty good.” She shrugged, and he went on. “Seriously, you’re light-years ahead of me. Okay. Let’s do it—the tutoring thing, I mean.”
“Okay.”
The screen door creaked open, and Bryan stepped out onto the porch with a toaster pastry in one hand and a glass of chocolate milk in the other. Both had to have been in the pickup, because neither would have been within a mile of Maude’s kitchen.
“Good morning, Bryan,” Maude called, sounding as cheerful as if she hadn’t noticed a thing out of the ordinary this morning, much less overheard his fight with his father. “Did you sleep well?”
He offered her a halfhearted smile, his dark hair falling over his forehead before he pushed it back. It was so much like the way Josh had pushed his hand through his hair earlier that Beth almost smiled.
Bryan avoided his father’s eyes. “Slept better than I do in the city, that’s for sure.”
“Well, now that you’re up, I’ll get your breakfast out of the oven.”
“Oh, that’s okay, I made my own.”
Maude looked at his pastry and rolled her eyes. “That is not a breakfast. It’s a future health crisis. Now, I’ve had a real meal staying warm in the oven for you for the past hour.” She glanced at Beth. “Join us, dear?”
“No way, Maude. I eat one of your meals, I’ll be crawling home instead of running.”
“Oh…you’re going home?” Bryan asked. He sounded a little…off.
“That’s the plan, Bry.”
He shot his father a look, and Beth got the feeling their earlier argument was suddenly the furthest thing from the young man’s mind. “Well, why don’t you stay? You can, uh, talk to my dad about that tutoring thing.”
Something had certainly snapped Bryan out of his petulant state. “I already did that,” she said. “Was kind of surprised you hadn’t done it yourself by now.”
He nodded, all but admitting he probably should have clued his old man in.
“I gotta go. See you at noon, Bryan?” She reached for her tea to finish the cup.
“Uh, yeah, about that…” Bryan began. He sent his father another quick look, as if uncertain whether to speak.
“What