“Clearly, she didn’t intend to hurt anyone with the letter opener or she would have used it during the fight.” He believed children should accept responsibility for their actions, but he also knew Alex. “She might fight, but she doesn’t fight dirty.”
“Sean.” Candace spoke softly, but looked him right in the eye. “The rules are there for the safety of the children. Even if I wanted to, I can’t make exceptions where safety is concerned. So…one week for fighting. One week for possession of a potential weapon. Two weeks suspension.”
“But there are only two weeks left of school.”
“Yes. The maturity Alexandra shows in completing her work outside of class will affect our decision to promote her…or not.”
“You’re telling me she might not pass?” Sean felt his blood pressure rise. “Hey, she’s one bright kid.”
“We both know that.” Candace’s pause spoke volumes. “But she’s disruptive. She has tremendous difficulty staying on task. Difficulty, too, interacting with her peers.”
“You know she’s used to being around adults.” Mainly because he was raising Alex in the home he shared with his father and his brother. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Of course not. But Alexandra’s behavior is beginning to hinder her education.” Candace rested her hand gently on Alex’s head. “When you take her to her pediatrician to look at that eye, please, discuss her classroom behavior.”
“What are you suggesting?” Defensive, he slipped his arm around his daughter.
“I’m saying that there are sometimes physical reasons for behavior patterns.” Candace’s expression softened. “It’s just wise to check.”
“You’re talking hyperactivity—drugs to counteract it?”
“You know that, by law, I can’t make a medical diagnosis.”
But she could push him in that direction, he thought, his jaw set. He would not drug his child. His active, inquisitive, normal child.
“In the meantime,” Candace continued, “these are the class assignments for the rest of the year.” She handed Sean a hefty packet. “I’ll personally monitor Alexandra’s suspension but she’ll need adult supervision at all times.”
“Of course.” Taking Alex’s hand, Sean stood, feeling as if they were two against the world.
Under the best of circumstances, Alex required almost constant supervision. Unfortunately, Sean’s circumstances weren’t the best at the moment. In addition to pulling his own traps, he was building a lobster pound with his father and brother, a potential family business they’d laid their life savings on and had hoped to have up and running before school’s end. Until the start of summer day camp, school had been Sean’s only viable child-care option.
This suspension also brought home the hard fact that the time had come to rein in his adventuresome daughter.
Before Jilian had died, Sean had made her a solemn promise to keep their baby safe, but with each passing year the task grew more difficult. Especially with a child like Alex, who never colored inside the lines.
CHAPTER ONE
DID SHE HAVE THE STAMINA to spend one more minute in this town, a town that had essentially dropkicked her from the nest?
As thunder rumbled in the distance, Kit Darling lifted the hair off the back of her neck and prayed for a breeze, a breath of fresh air, any movement at all to break the unusual June heat of this strength-sapping afternoon.
Rain would be a welcome relief. Rain would mean she could close down her stupid yard sale.
“How much is this?” A woman held up an oversize velvet painting of Elvis draped in a skimpy toga. Her companion, a second woman, snickered.
“The tag says five bucks,” Kit snapped. She knew neither woman had any intention of buying the painting, or anything else for that matter. Knew they’d only come to gawk at her mother’s tacky things and gossip about Cynthia “Babe” Darling, the woman who’d run off with Millicent Crenshaw’s husband, leaving chaos, recriminations and a pile of unpaid bills in her wake.
Turning her back on the two women, Kit stalked to the shade of Babe’s sagging front porch and tried to turn her thoughts to the weather. Anything other than the woman who was her mother in name only.
Why didn’t it rain? And wash away the ghouls who’d come to pore over the leftovers from Babe’s sorry life.
Kit hated the overt cheesiness of her mother’s possessions. The erotic paintings. The tasseled, satin pillows in garish colors. The hundreds of candles with fragrance like Naked Lunch and Lusty Musk. Items Babe had bought to enhance her femme fatale image, now spread over the yard in an attempt to take a bite out of her mother’s debts, since it was her unfortunate responsibility to pay them. Kit hated Babe for sucking her back to the hometown she’d discarded nine years ago. The hometown that had discarded her years before that.
Responding to a flash of heat lightning in the distance, the two women, the only customers left in the dusty front yard, scurried to their car.
Good riddance. Kit might need the money, but she sure didn’t need the spotlight. Rumors of Babe’s latest outrage had spread like a virus through this insufferable burg. People had flocked to the yard sale to see if the rumors were true. If Babe had indeed flown the coop, her little love nest.
Would she ever be able to claw her way out from under her mother’s reputation? she wondered bitterly. Not in this town.
Nursing a powerful thirst, Kit bent to open a cooler on the porch step—the utilities in Babe’s rented house had been cut off—when a movement in the shrubbery near the end of the porch caught her eye.
“You got any books?” A small child emerged from behind a wilted hydrangea.
Despite the heat, the kid wore rubber boots and a faded flannel shirt tucked into much-worn overalls. Her hair—on second glance, Kit could see it was a little girl—looked as if it had been combed with an electric mixer. Strands stuck to a face so grimy and sweat-streaked, Kit almost overlooked the black eye. A scrapper for sure, this newcomer couldn’t be more than five or six.
Kit felt an instant affinity for the kid. She herself had been a scrapper.
“What’s your name?” she asked, stepping off the porch.
“Alexandra Melinda McCabe. But my dad calls me Alex.” The child looked her straight in the eye. “You got any books?”
Alexandra Melinda McCabe. The McCabes were an upstanding family in Pritchard’s Neck. Which one of them didn’t know better than to let a little kid run loose? And why wasn’t the child in school on a Tuesday? “What grade are you in?”
“Three.” She was small for her age.
“Why aren’t you in school, Alex?”
“I got ’spended. For fighting.” Alex rammed her tiny fists on her hips. “That’s three questions I answered. Now, you. You got any books?”
“No. I’m sorry. I have books in my apartment in Boston, but not here.” Babe had never been a reader. Men were her hobby. With Ed Crenshaw, she’d begun to specialize in younger men.
“Where are your parents?” Kit turned the conversation back to Alex.
“My dad’s working.”
Kit never failed to feel a stab of empathy when she saw a young child on the street, unsupervised.
“So your dad leaves you by yourself while he’s working?”
“My Aunt Emily’s watching me.”