“C’mon. Show me where you live. Is it far?” He looked back to check for the trio who had jumped the child. A male jogger and a couple, hands clasped, were the only people he saw in the park. “I’m Jake. What’s your name?” With his injured leg throbbing, he used his cane to support more of his weight than usual.
“Josh.” The boy dragged his feet as they turned the corner onto Sooner Road.
“Why were those kids bothering you?” The question came out before Jake could censor himself. He didn’t want to get involved. Yet, the second he took the first step toward the fight, he had become involved, knowing firsthand what the boy was going through.
Josh mumbled something again, but Jake could hear only the words, “like to fight.”
“Have those guys bullied you before?”
The boy’s pace slowed until he came to a stop in front of a one-story, redbrick house with a long porch across the front. “Yeah. The big one has since he moved here,” he said, his head still hanging.
“Do your parents know?” Jake studied the top of the child’s head, some blood clotted in the brown hair. The urge to check the wound inundated him. He started to bring his hand up.
Josh jerked his chin up, anger carved into his features while his eyes glistened. “I don’t have a dad. I don’t want my mom knowing. You can’t tell her.” He took a step back. His hands fisted at his sides as if he were ready to defend that statement.
“I won’t.”
The taut set of the child’s shoulders relaxed some, his fingers flexed.
“But you will.”
“No, I won’t. I can take care of this myself. Mom will just get all upset and worried.”
“She’ll know something is wrong with one look at you.” Jake gestured toward the house with a neatly trimmed yard, mums in full bloom in the flower bed and an inviting porch with white wicker furniture, perfect for enjoying a fall evening. Idyllic, as if part of the world wasn’t falling apart with people battling each other. “Is this where you live?”
Josh stuck his lower lip out and crossed his arms, wearing a defiant expression.
Instantly, Jake flashed back to an incident with a captive prisoner who gave him that same look. His heartbeat raced. His breathing became shallow. His world shrank to that small hut in the mountains as he faced an enemy who had been responsible for killing civilians and soldiers the day before. He felt the shaking start in his hands. Jake fought to shut down the helplessness before it took over.
“Josh, what’s going on?” A female voice penetrated the haze of memories.
Jake blinked and looked toward the porch. A tall woman, a few inches shy of six feet, with long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail that swished, marched down the steps toward them, distress stamped on her features.
“What happened to you?” Stooping in front of the boy, the lady grasped Josh’s arms. When he didn’t say anything, she peered up at Jake. “What happened?”
“Is Josh your son?”
“Yes.” The anxiety in her blue eyes, the same crystalline color as the boy’s, pleaded for him to answer the question.
Jake shifted. He’d done what he said he would do. He’d delivered the child safely home. It was time to leave Josh and his mother to hash out what had occurred in the park. He backed away, his grip on the cane like a clamp. He spied the imploring look in Josh’s eyes. “Your son needs to tell you,” he said.
She turned back to the boy. “You’re bleeding, your eye is red and your clothes are a mess. Did you get in a fight?”
The boy nodded.
“Why? That’s not you, Josh.”
The kid yanked away from his mom and yelled, “Yeah! That’s the problem!” He stormed toward the house.
Jake took another step back.
She whirled toward him, her face full of a mother’s wrath. “What’s going on?”
“He was in a fight.”
“I got that much from him.”
“I broke it up and walked him home.” Jake could barely manage his own life. He didn’t want to get in the middle of someone else’s, but the appeal in Josh’s mother’s eyes demanded he say something. “Three boys were beating up Josh.”
“Why?”
“That you have to ask him. I came in after it started, and he wasn’t forthcoming about what was going on.”
“But something is. I get the feeling this wasn’t the first time.”
“A good assumption.”
“I’m Emma Langford.” She paused, waiting for him to supply his name.
He clamped his teeth down hard for a few seconds before he muttered, “Jake Tanner. I live around the corner, across from the park.” Why did he add the last? Because there was something in her expression that softened the armor around his heart.
The woman glanced up and down the street, kneading her fingertips into her temple. “I don’t know what to do. It sounds like they ganged up on Josh. Have you seen them around?”
“No, but I know what they look like, especially one of them close to Josh’s size. The other two were bigger than him. Maybe older.” He could understand a mother’s concern and the need to defend her child. He’d often felt the same way about the men under his command.
“So my child is being bullied.” Weariness dripped from each word.
Jake moved closer, an urge to comfort assailing him. Taking him by surprise. For months he’d been trying to shut off his emotions. Hopelessness and fear were what had him in his current condition: unable to function the way he had before his last tour of duty.
“He never said a word to me, but I should have known,” she said in a thick voice. “No wonder he’s been so angry and withdrawn these past few months.”
“That would be a good reason. Chances are he doesn’t know how to handle it, either.”
“Do you think they live in the neighborhood?” She panned the houses around her as if she could spot where the bullies lived.
“Maybe. They were in the park when the fight occurred.”
“I need to find out who’s bullying my son and put a stop to it.”
“How?” Jake could remember being bullied in school when he was in the sixth grade.
“I don’t know. Confront them. Have a conversation with their parents.”
“Often that makes the situation worse. It did for me when I was a child.” The reply came out before he could stop the words.
“But maybe it would put a stop to it. Make a difference for my son.” Her forehead creased, she glanced back at the house. “I want to thank you for what you did for Josh. Would you like some tea or lemonade?”
He hesitated. He needed to say no, but he couldn’t, not after glimpsing the lost look in the lady’s eyes.
“Please. I make freshly squeezed lemonade.” She started toward her house. “We can enjoy it outside on the porch.”
Part of him wanted to follow her, to help her—the old Jake—but that guy was gone, left in the mountains where some of his men had died.
She slowed and glanced back, anxiety shadowing her eyes. “I’m at a loss about what to do. Tell me what happened to you when you were bullied. That is, if you don’t mind. It may help me figure out what to do about Josh.”
It