Heidi shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
Her nonchalance raised his blood pressure another notch. “So why did you do it?”
Nothing.
“Heidi?” he said firmly, resisting the urge to raise his voice. “Tell me.”
She let out a huff. “Because Briana and Jessie dared me, okay?”
So Phoebe had been right. Even so, he dipped his chin and just stared at Heidi, as if to say, you did this on a stupid dare?
Her eyes glimmered, and he guessed her control was slipping. “They said that I wouldn’t have the guts because I was the sheriff’s daughter.”
Her words hit him like well-aimed bullets, and he winced inwardly. His first instinct was to back off a bit; it probably was hard at times to be a small-town sheriff’s kid. Kind of like being the minister’s kid—expectations were higher somehow.
But, no. He couldn’t cave and go easy on Heidi. There was a lot at stake here, and he had to be a strong father for his daughter’s sake; a statement about an inch and a mile flitted through his brain. Hopefully she’d thank him someday.
“So you broke the law to prove you weren’t chicken,” he stated, trying to stay calm.
Suddenly the dam broke, and tears streamed down her cheeks. “Yes, I did,” she cried. “They said they’d be my friends if I did it.”
Searing pain streaked through his heart, and he resisted the urge to scoop his baby girl into his arms and make everything all right. Poor Heidi. She’d been through so much lately, more, really, than any kid should have to bear. “So you did it to make them like you?” he got out.
Looking at the floor, she nodded.
His throat tightened. What could he say to that? Heidi was the new girl in town, and he knew she desperately wanted to fit in. But, again, he had to be strong, had to keep the big picture in mind. He had to do the hard thing here; parenting wasn’t for wimps, and here he was, doing it all alone.
Grim resignation settled down around him.
He fisted his hands, hating what he had to do. “Well, honey, I’m sorry they dangled that in front of you. That was a cruel thing for them to do.”
She sobbed, gutting him.
He forced himself to continue. “But you’re still responsible for your choices. And you stole, period.” He sucked in air, steeling himself. “There has to be a consequence. So Ms. Sellers and I have agreed that you will spend the rest of the week doing chores at her store after school.”
Heidi froze, then blinked, clearing her wet eyes. “What? Are you kidding me?” Red-faced, she jumped to her feet. “It was no big deal, Dad. Why can’t you just let it go? Why do you have to make me work at some dumb ice cream store?”
He tightened his jaw until his head ached. “Because shoplifting was wrong, that’s why.”
She swiped the tears from her eyes. “You’re the worst dad ever!” she screamed. “Mom wouldn’t have made me do this.”
More bullets pierced him; Susan was gone and would never make a tough parenting call again. He was on his own.
He let Heidi’s comment go, sure she was speaking out of anger, which he couldn’t blame her for. He had a boatload of anger, too, mostly directed at himself, though he was also pretty mad at Susan for abandoning them.
Mostly, though, he just felt betrayed.
Heidi turned on her heel and ran out of the room, and he let her go, bleeding inside.
From the hallway she yelled, “And I’m not ever going back to that store and you can’t make me!”
Her footsteps clomped quickly up the stairs, and then he heard—and felt—her bedroom door slam.
A sense of failure screamed through him, and he pressed a hand to the bridge of his nose. His appetite gone, he shoved his plate away and slumped back in his chair. With a weary breath he looked around the kitchen, at the old appliances, ugly cabinets and hideous green-and-gold curtains the landlord had probably put up in the seventies.
The place certainly was not a home, nor the peaceful haven he wanted.
A feeling of helplessness spread through him, and suddenly, he’d never felt so alone. He’d lost his son and his wife, and any kind of peace. And now, in a way, he’d lost his little girl, too.
She hated him.
How was he supposed to face that, much less deal with it?
* * *
“Sheriff Winters is here to see you.”
Phoebe looked up from her desk, trying to ignore the little skip her heart took at the mention of the handsome sheriff. “Okay, thanks. I’ll be right out,” she said to Tanya, an energetic middle-aged woman who was her lone weekday employee.
“He has a young lady with him,” Tanya said, raising her auburn brows. “And she doesn’t look very happy to be here.”
Not surprising at all. Phoebe was guessing the hammer had come down at the Winterses’ last night. “That’s his daughter.” She rose and stretched the kinks out of her neck. “He said yesterday when he was here they’d be stopping by.”
“Why was the sheriff here? Did something happen?”
Phoebe gave herself a mental head slap. Tanya had been taking her daughter to the doctor yesterday when the shoplifting incident had occurred and when the sheriff had stopped by. She wasn’t aware of what had happened, and Phoebe wasn’t going to fill her in. Heidi’s slip-up was nobody else’s business.
She waved a hand in the air. “Oh…um…he stopped by for a cone and I told him I’d like to meet his daughter.”
Tanya nodded, apparently satisfied with Phoebe’s answer—fabulous—and they both walked out to the main part of the store. Phoebe resisted the ridiculous urge to fluff her hair. Please! Talk about a waste of energy.
Save for Carson and his daughter, the store was thankfully empty. In uniform, he stood, unsmiling, on the other side of the soda-fountain counter, his daughter beside him. He had his big hand on Heidi’s shoulder—to keep her from bolting?—and Heidi, dressed in a cute pair of black leggings, boots and a gray coat—was intently studying the floor, her mouth pressed into a decidedly rebellious scowl.
Phoebe felt bad for both of them; this clearly wasn’t a fun father/daughter trip to the ice cream parlor for treats.
“Hello, Sheriff,” Phoebe said, smiling cheerily to ease the tension, if that were possible. She looked at Heidi. “Hey, Heidi.”
Heidi replied with nothing more than a twitch of her mouth.
Carson nodded crisply, all business, his face taut. “Ms. Sellers. Heidi here would like to talk to you.”
“Sure.” Phoebe cast a surreptitious gaze around and saw Tanya over by the candy shelves, straightening some packages of gummy bears some kids had riffled through earlier.
“Um…why don’t we go back to my office,” Phoebe said, gesturing to the Winterses to follow her. For Heidi’s sake, Phoebe was determined to keep this just between the three of them.
She stepped into her office, pulled two plastic chairs from their spot on the wall and set them before her desk. “Have a seat.”
Carson and Heidi sat, and Phoebe moved around behind her desk and settled herself in her desk chair. Folding her arms before her, she looked directly at Heidi, who still hadn’t made eye contact. “Thank you for coming by.”