“Yep. I’ll join the PTA and campaign for a bigger book budget.”
“Fat lot of good that’ll do me,” Nicole muttered.
“Probably not,” Teresa admitted, “but it might achieve something before Mark gets to high school.”
“I suppose you think his education is more important than mine!”
Teresa gave an inward sigh. “You know that isn’t true. But I see no reason you won’t get a perfectly adequate education here. Let’s face it, at this level it’s the teacher that counts. The teacher, and the effort you are willing to expend.” She added some briskness to her voice. “If you get bored, next year you can start taking some classes at the community college in Everett.”
“I’m supposed to be happy when you pulled me out of a great high school—”
“Rife with drugs and gangs.”
“—and moved me here.” Examining a banner decorating the wall above a bank of metal lockers, Nicole curled her lip. “This one is full of Future Farmers of America.” Every word was a sneer. “What am I supposed to do, learn how to milk a cow?”
“Wouldn’t hurt. I had to,” Teresa said unsympathetically. “Have you seen enough? Shall we go find Mark?”
Rolled eyes. “Yeah, I’ve seen enough.”
Outside they found Mark involved in an impromptu soccer game with a bunch of boys who ranged from third or fourth grade on up to middle-school age. He trotted over.
“Can I stay awhile, Mom? For an hour or two?”
“You bet.” She cuffed him lightly on the shoulder. “Have fun.”
Nicole turned the full battery of entreaty on her from wide brown eyes. “Since we have an hour, can we go shopping, Mom? Please?”
Teresa hated to shop. She didn’t care about clothes, seldom bothered with makeup, couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn a dress. How she’d given birth to a child obsessed with appearances would forever remain a mystery to her.
But this struck her as an intelligent moment to compromise. “Fine. We’ll see what the town has to offer.”
A smug smile curled her daughter’s pale mouth. Because she’d won? Or because she figured she had a chance to show her mother how inadequate White Horse was? Self-absorbed as she was, she probably hadn’t noticed that Teresa visited malls only under duress.
Teresa decided the answer was the latter when she shocked Nicole out of her socks by actually finding an outfit she liked. White Horse only had two clothing stores. One of them had beautiful, high-quality casual clothes for women. Teresa looked around happily. “I’ll never have to hit the mall again. I’ll just come in here and snap something up.”
“But this is old-lady stuff!”
“You mean, it’s not teenage stuff. I am not a teenager, believe it or not.” She headed for a display of cotton sweaters.
“Mo-om.”
She waved Nicole off. “Let me try these things on.”
Twenty minutes later, she paid for a pair of slim-fitting pants, a tunic-length sweater and a chunky silver necklace to wear over it.
A very sulky teenager followed her out onto the sidewalk. “Where am I supposed to shop?”
“The Everett Mall is only forty-five minutes away.”
“Everett!”
“Bellevue Square isn’t much over an hour. Surely some of those friends who used to pick you up every morning will come up here and get you once in a while.”
“Oh, right.” Nicole flung herself into the passenger seat of the car and slumped down, her expression tight. “They’re supposed to drive for almost four hours just to see me.”
Once behind the wheel, Teresa studied her daughter. She looked and sounded so unhappy Teresa reached out and stroked her hair. “Sweetheart—”
Nicole averted her face. “Oh, please. Spare me the lecture about making the best of it.”
Teresa hesitated, then started the car. Maybe, determined that her children be as happy about the move as she’d been, she had been insensitive to Nicole’s misery. On one level, she understood it; on another, she didn’t at all. She hadn’t been as social a creature as her daughter was. At that age, she’d been absorbed in her books and her studies and her ambition for the future. She’d had friends of course, but she didn’t remember missing them all that much when she went off to college. Probably she wouldn’t have missed them any more if her family had moved.
And here she’d been accusing Nicole of being self-absorbed. Maybe, Teresa thought ruefully, she was the selfish one. She’d convinced herself that the kids would be better off in small-town America because this was what she wanted for herself. She still thought this was a better place to raise children—but maybe Nicole was already too formed by her environment to adjust. Maybe, along with the veterinary practice and the farmhouse, Teresa had bought her daughter unhappiness.
The thought was an unsettling one.
IT WAS STILL on her mind on Friday as she dressed for her date with Joe Hughes. Nicole hadn’t been happy to hear that her mother was going out with the logger and that she was condemned to baby-sit her little brother. It didn’t help when Teresa pointed out that Nicole would have been sitting home, anyway.
Realizing her mistake immediately, Teresa tried to amend it. “You haven’t picked up any baby-sitting clientele yet—”
“How can I? I don’t know anybody.”
“Why don’t I put up a notice for you at the clinic?”
Nicole lifted one finger and traced a dispirited circle in the air. “Wow.”
“Joe mentioned brothers and sisters. Maybe they have kids.”
“Mom.” Nicole waited until her mother turned to look at her. “I don’t care if I baby-sit. I don’t need the money. There’s nowhere to shop, remember? Nobody to shop with? Okay?”
Teresa gritted her teeth at the snotty tone, but decided to let it pass. This time.
She ended up wearing the outfit she’d bought in town that day with Nicole. If Joe showed up in a suit and tie, she’d whisk back into the bedroom and exchange the leggings for a calf-length gauzy skirt.
As it turned out, he wore jeans and a plaid sports shirt that echoed the extraordinary blue of his eyes. His eyes took in her appearance with one swift assessing glance and returned, obviously approving, to her face.
“Do you like Mexican food? I thought we’d go to La Hacienda here in town.”
“Love it,” she assured him, standing aside. “Joe, I’d like you to meet my kids. Nicole, Mark, come here.”
He shook hands solemnly with both, didn’t remark on Nicole’s teenage sulkiness and agreed with Mark that soccer was a popular sport in White Horse.
“One of my nieces plays select soccer,” Joe said. “She’s darn good. They go to tournaments all over the state.”
“That’d be cool.” Mark’s eyes were wide.
Briskly Teresa ended the preliminaries. “See you, guys. I don’t know what time I’ll be home.”
In the pickup, Joe said, “I feel a little guilty leaving them behind. I could feed them, too—”
“No!” she exclaimed, then saw his surprise and amusement. She made a face. “Nicole’s driving me nuts,” she admitted. “I need a break.” There was more, of course. The moment she’d answered the door, she’d remembered why she’d wanted so