big.
Just as she sent the prayer skyward there was a sickening crunch and the terrifying sound of breaking glass. The dust cleared and she stopped at the sight of the back end of the car buried in the green roses on the side of the house.
She skid to a halt just as Jack ran past her and threw open the driver’s side door. She was a coward but she knew her heart couldn’t take seeing that boy hurt in the driver’s seat of that car. The blood and broken little bones.
Please, please let him be okay. Please.
“He’s fine,” Jack said, glancing at her over the roof of the car. “A little banged up, but fine.”
“I’m going to go see if the inside of the house is okay,” Mia said, and she ran back inside.
Ben, looking so small, so fragile, walked around the car and stopped in front of her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
She laughed, a wild gust of breath. It was impossible to process what had just happened in…had it even been ten seconds? Ten seconds of terror and relief. She was light-headed. “I think maybe you need to save that apology for Reese. Look at what you did to his car.”
He glanced over his shoulder and hung his head, the black curls along his thin neck damp with sweat.
So small, so terrifyingly small.
“He scraped through a big patch of paint, but the structure of the house is fine,” Jack said as he came up. “The roses, however, are toast. You dodged a bullet, son.” Jack propped his hands on his hips and managed to look so disappointed even Lucy felt like apologizing.
“Does your uncle know where you are?” Lucy asked. She reached out to put a hand on Ben’s shoulder but he jerked away before she made contact.
“No.”
“Well, we’re going to have to call him. He’s probably freaking out.”
“He’s always freaking out.”
“Doesn’t make what you did okay,” Lucy said.
“Not by a long shot,” Jack said. “You could have been hurt. Or you could have hurt someone else. Badly. You should know better, Ben.”
Ben’s jaw, remarkably similar to his uncle’s, set like concrete.
“I’ll go call Jeremiah,” Jack said, and stepped back toward the house.
“Do you have to tell my uncle?” Ben asked when Jack was gone. For the first time in the few hours she’d known him, the little boy looked his age.
“Uh, yeah.”
Ben stared down at his boots, which were beat up and dusty.
“What were you thinking, Ben?” she whispered.
He jerked a shoulder, trying so hard to be cool. An instinct she understood all too well, and she applauded his effort. Hard to act cool when you’ve just plowed a hundred-thousand-dollar sports car into someone’s house, but he was giving it his best shot.
Things were bad at Stone Hollow, she thought, if a nine-year-old boy had to pretend to be so hard. Worse than she’d thought and she wondered if anyone knew it.
“He hates me,” Ben whispered.
“Who?”
“Uncle J.”
Lucy gaped at the boy, at the heartbreak and anger. This was bad, really bad. And she had no idea what the boundaries were. Or the rules. Jeremiah wouldn’t like her interfering but Ben was a nine-year-old boy in a lot of pain who needed all the help he could get. “Oh, honey, no, he doesn’t—”
“Yes, he does,” Ben spat. “And I hate him, too. I do. I hate him. He’s not my dad.”
“Jeremiah’s on his way,” Mia said, coming around the side of the house. She glanced over at the car and winced. “So much for Mom’s roses.”
“I’m sorry,” Ben whispered.
Mia laughed and handed Ben a glass of water. “Not as sorry as you’re gonna be when your uncle gets here.”
* * *
JEREMIAH STARED AT REESE’S sports car covered in slaughtered rosebushes and wished he had one clue about how to handle this. One single clue. A hint. He wished he could have a five-minute conversation with his sister for some guidance, because he was totally in the dark. He tried to think of what his own father would have done in this situation, a tactic that usually helped him in whatever parenting dilemma he was facing. But Jeremiah had never caused the kind of trouble Ben seemed drawn to.
So he stared at those rosebushes, the yellow clapboard house with the—thank God—cement foundation, and waited for the answers to come to him.
“The house is fine,” Jack said, and Jeremiah nodded as if that was the much-needed answer to a question. But the truth was he didn’t care about the house right now. He cared about the sullen, wild-eyed nine-year-old ball of anger to his left.
What about Ben? he wanted to ask. Is he fine? Will he ever be fine again? Will any of us?
Reese started up his car and slowly pulled it away from the house. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as if they’d all been expecting the house to fall apart. The back of the car looked like an accordion. A broken and very, very expensive accordion.
“You,” Jeremiah said through his teeth, unable to even look at his nephew, “will be working at the ranch until you’ve paid off repairs to that car. In fact, I think you’re grounded until you’re about thirty and if you even—”
Lucy cleared her throat and he glanced sideways at her, infuriated at her interruption.
“About that,” she said. “What if he works off the repairs here?”
Ben looked up at that and his hope was palpable.
“Don’t get excited, buddy,” he muttered. “There’s no way you’re working here.”
“Wait, Jeremiah, hear me out.” She stepped toward him, the long dark locks of hair that had fallen from the messy knot on top of her head reaching out toward him on the breeze. The lines of weariness around her eyes didn’t make her any less pretty and he felt like a jackass even noticing that.
“Ben, go wait for me in the truck.” Like a criminal out on parole, the boy took off for the truck and Jeremiah watched him go, gathering up what was left of his composure. When he felt as if he could speak like an adult he turned back to Lucy and held up his hand. “The kid is in some kind of crisis,” he said. “And he doesn’t need to be coddled. He needs to understand he’s done something wrong—”
“I’m not arguing with you, Jeremiah,” she said. “But…look, something isn’t working between you and Ben. It’s obvious.”
Jeremiah felt his ears get hot. She was right. So painfully right.
“You’re
