makes it four school days in a row that you’ve disrupted class. You’re going to get yourself into some serious trouble here. I’m doing my best to help, but you’re going to tie my hands if you aren’t careful.” The woman’s words were hushed, but brimming with intensity. And, Talia kind of suspected, sincerity, too.
“I don’t care,” the boy said.
“You do, too, care, Kent.”
Kent!
Surely there weren’t two of them in the group of fourth-grade classrooms lining that hallway.
The couple had passed out of hearing range, and Talia stepped out from her alcove far enough to watch them until they turned a corner out of sight.
Had that little, short-haired preppy-looking boy in need of anger management been her kid?
Her son?
Biologically only, of course. She had no parental rights to him.
If he was even Kent Paulson. The Kent Paulson.
She had to find out.
And if he was? If that troubled young man was the one she’d put here on earth? Had she just witnessed that scene for a reason? Her being there, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, right when he was acting out—that couldn’t be a coincidence. It had to be fate, right?
She’d have to figure that out. She wasn’t walking away, though.
Not until she knew for certain that he was getting help. If that boy was hers, the chip on his shoulder could be hereditary.
There was no way any progeny of hers was going to end up like her.
Not while she had a breath left in her body.
* * *
“MRS. BARBOUR IS on line two, Mr. Paulson.”
Not again. “Thanks, Gina.” He waited for the door to close behind his administrative assistant.
Loosening his tie enough to release the top button, Sherman Paulson pondered the blinking button on his phone console for several seconds.
As campaign manager for a couple of up-and-coming voices vying for careers in California politics, he was used to problem solving. Exceled at it, actually.
“Mrs. Barbour? Sherman Paulson here.” As he usually did when faced with adversity, he feigned a cheerful tone.
“I’ve got Kent in my office again, Mr. Paulson.” His son’s principal did not sound at all happy.
Pinching his nose between his eyebrows, Sherman asked, “What has he done this time?” Kent had promised, when Sherman had dropped him off that morning, that there’d be no more trouble.
“He pushed another student into a wall,” the school principal said. “The other boy has a bump on his head.”
“Did you ask him what the other boy did first?”
“I know what he did.” Mrs. Paulson’s tone didn’t change. “The boy cut in front of him in line. Your son didn’t use his words, Mr. Paulson. He didn’t try to resolve the situation in a healthy manner. He went straight into attack mode.”
Sherman wished like hell he couldn’t picture exactly what Mrs. Barbour meant.
“We’re willing to work with you, sir. We understand the difficulty of your situation and we sympathize, wholeheartedly...”
Yada, yada, yada, she might as well have been saying. In the two years since his wife’s sudden and unexpected death due to a drunk driver, Sherman was accustomed to hearing similar sympathetic sentiments. And wasn’t sure what any of them meant in real life where pain was a burning hell that never let up.
“...but my hands are tied on this one,” the woman said, her tone changing, empathy losing out to authority. “I’m afraid that I’ve had to suspend Kent for the next week.”
“But...” What in the hell was he going to do with the boy? He had to work. Had appointments and power lunches, schmoozing calls to make, and only six months to make miracles happen if he wanted a hope in hell of winning the position he sought as a state senate campaign manager. A job that paid far more than his current position working for local politicians.
“I’m sorry, sir, but policies are policies. Kent was the first one to make physical contact and the other boy has a visible wound as a result. I have no choice but to suspend him.”
Sherman wouldn’t have his job for a day if he accepted “no” at face value. “I understand your policies and support them completely,” he began. “I’m not asking or expecting you to make an exception in our case.” He continued the soothing litany he’d learned to employ in situations like this. “I understand that Kent has to be removed from his normal classroom for the requisite number of days...”
Deal with the problem at hand, he reminded himself, his steel-like mental control serving him, as well, as always. One step at a time.
“But I don’t think a week’s vacation from school is the reward my son needs at the moment,” he continued, homing in on the meat of the problem because it was the only way to find a workable solution. “Is there someplace else there he can sit for the five days he’s earned of solitary confinement?” he asked. “A guidance counselor’s office or...”
Your office, he was thinking. He had a goal in mind.
Keep his son at school.
And safe.
In an environment where he couldn’t possibly get into any more trouble. At least for a few days.
“Well...”
“Just a little desk someplace where he won’t have anything to distract him from the schoolwork he’s there to do. If he gets to leave school, he’s going to view this as a win.”
Sherman might not know how to control Kent’s personality change since his mother’s tragic death, but he knew his son well enough to know that Kent wanted out of school more than just about anything else on earth.
Other than knowing that the drunk who’d killed his mother was paying for the crime. They just had to find the guy first.
Sherman was working on that, too. When he could. As he could. However he could. But Kent, in his ten-year-old way, didn’t yet understand that a political science degree didn’t give Sherman the tools to find a killer who’d eluded the police. He had to identify him first, and that was something no one had been able to do as of yet.
All they knew was that he’d been driving a stolen car. And there’d been an almost-empty fifth of whiskey in the vehicle.
The pause on the line had grown in the space of Sherman’s mental wandering.
Big mistake—allowing his mind to wander in the middle of a negotiation.
A bid for help and support.
The
