tears welling in his eyes. “I know Mrs. Alexander would want to know. Every child should be safe at school. This is not negotiable. I can’t force you to tell me, but I need to know who is doing this to you.”
“I’m not a snitch. That’s what they’ll call me. I’ll never live it down.”
“So what’s your plan? Let them keep beating you up? What if Mr. Tanner hadn’t seen them and stopped them? What do you think would have happened?”
Josh shrugged, turned away from her and lay on his bed.
Emma remembered Jake Tanner’s words about how talking with the bullies’ parents sometimes only made the situation worse. Then what should she do? What could Josh do? “At least make sure you have friends around you. Don’t go anywhere alone. It’s obvious now you can’t go to Craig’s house through the park. I’ll have to drive you to and from your friends’ houses. I’ll pick you up from school and take you in the morning. I’ll talk to Dr. Harris and figure out a way to do that with my work schedule. If I can’t, I’ll see if Abbey will. She takes Madi to and from school.” As she listed what she would do, she realized all those precautions weren’t really a solution.
Then in the meantime, she’d talk to the school about the bullying. She had to do something to end this. The thought of her son hurting, physically and emotionally, stiffened her resolve to help him somehow whether he liked it or not. She hated that bullies were almost holding her son hostage.
“Don’t say anything to Mrs. Alexander, Mom.”
Emma rose and hovered over Josh. “I have to. It’s my job as your parent. I can’t ignore what happened.”
He glared at her. “I hate you. You’re going to make my life miserable.”
The words hurt, but she understood where they came from—fear and anger at his situation. She knew those feelings well, having experienced them after Sam passed away. “I love you, Josh, and your life right now with these bullies isn’t what you want or deserve.”
Her son buried his head under his pillow.
“I need to check your cuts and clean them.”
“Go away.”
“I’m not leaving. You aren’t alone.”
He tossed the pillow toward the end of the bed. “I wish Mr. Tanner hadn’t interfered. Then you wouldn’t be making such a big deal out of this.”
“Thankfully he did, and believe me, I would have made a big deal out of it when I saw you in this condition whether he’d stepped in or not. I’ll be right back with the first-aid kit.”
Josh grumbled something she couldn’t hear.
As she gathered up what she needed, a picture of Jake Tanner flashed into her mind. Short, dark hair— military style like her brother’s... Emma snapped her fingers. That was it. Ben had mentioned a Jake Tanner on several occasions because he was the army captain Ben had served under in his Special Forces Unit. Could this be the same man?
After she patched up an uncooperative Josh, she left him in his bedroom to pout. When she really thought about Josh’s angry behavior and keeping to himself, she realized it had begun during the summer. She’d hoped his mood would improve when school started and he saw his friends more. But it hadn’t. She’d tried talking to him. He’d been closemouthed and dismissive of her concerns. Why hadn’t she seen it earlier?
She made her way to the kitchen to start lunch but first decided to call her brother. She knew it would nag her not to know whether the Jake Tanner she’d met was Ben’s company’s commanding officer. She remembered Ben’s commenting they both had lived in Oklahoma so it was possible.
She called his cell phone number. “Hi, bro. Do you have a moment to appease my curiosity?” Emma leaned against the kitchen counter, staring out the window over the sink at the leaves beginning to change colors.
“For you, always. What’s going on?”
“Josh was in the park and some boys jumped him and beat him up. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time they’d approached him.”
“How’s Josh?”
“Some cuts and bruises but I think his self-confidence is more damaged than anything.”
“I wish I didn’t live so far away. I could help him. With my new job I’m working weekends, so that doesn’t leave a lot of time to even drive to Cimarron City when Josh isn’t in school.”
She didn’t want Ben to feel this was his problem. He lived in Tulsa and was just getting his life back. “I’m going to talk to the school on Monday about it. But that’s not what I wanted to speak with you about. A man named Jake Tanner broke up the fight and brought Josh home. He lives across the street from where it happened on Park Avenue. Could he be your captain? You said something about his living around here once. Am I crazy to even think it could be the same guy?” And why in the world did it make a difference, except that it would bug her until she found out?
“So that’s where he is. Some of my buddies from the old company who made it back were wondering where he went when he was let out of the army hospital a few months ago. He has an email address but hasn’t said where he is when he’s corresponded with any of the guys. I’ve been worried. I should have thought about Cimarron City. He lived there for a while when his father was stationed at the army base nearby. And he used to visit his grandmother there in the summer. I think his grandmother died last year, but I thought since his father is stationed in Florida, that might be where he went.”
“What happened to him?”
“I was stateside when my old company was ambushed and about a quarter of the men were killed, many others injured. Captain Tanner was one of them. A bullet in his left leg. Tore it up. I hear he almost lost it.”
She recalled how emotionally messed up Ben had been last year when he was first released from the military hospital and honorably discharged from the army. He didn’t have a job then—couldn’t hold one down—and lived with their parents in Tulsa.
“How did he seem to you?”
“He couldn’t get away fast enough. I invited him to share a drink for rescuing Josh, and he backed away as if I was contagious.”
“What did you say to him?” Half amusement, half concern came over the line from her brother.
“Nothing. He wasn’t mad at me. He was—” she searched her mind for a word to describe the earlier encounter “—vulnerable. Something was wrong. Maybe his leg was hurting or something like that. I did see his hands shaking. He tried to hide it, and he was breathing hard, sweating. That didn’t start really until he’d been talking to me for a while. Do you think it could be...” She wasn’t a doctor and had no business diagnosing a person.
“Post traumatic stress disorder?”
Ben had recovered from his physical injuries within months of returning stateside, but what had lingered and brought her brother to his knees was PTSD. Last year she’d trained her first service dog to help her brother deal with the effects of the disorder. “How’s Butch doing?”
“He’s great. You don’t know how much he changed
