she couldn’t reassure him that everything would be fine. It was impossible to promise him anything. “They found you on campus,” she said carefully. “They said they caught you running.”
He groaned. “I was on campus because I’d taken you a gift.”
“But why were you running?”
“I was late getting home. I didn’t want my father to know I’d missed the school bus.”
She bit her bottom lip, bit down to keep her emotions in check. “Apparently someone saw you running from the office—”
“Not me.” He looked at her, eyes brilliant with unshed tears. “And maybe someone was running from the office, and maybe someone had stolen papers, but it wasn’t me.”
Sharif glanced from Jesslyn to the boy. “What do you know about the papers?”
Aaron’s jaw hardened and yet his eyes were filled with pain. “I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t.” And then he dropped his head, his shoulders slumping.
Jesslyn moved forward on her chair. “Aaron, if you know who did it, it would save you from serious trouble.”
“And if I tell you, he’d be in serious trouble and I can’t do that. His mom is already dying—“Aaron broke off on a soft sob. His head hung so low that a tear fell and dropped onto the floor.
Jesslyn inhaled sharply, knowing who he was referring to. Only one boy in the upper grades had a mom dying, and it was Will. Will McInnes. Will’s mother had just been moved to a hospice facility, and Will’s father was coping by drinking too much and then terrorizing the children.
She turned to Sharif. “I need to talk to you.” They stepped out of the room and stood in the narrow hall.
She told Sharif everything, about Will and Aaron’s friendship, how Aaron’s parents had done their best to include Will in their family life as Will’s family life unraveled. “Will is barely getting by,” she said, her eyes stinging. “He’s had such a hard year, and the only person who’s really been there for him is Aaron. And now Aaron’s leaving.”
“But why steal?” Sharif replied. “And why pull the alarm? He flooded the school, which destroyed nearly every classroom. He’s going to have a criminal record and his family will have to pay for the damage, damage that will be in the thousands.”
“Then we can’t tell anyone it was Will. We’ll deal with Will ourselves.”
“We will?” Sharif repeated.
“We have to. His dad has a fierce temper. I can’t bear to think what he’d do to Will if he found out about this afternoon.”
“So you’ll let Aaron, who just might be innocent, pay for the crime instead?”
Jesslyn could picture Aaron in her mind, could see his ashen face and the tear that trembled on his lower lash before spilling and falling to the cement in a wet plop. “No. We get Aaron off.”
“Jesslyn.”
She lifted her shoulders. “He didn’t do it, he can’t be punished. Will did do it—”
“So he should be punished.”
“But he’s a child, Sharif, in the process of losing his mother. She doesn’t have long. Not even a month. It’s all about pain management for her now, and imagine what Will is going through, imagine how helpless he feels, imagine his rage.”
Sharif gazed down into Jesslyn’s upturned face.
It wasn’t hard for him to imagine what Will was going through, he thought, nor was it difficult to imagine the grief, the fury, the pain as his children had lost their mother just three years ago. Unlike Will’s mother, Zulima’s death had been sudden, and there had been no time for goodbyes. One moment she was resting in her room after her cesarian section and the next gone, dying from a blood clot.
“My children also lost their mother,” he said roughly. “It’s not fair for children to lose their mother so early in life, but it does happen.”
“But if we can do something, change something, make it more fair—”
“We can’t.”
“We can.” She took his arm with both her hands, pleading. “Please, Sharif. Please help me help these children. Get Aaron released. Help me find Will, let me speak with him. Perhaps we can get the papers back, get them returned.”
“You’re asking for a miracle.”
Her hands gripped his arm tighter. “Then give me a miracle, Sharif. If anyone can make this happen, you can. You can do anything. You always could.”
Sharif stared down into her upturned face, fascinated by the pink bloom in her cheeks and dusky rose of her lips. Emotion lit her features; passion and conviction darkened her eyes.
She looked at him with such faith. She looked at him with all the confidence in the world. She was so certain he could do all this, certain he would.
Her fierce faith in him made his breath catch. Her fire made something in his chest hurt. In all his years of marriage Zulima had never once looked at him that way.
“I’d have to pull a million strings,” he said, even as his brain already worked through the possibilities of getting Aaron released and Will sorted out. It’d be complicated, far from easy, but he did know the right people and he could put in calls …
“Then pull them,” she answered, dark-brown brows knitting.
“It’s more than a snap of my fingers,” he answered, intrigued by this Jesslyn Heaton standing in front of him. This woman was neither naive nor helpless. In fact, this Jesslyn Heaton had grown into something of a warrior and a defender of the young.
“I understand that, but I love these kids and I know these kids. I’ve taught them for years. Will’s acting out and Aaron’s protecting him, and yet in the end, they’re just boys. Just children.”
He’d never heard any other woman but Jesslyn speak with so much feeling, but that was the kind of woman Jesslyn had always been. From the time he met her she wore her heart on her sleeve, and eleven years after first meeting her he realized her heart was still there for everyone to see.
Impulsively he reached out and touched her smooth, flushed cheek. Her skin was warm and surprisingly soft. He dropped his hand quickly and hardened himself to her pleas. “It’d be better to let the boys take the blame and accept the consequences. That way they’d learn from this.”
“Maybe,” she argued, “maybe in other circumstances they would learn. But not now, not when Will’s mom is nearly gone.” She held his gaze, held it long, her expression beseeching. “Do this for me, Sharif, do this and I will do whatever I can for you.”
His pulse quickened. His interest sharpened. “What exactly are you offering?”
Shadows chased through her eyes,
