Riding Tall (9 page)

“You’re not actually any use at all. You won’t even warm up my ice for me.”

“Wrong!” Ally said, her triumph clear as she handed Joe a glass of water. “Look! Warm ice!” She held out her other hand, two white tablets in her palm. “And drugs! I’m like Santa Claus!”

“Santa can’t be trusted,” Joe mumbled as he held the pills on his tongue and reached for the glass with his good arm.

“I know you think that,” Ally said soothingly. “But those are your prescribed painkillers and anti-inflammatories, not a strong sedative that will put you under for three days and allow me to run a drug ring out of the kitchen.”

“Your imagination frightens me.”

“Better than reality,” Ally said darkly. The mudroom door banged shut and she looked over the back of Joe’s armchair and loudly said, “Oh, hi, Mackenzie. Joe’s just fine. No problems here. Nothing to worry about.”

“What?” Mackenzie said. There were muffled noises that Joe was pretty sure meant Mackenzie was taking off his boots and coat, and then soft footsteps. “Why wouldn’t he be just fine?”

“Well, hypothetically,” Ally said, ignoring Joe’s attempts to shush her with vigorous one-armed waving, “Maybe he might have fallen off the top of a truck. Maybe he was trying to attach a cable or something as a way to pry a crumpled-up cab open to get the driver out, and he might have slipped and fallen and hurt himself. But that probably didn’t happen.”

“Another stupid volunteer fireman call?” Mackenzie asked. The words were hard, but his voice was soft as he fell to his knees in front of Joe. “I hate them.” He leaned forward for a soft kiss, and Joe felt himself relaxing. Mackenzie was home. Everything would be okay. “But how far did you fall? A pickup is, like, six feet tall, maybe?”

Mackenzie looked to Ally, who was all too happy to explain. “Not a pickup. A tractor trailer. And it was all kind of buckled up in the air. I drove past it on the way in to the hospital. The top of it was probably twenty feet in the air, at least!”

“It wasn’t that high,” Joe said, keeping a close eye on Mackenzie’s expression. Was this going to be a little problem or a big one?

But Joe’s phone rang then, and Ally pulled it off the table and made a face as she saw the name on the call display. Instead of answering, she handed it over to him. He looked at the display and then back at her, then lifted the phone to his ear. “Joe Sutton,” he said, trying to sound casual.

“Mr. Sutton. Richard Bowerman here, the principal at the high school. We have a problem.”

Joe hoped it was just about Ally’s attendance, but he was pretty sure the principal didn’t call home about a straight-A student missing a day of classes. “What’s up?”

“Miss Walton is in my office right now. I contacted Jean Carpenter, and she referred me to you.”

“Okay,” Joe said. He wished he hadn’t taken the pain pills quite so fast; it was starting to seem like he was going to need his full attention for whatever Bowerman was leading up to. “Why’s she in your office?”

“She’s drunk,” Bowerman said, his voice clipped. “She was seen in the company of several other people, but they left the area and she’s refusing to identify them. We believe that the group was responsible for some vandalism and theft in the kitchen storage room, as well.”

“What kind of vandalism? What theft?”

“They jimmied the lock on one of the freezers and stole and cooked and ate some french fries.”

“Okay,” Joe said. French-fry theft. He tried not to wonder whether Lacey had consumed something more than just alcohol. “What’s the next step?”

“Miss Walton needs to give me the names of the other students involved in this incident.”

“You said she was refusing to do that, right? So what’s the next step
after
that?”

“There
is
no next step after that. Until I have a full list of names, we don’t proceed any further.”

Joe hadn’t fallen on his head, but it was beginning to ache anyway. He glared at Ally. If she’d known about any of this, she was going to have some serious explaining to do. But that was for later; right now, he needed to deal with Bowerman. “Well, obviously the world isn’t going to just stop spinning for us to just sit around and wait for Lacey to give you names.” He tried to lift his arm to look at his watch, but winced in pain and let it fall back into its sling. “What time is it?”

“Almost three o’clock.”

“Okay. She can’t take the bus home, right? If she’s drunk?”

“And suspended.”

“Okay. She’s suspended. That’s one of those next steps I was wondering about. How long is she suspended for?”

“Mr. Sutton, I’m not sure you’re taking this seriously enough.”

“I’m trying to, but you’re really not making it easy. Is there any chance you could be a bit less of a cartoon villain about all this? I mean, could you just pull the stick out of your ass and then—”

Mackenzie was pretty quick when he wanted to be. He had the phone out of Joe’s hand and up to his own ear before Joe had time to register what was happening. “We’ll be in to pick her up,” he said. “About half an hour, probably. We can talk more then, but I should warn you… Joe was injured earlier today, part of his role as a volunteer fireman. You know how important they are to this community, and the work is
quite
dangerous. Anyway, he was injured during a daring rescue, and he’s been prescribed some painkillers. He won’t be driving, and I don’t think he needs to come inside, either. I’ll come in to pick up Lacey, and we can have a meeting about all this after the Christmas break, okay?”

There was a pause while Bowerman said something, and then Mackenzie laughed. He sounded genuine, even as he rolled his eyes in Joe’s direction. “Oh, I’m sure it’s confusing, absolutely! But you can call Jean and review it with her. My name’s Scott Mackenzie. She knows the situation.” He made a face while he listened, but made sure he was smiling when he added, “I really want to thank you for all you’re doing for Lacey. I’m sure she’s a challenging student—so much has happened to her recently, and we think she’s doing a great job of coping with it all, but, of course, you must see a different perspective. It’s easier for us to be flexible when we only have a few kids in the house, instead of a few hundred!”

Even without hearing Bowerman’s side of the conversation, Joe could tell that things were going much better since Mackenzie had taken over. Which only made sense. This was Mackenzie’s thing—he was social, good with people. Joe leaned his head back against the leather and wished the armchair was a few inches taller. He also wished Mackenzie was a few inches closer, and it sure would be excellent if they didn’t have to drive into town to pick up a drunk teenager who’d been suspended from school.

He opened his eyes as Mackenzie ended the call. “Fuck,” Joe said. “What the hell was she thinking?”

“Let’s go find out,” Mackenzie said softly. “Can I pull you up? And what is that on your wrist? Is that a new kind of cast?”

“It’s a splint,” Ally said, eager to be part of the conversation. “They can’t put the cast on until the swelling goes down. He’s supposed to ice it and take the anti-inflammatories, and then we’ll take him in tomorrow. Dr. Michaels said I can help put the cast on, if I want. I did a co-op at the hospital last year, and she knows I want to be a vet.”

“So this has worked out pretty well for
you
,” Joe growled. “But it’s going to get a lot less pleasant if I find out you knew Lacey was planning to drink at school today.”

Ally frowned, suddenly serious. “I didn’t know. Lacey’s… she’s weird about alcohol. You know, because of her parents. She doesn’t usually drink at all. But I’ve seen her get totally wasted a couple times. I don’t know why she’d do it at school, though.”

“I don’t know why either.” Joe heaved himself to his feet, staggered just a little, and headed for the door. “Ally, you stay here.”

“But
I’m
coming,” Mackenzie said, obviously ready for an argument. “And I’m driving.”

“I’m sore all down one side,” Joe said. It sounded less like whining if he was sharing the information for a reason. “I don’t want to fold myself up in your little car.”

“Newsflash,” Mackenzie said with a raised eyebrow. “I can drive your truck. You let Lacey drive it, for God’s sake. You really won’t trust me in it?”

Oh. Well, now that Joe thought about it, there was really no reason they couldn’t do things that way. “Okay. You can drive.”

They were halfway to town when Mackenzie said, “You’re really hurting, huh?”

“What?”

“Usually when I drive, you stare at the road like you think you can control the car telepathically. You keep one hand on the door handle and the other near the parking brake. But today you’re just staring at the floor, flinching every time we hit a bump.”

“I’m not hurting too much,” Joe lied. “I’m just thinking. What am I supposed to do with Lacey?”

“You’re the one with all the parenting experience. Lacey’s your fourth teenager, isn’t she?”

“Sarah and Ally were never any trouble. Not like this. I worried about them… you know, going out to parties or whatever. Worried that they’d get hurt. But they never did stupid stuff like this. This is more of a Nick move.”

“So what’d you do with Nick?”

“I yelled at him. Grounded him, and then listened to the whole ‘you’re not my father, you can’t ground me’ bullshit. So, first, not pleasant for anyone, and second, it didn’t really work. He did stupid stuff all through high school, and he’s probably down in the city doing stupid stuff as we speak. It’d be nice if Lacey could actually
change
her behavior, you know?”

“She should be seeing a counselor.” There was something about the way Mackenzie spoke the words that made Joe feel like they’d been building for a while. “Jean is great, and you’re great, but she needs more than that.
Most
teenagers are a bit fucked up, just from going through too many changes too fast, and then you add in all the extra crap Lacey’s had to deal with? She’s doing really well, but she could be doing better.”

A counselor. Will had insisted that the whole family go to a grief counselor after their parents had died. Joe hadn’t had much to say, but he’d tagged along so the other kids would think he approved of the process. But he wasn’t sure it had really done any good. Their parents were dead. No amount of counseling was going to change that.

And Lacey’s parents were dead. Her sister was brain-damaged. What the hell was anyone going to be able to say that would do her any real good?

“I went to one,” Mackenzie said, taking his eyes off the road long enough to judge Joe’s reaction. “When I was a teenager.”

“What for?”

“I’m not sure. My parents thought it would be a good idea. I guess… maybe it was because they thought I was gay.”

“Gay? Really? You?”

“Crazy, I know. They said it was because I seemed unhappy, but I don’t really remember feeling that way.”

“And how’d it go? Was it useful?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You didn’t talk about being gay?”

“No.”

“Seems like kind of a big thing to leave out.”

“It does,” Mackenzie agreed. “I can’t remember what I was thinking. But for Lacey, it could be better. She’s been through way more than I had. Maybe Savannah should go too. Different therapist, maybe. Or some family counseling.”

“One kid gets drunk at school and the whole family has to go into therapy?”

“We don’t
have
to. But it might not hurt. Just to have someone help us have good conversations.”

“We aren’t having good conversations?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we are. I’m just trying to answer your question. What should we do about Lacey?”

“I think I’ll just lock her in her room for a couple months,” Joe said, letting his eyes close. “And take away all her Christmas presents. That should take care of things, right?”

“I’m sure Mr. Bowerman would approve of that approach.”

Well, that was a pretty clear sign it wasn’t the way to go. But Joe couldn’t think of any real alternatives, not with his head as foggy as it was. Damn, it wasn’t like he was on morphine or something. He’d taken the same pain medication before without feeling like he was shutting off his brain.

“You fell twenty feet?” Mackenzie asked. It felt like he was really far away, and Joe had to fight to make himself answer.

“I don’t think it was that far. I slid for a while before I ran out of roof.”

“Did you land on your head at all? Did the doctor check for a concussion?”

“I’m fine. It was Dr. Michaels. She checked me over. And, no, I didn’t land on my head.”

“You were a bit dopey after the Walton fire too,” Mackenzie said. It sounded like he was thinking out loud. “But I blamed that on stress or trauma or something. Is this just the way you act when you’re hurt?”

Joe didn’t really think it was, but he wanted Mackenzie to stop talking, so he nodded. “I guess so.”

“So we’ll go get Lacey, we’ll yell at her until the little guys get home from school, and then we’ll have a shower, and I’ll put you to bed. We’ll stay in there until tomorrow morning and you’ll be fine.”

“There’s one shower for the whole house. You and me aren’t sharing it while the place is full of kids.”

“We’ll send them to town for dinner.”

“That’s a great punishment for Lacey.”

“We’ll ground Lacey and tell her she has to stay in her room. No peeking. And we’ll send the
other
kids to town for dinner.”

“Or we could just skip the shower part,” Joe said. “And stay in bed until tomorrow
afternoon
.” He just wished he were feeling better so he could take full advantage of the opportunity.

That was when his phone rang again. He winced at the call display. What else was going wrong? “Hi, Joe Sutton,” he said cautiously.

“Joe, it’s Vicki at the elementary school. Austin didn’t get on the bus. He’s in the office. He says he has an—” There were vague sounds of commotion, and then the secretary’s voice was back. “Well, that clears things up, at least. He definitely has an upset tummy. He just threw up. Marion’s with him, but he’d really like his Joe as soon as possible.”