Small-Town Mom (13 page)

“Ah.” He controlled the grin tugging at his lips. “So we should sneak around so no one sees us.”

Her eyes went blank. Then, a blush rose on her cheeks, kicking his protective instincts into full force. Jamie was an intriguing puzzle of independence and vulnerability.

“No!” She laughed and raised her hand as if to swat him, then dropped it. “I like being with you.”

He pressed his shoulders back into the seat.

“As a friend,” she finished. “But Charlotte’s gossip isn’t good for the kids.” Her voice dropped. “Or for me. Rose doesn’t understand why Katy can’t come over anymore. And Myles is angry and hurt. He thinks I…we’re betraying his father somehow.”

“Myles is a teenage boy who’s trying to be the man of the house. He’d think that about any man you were seeing.”

“But I’m not seeing you.”

That sliced his ego in half. “So, what, we avoid each other?”

She released a sigh, making him feel like a petulant child. “We limit our contact to a guidance counselor/parent relationship.”

“I can do that.” But he wasn’t going to like it. “So, I’ll look for an opening in one of the other bowling leagues.”

“Of course not. I’m the newbie. I’ll drop out.”

“Come on. You don’t want to do that.”

She scrunched her face in an expression that was a mirror image of Opal’s earlier one. He waited for her argument.

“You’re right. I don’t want to quit.” She grinned. “At least not before I beat you. We’ll set some rules.”

He took that to mean she’d set some rules.

“You don’t walk me to my car. No buying me the cheeseburger special. Nothing that would lead anyone to think we’re anything but teammates. Because we’re not.”

He got it. She’d already hit the strike zone with that pitch.

The curtain at the living room window moved. “Don’t look now, but we’re being watched,” he said.

“Add no sitting in the car and talking to the list.” She made an invisible check in the air. “Seriously, I should be going in.”

Eli reached for his door handle.

“You don’t need to walk me in.”

He got out of the truck and walked around to open her door. “I’ll wait until you get to the door.”

Her lips parted and snapped shut as if she were going to tell him that wasn’t necessary, either, but decided not to.

She climbed out. “Thanks. For everything. I’m sure you had better things you could have been doing.”

“No problem.” He stood by the truck watching Jamie walk to the house, head down against the wind. She waved as she closed the front door behind her.

Right now, he couldn’t think of anything he’d rather have been doing than spending time with Jamie—except spending time with Jamie
and
protecting her from Charlie Russell. But he’d promised Jamie he wouldn’t step in between her and Charlie unless it was on Jamie’s terms. Terms that weren’t going to be easy to honor.

Chapter Nine

“E
li. Brett Russell is here to see you. Are you available?”

While it wasn’t like her to make a mistake, Thelma Woods, the school office manager, must have meant Liam—Brett had graduated last year. Eli eyed the reports piled up on his desk. “Yes, send him down.” His job was to counsel students, not push paper.

The door opened slowly and the young man entered the office.

Eli snapped the pencil he was holding. He couldn’t believe Charlie would stoop this low, using her own child.

“Mr. Payton, I’m Brett Russell.” He offered his hand.

Eli rose, letting the pencil piece in his hand fall to the desk, and walked around the desk to shake Brett’s hand. “Have a seat.” Eli motioned to the chair next to his desk and returned to his seat. “What can I do for you?”

Brett kept his gaze lowered. “My mother…”

Eli tensed.

“She says that she’s going to hit you with a paternity suit to pay for my college.”

“She sent you here to tell me that?”

Brett’s head shot up. “No! She doesn’t know I’m here. I came to ask you a favor.”

The kid was as brash as his mother.

Brett shook his head. “I have no right to ask anything of you after my mother’s behavior toward you.”

“I’m not your father.” Might as well get that right out front.

“I know you’re not my father. Dad told me the whole story a long time ago. They were arguing in their room and I overheard Mom taunt Dad that he wasn’t my father. When Dad came out, I was still in the hall. Mom’s a very unhappy person. She’s gone kind of crazy since Dad left, talking about the past a lot and what she could have done, how she wouldn’t be working at a hardware store in a Podunk town if you hadn’t left her. I think she’s convinced herself that you
are
my father and owe her for ruining her life.”

Eli’s compassion for Brett clashed with his anger at Charlie. His anger won. “She’s not going to collect on that. She’s hurt a lot of people.”
People I care about.

“I’m sorry. She’s so mad at Dad. She says she’s not taking anything from him and I shouldn’t, either. He’s been paying for my classes at North Country Community College and helping with my apartment in Ticonderoga.”

“I don’t follow.” An edge crept into his voice. “What does any of this have to do with me, except in your mother’s mind?”

Brett studied his fingers. “Nothing. I’m messing this up. Mom thinks she can force you to send me away to college. I’m so tired of hearing her rants about you and how you owe her big-time and about how none of her kids are going to get stuck in Paradox Lake.”

Eli softened. The same way he was tired of hearing Charlie’s lies spread all over town.

“I’ve come up with an idea that might stop her.”

Eli frowned. He’d promised Jamie not to interfere, to let the gossip die of its own accord. But he had a personal stake in Charlie’s actions, too.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you asked me to leave right now, but hear me out.”

“All right.”

“Mom keeps giving me all these college catalogs. When I graduated last year, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go to college. I had good grades and all, but I didn’t know what I wanted to study. I thought about joining the service. She talked me out of that and compromised with my taking classes at the community college this year.”

Eli interrupted. “I’m certainly not the person to change your mother’s mind, if that’s what you’re getting to.”

“No, I doubt all four branches of the Armed Forces combined could do that.”

Eli laughed. He couldn’t help himself.

“I started looking at the service academies. I know most kids apply to start right out of high school. But online, it says the Air Force academy can accept students up to age twenty-three.”

“The academy is a better way to go than the route I took.”

“That’s kind of what my favor is about.”

“I don’t think I can help you.”

Brett’s face crumpled.

“I’m just a retired Lt. Colonel. I don’t have the clout to recommend your appointment.”

“I know. I need to contact our U.S. representative and senator.” Brett scuffed his boot on the floor. “My friend Seth says you’re a good guy, that you’d help me prep to apply. There’s this whole list of things online.”

Eli studied the young man across from him. He had a lot of nerve after what Charlie had put Eli and his mother and now Jamie, through. But he was a kid. He probably didn’t know half of what his mother had done.

A verse from his Bible in a Year online study group played in his mind:
Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.

“It could get my mother off my back and yours. You know, get her to drop the whole lawsuit thing.”

Eli couldn’t ignore the plea in Brett’s eyes. Brett wasn’t responsible for his mother’s actions. It was up to God, not Eli, to judge and punish if punishment was needed. “Yes, I’ll do what I can.”

“Thanks, sir.”

Eli wondered whether the kid was brown-nosing him with the
sir.
It didn’t matter. “I’m free after church on Sunday to get together.”

“What time would that be?”

“One is good. We can meet at the North Country library. You have computer access there, right?”

Brett nodded.

“Fine.”

Brett stood as if to leave but didn’t move.

“Is there something else?”

The young man’s gaze dropped. “I…my mother…never mind. Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome.”

He turned and left.

As Eli had thought before, Brett had a lot of chutzpah to come here and ask a favor. But now that he’d talked with Brett, he could separate Brett from Charlie. And the kid’s plan just might work. That and another idea he had, if Brett would agree. Eli took a new pencil from the desk drawer and tapped it on the desk. He wouldn’t be going against his promise to Jamie. Not really.

* * *

Jamie’s heart pounded as she approached Hazardtown Community Church.

“Watch it, Mom!” Myles said.

She braked just in time to miss the deer dashing across the highway in front of her. The pounding doubled.

Dear Lord—
She cut the involuntary prayer short.

“That was a close one.”

“You’ve got that right. Thanks, I didn’t see it.” What was wrong with her? She’d lived in the North Country long enough to be on alert for deer darting into the road. Driving Myles to his first confirmation class shouldn’t have her so rattled. She shuddered thinking what could have happened if she’d hit the deer. She had all of the kids with her.

Jamie parked at the back of the church lot, since she wouldn’t be staying. She scanned the sparsely filled lot for Eli’s truck before getting out. She couldn’t help it. She hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks. Rose had come down with some kind of bug the Friday before last, and Jamie hadn’t made bowling. Eli never showed this past Friday. She should be glad he was honoring her request to limit their contact. But she missed him. Missed his strength, his smile and even his take-charge manner that bordered on bossiness.

The click of Myles’s door opening pulled her from her thoughts. “You need to come in and sign me up. Pastor Joel said so when I talked to him at youth group.”

“I know.” She got out and opened the back door for Rose and Opal.

“Can I go say hi to my Sunday school teacher?” Opal asked as they entered the church hall.
Former Sunday school teacher,
Jamie silently corrected her daughter. “No, stay with me. We’re early. She’s probably not here yet.”

Opal pushed out her lower lip and followed Jamie to the room where Myles’s class was. Jamie hated saying no. Opal had adored her teacher and hadn’t seen her since they’d left Community Church. But she knew Opal would want to stay for class. And she wasn’t up to that confrontation. She’d had her reasons for the break, and they hadn’t changed.

She looked at Myles. He was older, old enough to choose for himself. Rose and Opal could have that choice later when their choice wouldn’t drag Jamie back into participating at church.

“Myles, Jamie. Good to see you.” Pastor Joel met them at the classroom door. “And Opal and Rose. Are you staying for Sunday school?”

Jamie’s heart sank. She should have expected this. She’d explained to Rose and Opal why they weren’t going to Sunday school anymore. That it was all a lie. But they were only five and seven when John died, and she’d been emotionally distraught. Who knew what they had gotten out of the explanation. She’d put them off when they’d asked again until they’d stopped asking to go.

“No, Mom won’t let us. Only Myles,” Rose said.

She liked Joel. But he wasn’t playing fair. She was the parent. It was her decision whether or not they attended Sunday school. Her shoulders drooped. And it was Joel’s job to gather his flock.

“I’m sorry,” Pastor Joel apologized. “I assumed, or I should say, hoped.”

“That’s okay. Myles said you need me to sign something.” Maybe she could get the girls back out to the car before they ran into anyone else.

“Yes.” Pastor motioned her to the front of the room. “I’m asking all of the parents to sign a pledge that they will support their child in his or her decision to explore church membership.”

Jamie read through the pledge. It seemed innocuous enough. She supported Myles learning more in hopes of helping him see the folly of blind faith and save him from the heartache she’d experienced. She wouldn’t be lying by signing it. An abyss opened in her chest that stretched to the pit of her stomach. She pressed the pen to the paper so hard she almost tore it and scratched her signature.

“The class is done at ten fifteen?”

“That’s the plan.”

“I’ll be back then. Meet me outside, Myles.” Everyone would be arriving for service then. The fewer people she ran into here, the better for the tenuous inner peace she’d built over the time since John’s death.

Pastor Joel walked with her to the door, greeting the other arriving students. “You’re sure you don’t want to stay for Sunday school?” the pastor asked.

Opal and Rose looked at her with expectant eyes.

“You know a lot of the adult class members, Ted and Mary Hazard, Neal and Anne, Drew and Emily, the Hills, Becca Norton, Edna Tiffany, Harry Stowe and Leah Summers.” Pastor Joel ran through the rest of the names like he was doing class roll call. “Leah’s son, Eli, is leading the class now. Harry thought it was time to give someone else the opportunity.”

Pastor Joel’s mention of Eli tugged at her. He’d probably be a dynamic class leader. She pictured him, his wide shoulders and broad chest filling out a crisp dress shirt tucked neatly into sharply creased slacks. Jamie shook the picture out of her head. She couldn’t believe she’d actually been considering attending the class just to watch Eli.

Pastor Joel misinterpreted her headshake. “I had to try. When you’re ready, we’ll welcome you back.”

Her throat clogged. She’d yet to find something to fill the void that leaving Community Church had created. But she couldn’t live a lie of pretended faith.

She touched Pastor Joel’s arm. “That means a lot to me. But I can’t. Come on, girls. Let’s go.”

Rose and Opal dallied walking back to the church hall, probably in hopes of seeing some of their Sunday school friends. Jamie fought the almost suffocating longing that had plagued her since she’d set foot in the church building. She stopped at the door to the hall and waited for the girls who were now several paces behind her whispering to each other.