Interestingly, the mud and foul weather that would have discouraged me only a few days ago, now felt like a challenge to be met, a rite of passage, a chance to prove myself. When Taz called on Sunday to suggest that I borrow the jacked-up four-wheel-drive truck he kept for trips to his small weekend ranch, I took him up on it. I even went out with him on Sunday afternoon and took a four-wheeling lesson. While we were discussing fascinating things like self-locking hubs, rear differentials, and the laws of physics as they applied to mudholes and four-wheel-drive trucks, my boss asked about Dustin.
I spilled more than I meant to about our continuous head-butting sessions and Dustin’s reluctance to participate in our new life in Moses Lake. No matter what I suggested, he refused. I was hoping against hope that the start of the water safety course might snap him out of his funk, but now I was worried about how I was going to transport him to the class. I hadn’t heard from Mart. While buying gas at the Waterbird, I’d learned that he was still tied up doing flood duty in southeast Texas. No one had seen Len, either, but that wasn’t too surprising, considering the weather.
“I’m just hoping Dustin doesn’t go into total protest mode about the water safety course tomorrow,” I told Taz glumly. “He’s just so . . . oppositional these days. It’s like he thinks if things get miserable enough here, we’ll pick up and move back to Houston. He won’t even give Moses Lake a chance.” I knew, in a way, that I was the pot calling the kettle black. I’d arrived in town determined not to get too involved in the community – to make Moses Lake no more than a temporary stopping-off point in our journey to some sort of new life. But day by day, Moses Lake was drawing me in.
Taz nodded, seeming unsurprised by the revelations about Dustin. “Take the truck on home and give him a ride in it. I haven’t met the teenage boy yet who couldn’t relate to a hemi engine, a lift kit, and four knobby mud tires. You know, I’ve got some boxes to sort through at the office and some new shelves to put together. Once he’s done with water safety, I can give him some work the first couple weeks of August, if you think he’d be interested.”
“That would be great.” Maybe setting Dustin up with his first paying job would distract him from the fact that he was supposed to be at his father’s house. Dustin might actually enjoy working at the office.Taz would take him under wing, Bonnie would spoil him, and the doughnut lady would feed him apple fritters. “Maybe a change of scenery will help.” Among other small favors, I’d landed in a job with the world’s nicest, most understanding boss.
On the way back to Taz’s condo, we talked a little more about Dustin and the tasks he might be able to help with around the office. After dropping off Taz, I drove home, feeling foolish behind the wheel of the big blue truck. At stoplights, it seemed as if people were looking at me, surveying the truck, thinking that I didn’t belong in it. I splashed through rain-swollen intersections and ran over a curb or two, but overall, I piloted the big rig pretty well for a girl who’d never driven anything larger than a minivan. Turning into Larkspur Estates, I envisioned Dustin running out of the house with his mouth agape when he heard the hemi engine roaring up the driveway. Oddly enough, though, the house was quiet. Maybe Dustin was asleep, or back in his room with his earphones on.
I parked the truck in the driveway, positioned for an evening junket to someplace muddy, then I dashed through the drizzle and slipped into the house via the carport door. Dustin was nowhere to be found, but the light was on in the boathouse. A mixture of suspicion and irritation stirred inside me, a pot working toward a boil. Why would Dustin be in the boathouse on a day like this? I doubted that Mrs. Blue would allow Sydney and Ansley out while storms were still passing over. What could Dustin possibly be doing down there? Unless . . .
Unless his friends had come back.
Irritation turned to panic. Surely they wouldn’t go out on the lake in this weather. The water was choppy and dotted with whitecaps. I couldn’t see a single boat out there.
Grabbing an umbrella from the stand on the back porch, I hurried down the hill, water sloshing into my tennis shoes and soaking the hems of my jeans, my brain whipping up worrisome scenarios as to what might draw a fourteen-year-old boy outside on a day like today. The answer to that question became perfectly apparent as I rounded the corner, bringing the interior of the boathouse into view. A bicycle was parked under the overhang on the front of the building, and along the edge of the empty boat stall, side by side, sat my son and a petite, dark-haired, olive-skinned girl I could only assume was Cassandra. So much for her being grounded. Dressed in a faded cami top, short shorts, and dime-store flip-flops, she looked like she was ready for a party.
I stopped halfway into the building, the water from the roof pelting my umbrella in large droplets. “Dustin, what do you think you’re doing?” was out of my mouth before I even had time to consider how it would sound.
Dustin snapped upright, and the girl scrambled to her feet. Lashes flying wide, she darted a gaze around the room like she was looking for an escape hatch.
She’d better be,
I thought. Just the idea of her and Dustin alone in the boathouse, maybe even alone in the house, made me queasy. How often had they done this? What might have been going on during the week while I was at work?
Dustin flipped his hands into the air, then let them slap to his thighs. “Mom, we were just hanging out.” He turned a red-cheeked look my way. The resentment, anger, and hurt there shocked me.
“You are grounded, Dustin. You didn’t have permission to have a – ”
girl in extremely short shorts and too much makeup –
“guest over here.” The degree to which I sounded like my mother was staggering. The word
guest
even had the sharp edge of condescendence to it, a subliminal message to Cassandra, of sorts. She didn’t belong here.
Her mother cleans cabins for a living,
ran through my mind, and I was ashamed of the thought. It sounded like something my parents would say.
Nostrils flaring, Dustin sucked in a breath and stood up. “Mom!” he gasped, mortified at my rudeness. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was mortified myself. It was wrong to treat a child that way, and despite the attempt to look grown-up, Cassandra was a child.
She sidestepped toward the door, her neck retracting into her shoulders, as if she were afraid I might throw something at her. Her dark eyes rolled upward, soulful, puppy-like, with a wide, white rim underneath. “I . . . better go,” she choked out, her voice barely a whisper.
“Mom!” Dustin repeated insistently, blocking Cassandra’s exit. “We were just sitting here talking. Besides, you said I was grounded for two weeks. Tomorrow is Monday. That’s two weeks.” His eyes met mine, and in a strange instant of transference, I levitated across the boathouse and was standing in his shoes, young, confused, embarrassed by my mother’s behavior. One minute I was having the time of my life, and the next I was being squashed under my mother’s thumb. Nothing I ever did was right. She always assumed the worst, never trusted my judgment. I couldn’t wait to grow up and get away from her house, out from under her control. But when I did get out on my own, I lacked confidence in my ability.
By not trusting Dustin, by not listening to him, would I teach him that he wasn’t trustworthy, that his opinions weren’t worth considering? Would I cause him to yearn for love and acceptance so badly that he would jump into the wrong relationships just to get it?
“I called Dad,” Dustin said, and I felt the floor dropping out from under me, felt the cold splash of water as my head went under. “Dad said it was all right, as long as we stayed outside. He’s gonna call me back about August in a couple days, too. He’s been busy.”
“You called . . . wh . . . Excu . . . excuse me?” The words choked the air from my throat. Karl had actually bothered to answer the phone? And how in the world would he know what was
all right
? He had incredible nerve, handing out his approval. Why would Dustin think Karl’s permission counted for anything? The answer was obvious, of course. Dustin knew his dad would tell him what he wanted to hear.
“It’s not your father’s decision,” I bit out. “You should have called me.”
Dustin stretched taller, suddenly seeming more man than adolescent. “I couldn’t get you on your phone, so I called Dad, and I got ahold of him this time. Cassie’s finished being grounded. None of the other kids even got grounded.”
Cassandra rolled a sympathetic look toward Dustin, uncertain whether she should jump into the argument or run for cover. Shifting from one foot to the other, she twisted her arms, pretzel-like.
I stood between her and the only available exit, feeling almost as insecure as she looked. Should I give in? Should I draw a hard line, revoke Dustin’s parole, just to prove the point that his father didn’t have a right to an opinion? My thoughts raced, my mind and heart struggling to weigh the consequences of every possible reaction. I didn’t want to turn into my mother. I didn’t want Dustin and me to have that kind of relationship. But there were so many dangers in this new life, so many things that could go wrong, and Dustin had so little experience. Until now, he’d been sheltered, protected, monitored. He’d never been in a situation where other kids might lead him astray.
He’d never been around girls who dressed like Cassandra. . . .
“Hello-o-o down there in the boathouse.” A voice traveled through the mist, and my heart skipped, then fluttered. I knew who was coming down the hill before I turned and saw Mart approaching on the footpath, wearing a long oilskin slicker, like he was ready to round up some doggies in the outback. While he walked, he was whistling “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” a cheery tune that seemed out of place amid the ongoing drama in the boathouse. He lifted a hand in greeting as he came closer.
Dustin and Cassandra leaned out over the water to see who was approaching. When they figured out who it was, Cassandra ducked back into the shadows, and Dustin groaned, “Oh, great. What does
he
want?”
“Dustin,” I snapped. “Drop the attitude. You’re in enough trouble already. Mr. McClendon is trying to do you a favor with the water safety class. You’re lucky you didn’t end up in juvenile court.”
In a surprising show of bravado, undoubtedly for Cassandra’s benefit, Dustin answered, “Whatever.”
Cassandra seemed shocked, reacting with a soft gasp and a quick headshake that indicated even she thought he’d gone too far.
Mart stepped off the path onto the mottled, overgrown cement surface that had once been a boat ramp, and I felt the memory of the kiss speeding toward Dustin’s issues like atoms in a supercollider. If Dustin suspected what was happening between Mart and me . . . I couldn’t even begin to predict what the fallout would be.
Worry scampered through my mind, running breathlessly but going nowhere, a hamster on a wheel. What should I do now? Try to act cool and businesslike? Hope that Mart would get the hint? What if he didn’t? I could send Dustin to the house, remove him from the situation completely. Once he was gone, Cassandra would probably gather up her bicycle and leave.
Mart and I would be alone then. A heady swirl of remembered sensations followed that thought, and I had the brief realization that Bonnie was right. He did look rugged.
A rush of self-recriminations pushed the observation aside, covered it over with wide strokes of emotion painted in dull gray – guilt, embarrassment, self-doubt. I was a thirty-eight-year-old woman with a child to raise. I needed to stop acting like I was Cassandra’s age.
Mart, completely unaware of my mental dialog, smiled pleasantly, then turned his attention to the kids. He greeted Dustin first, receiving a muttered hello that notched up the temperature in my cheeks. Mart didn’t seem to notice. He smiled at Cassandra who, at the moment, appeared to be considering diving into the water and swimming to freedom. “You finished being grounded, Cassandra?”
She blushed and nodded, digging a toe into the dock. “Yes, sir.”
Mart’s posture softened further. “And we’ll be seeing you at the water safety course tomorrow?”
Tucking her chin, she rolled a remorseful look at him, her eyes large and dark and wounded, the kind of sad eyes a teenage girl uses to get what she wants. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry we got in trouble that day on the lake.”
The hangdog face worked on Mart. He stepped under the roof and gave her an encouraging look.“Come on, now. The water safety course isn’t that bad. You might even learn something.”
“Yes, sir.” Shifting her weight, she uncrossed her arms and pushed her hands into her pockets, one eye squeezing shut, as if she had something on her mind and couldn’t decide whether to bring it up. “Ummm . . . Do you know when we’ll be done? When the class will get out each day, I mean?”
In the corner, Dustin turned his attention to Mart. The conversation had suddenly become of interest to him, too.
Mart paused to scratch his chin, letting the suspense build. “Five, six o’clock, maybe.”
Cassandra’s mouth dropped open, and Dustin sucked in a breath. Considering that the class started at two in the afternoon, five or six o’clock was a little hard to imagine. I’d thought it was supposed to be about an hour each day.
The slightest hint of mirth twinkled in Mart’s eyes. “Why, you got a hot date?”
Both kids turned three shades of red, and Cassandra rolled her toes inward, looking like a shy little girl at a spelling bee. “No, it’s just that I’ve gotta . . . my . . . ummm . . . I’m supposed to . . . ummm . . . help my mom clean the rooms at the resort and . . .” She caught Mart’s expression and stopped midsentence, studying his face, a look of awareness dawning. “You’re, like, pulling my leg, aren’t you?”