Page 25 of Second Start: Family
He should call Dan on his tone. Should give him a speech about courtesy to adults. He was too busy being relieved his kid had let the fact of their relationship slide by.
Dan wasn’t done. “You, what? Discussed me like some interesting case? Like some lab rat? You and Miss Kenz— Ms. Smith.”
“I wasn’t talking with her about you. Talked with Ms. Otter. Our delayed conference.”
He waited for Dan to ask about the scholarship.
Instead, silence dropped between them for a mile, then another.
*
But when Dan spoke again Hall knew his son had been thinking about the scholarship.
“That was to shut him up — Mr. Kevery — wasn’t it.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
But he knew. And he’d heard his son’s hope.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The first of the Wyoming Marriage Association caravan of vehicles pulled into the parking area by the Mason School carefully, because students stood in clumps around the two women standing there.
A multi-colored curved ridge dwarfed the modest schoolhouse, as well as two trailers set off to the left. Bexley wondered if the ridge felt like a protector or a menace to the new teacher they’d come to check out.
“I thought the kids were supposed to be gone by now,” she said.
“Uh-oh. That old bus must be late again.” Ellyn clicked her tongue. “How they’re going to get through the winter with that thing, I can’t imagine. They need a new one for sure.”
Bexley’s concern was more immediate. “How’re we going to get to know this new teacher with all the kids around?”
“Well, the first thing we know is she’s watchful,” Ellyn said. “I bet she’s memorized your license plate already, Kendra.”
Whatever caution the new teacher might have about the new arrivals was not shared by two of her students.
As soon as the first occupant of the truck got out, they shouted, “Bexley! Bexley!” and raced to her.
Laughing, she bent to hug both Lizzie and Molly at once.
Each took a hand and tugged her. “You have to meet our teacher, Miss Kenzie,” Molly said.
“She’swonderful. And this is Bexley, Miss Kenzie.”
“She’s our friend from Christmas we told you about. Her and Kiernan and Eric and Pauline. Except Eric and Pauline aren’t a couple like Bexley and Kiernan. Only now Eric has a girlfriend, too, isn’t that right, Bexley? K.D. He brought her to meet us when we spent a couple nights with Gramps before school started.”
“Exactly right, Lizzie.” Bexley freed a hand to extend it to the other woman with a smile. Kenzie returned it in shared affection for the girls.
With Kendra and Ellyn joining them from one direction and Vicky from another, introductions covered everyone.
Drawn by curiosity, the older kids came within earshot, too.
Bexley broke from the group to say hello to Dan, though she was careful not to do anything he’d find humiliating, like hug him.
“Nice to see you all, but what brings you here?” Vicky asked as Bexley returned.
“We’re the advance party. Reconnoitering you could say,” Kendra said.
