Page 63 of Second Start: Family
Watching Hall’s profile, she saw him blink once. She couldn’t have explained how she knew from that blink, but she did — this was important to him.
“Great.” His voice sounded dry, like a man who’d been without water for too long. “Walks like me when he’s walking away.”
“Not just his walk,” she continued slowly. Needing him to see beyond that. Knowing she was giving away too much of how she watched him, remembered. Doing it anyway. “It’s the way he moves. The connection between his body and the space around it. If you couldn’t see his size or his height, but only how he was moving, it could be you. You’re part of him.”
“I’m part of him. He’s a part of me.” He said it so low she wasn’t sure she was supposed to hear it.
Her lips parted forOf course, but it clearly wasn’tof courseto him. “Always, Hall. But he wouldn’t be a teenager if he didn’t walk away a lot. It’s part of growing up. Being a separate, independent person at the same time he doesn’t want to be a separate, independent person. It’s a tough process. On both of you.”
*
Hall listened to the giggling upstairs, but his mind was on Kenzie’s words.
He wouldn’t be a teenager if he didn’t walk away a lot. It’s part of growing up …
If it were only that, solely part of the lurching, awkward growing up…
It’s a tough process. On both of you.”
Hearing her voice in his head again, he knew there was something in all this that was tough on her, too.
He didn’t quite get that, but he knew it.
I’malreadyin love with your kids.
Then the stumbling that followed that, despite it being clear she cared about the girls. Bobby, too. And the none-too-subtle point of masking that within the generality of loving all her students.
He didn’t doubt that. Yet there’d been something in the way she said it that gave him the impression she was hiding out, not being totally open about…
It clicked.
Dan.
She held back with Dan.
Not as much as at the start, but it was still there.
An awkwardness unlike with his other kids or the others in her class.
She shied away from Evan Kevery, too.
Not that Hall could blame her much there, the kid was almost as full of himself as his father was, but…
Ah. But he’d expect Kenzie to be more than capable of dealing with a kid that age. And Dan was more likely to go silent and withdraw than brag and clown, yet she still…
Yeah,shied awaywas a good way to describe it.
Like Dan’s horse Buster when he got it into his mind that a piece of paper might jump up and bite him.
Watching from the corner of her eye, on alert, waiting for the least flutter.
Why?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hall knocked on the doorjamb of Kenzie’s classroom to announce his presence, but it still made her jump.
“Oh. You startled me.”
