Page 9 of Stand

Shit.

She contemplated slouching down in the seat, but he’d already looked past Jake and seen her through her open window. “Hi,” she called over, knowing the word was inadequate.

Jake waved a lazy hand behind him. “That’s my aunt. She’s staying with us for a couple of days.”

Sam gave a close-mouthed smile and a shrug, as if to say,hey, I’m just as surprised as you are.

He turned around and yelled, “Matt!” behind him again. The boy from yesterday appeared, looking even more sleepy and unprepared for school than Jake. The boys started to walk toward the car just as Matt’s sister poked her head out the door. With her hair down around her face, her purple stripe was more noticeable. Sam gave her a wave, and she beamed back. Nice kid.

Matt had opened the back door and slid in next to Paolo before she realized that Ty had followed them. Something in his face made her get out and join him on the sidewalk. He was rumpled like his son and just as tall and rangy as yesterday. Yep, no denying the geek had grown up.

“I…” he began and grabbed the back of his neck. “I just wanted to… apologize for being a little… short with you yesterday.”

Sam laughed before she could stop herself. “I’m five eleven,” she said. “And I have to look up at you. You couldn’t be short if you tried.”

He didn’t smile with her. “You know what I mean.”

“Sorry.” Sam sobered up. His hostility from yesterday had gone, replaced with an intensity she couldn’t translate. “It’s fine,” she said. “I’m not… proud of a lot of what happened in high school. Particularly…”

“Well.” He got crinkles around his eyes that implied he would smile if it weren’t so damn early in the morning. “Neither of us were our best self in high school. Who is? I have apologies to make to you.”

“What?” Had she not remembered something from that party? “What didyoudo?”

He opened his mouth, then shook his head as though he wanted to tell her but didn’t know how to start.

Sam could see the stubble on his chin and his pulse in his neck, thrumming away slowly.

“Aunt Sam!” Jake yelled out the window.

“Right. Right. Well, bye.”

“Bye,” he said. “Thanks for taking Matt.”

“Sure.”

Such stilted language. Yet there was something underneath it all. Something Sam couldn’t catch hold of.

Their brief history didn’t have to be raked over again. Ty lived a good life now. A safe life, here with his kids. She wondered where his wife was. Partner, whatever.

A mystery for another day. Or never, since she was driving home tomorrow. She gave him one last glance before going back to her SUV. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her.

“You guys strapped in?” she said brightly to the boys. And they drove away, leaving Ty behind.

The high school was and wasn’t the same. There were more cars than ever, the parking spaces strictly outlined and numbered. She remembered a few fights over spaces, a few smashed lights. She might have encouraged one of them, she remembered with a squirm.

The school looked small, the children even smaller. Surreptitiously, she inspected her passengers. Jake seemed to be one of the “regular” kids with his pants low, Converses the required level of beaten-up, hair the perfect blend of messy and gelled. He had the dark hair and blue eyes of his no-good father, and Sam wasn’t surprised when two girls waved hello to him before he’d even straightened up from his seat. He was one of the cool kids, like all the Fieldings had been, even Thea, who’d spent all her time buried in books. Matt was blond and solid and looked like he played sports, she noted approvingly. Paolo and Mateo, peas in a pod, were dark and swarthy like their father. And their mother. And the whole Fielding family.

Sam, with her sun-lightened hair, was the odd one out among her siblings.

All the kids filing into the building were cool. Sam appreciated the ones carrying hockey sticks just as much as the ones draped in sweats, trying not to stand out. It was so easy to see their value now. Why hadn’t she seen it when she’d come here? She wanted to go up to each and every one of them and tell them that they were important, that they shouldn’t listen to anyone who made them feel less than. Anyone like Sam Fielding in grades eleven and twelve.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Why had she done this to herself? She could have been driving west by now. Not raking over these hot coals, waiting for another fire of guilt to break out.

♦

She spent the day trying to keep out of Cat’s way. The woman was a dynamo. After hosting yesterday’s lunch, she seemed determined to scrub all evidence of it out of existence. Megan had gone back to her apartment in Boston, so Sam had no buffer. Even the dogs hid. She helped where she could, took Cat’s fussing at how she cleaned as calmly as she could, and gratefully got out of there as often as possible to walk Cairo.

Jake came through the door at two fifty-five precisely. Sam knew this because Cat looked at the kitchen clock and said, “Two minutes late.”

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