No Matter What Read online

  Somewhere midspeech he’d risen to his feet, too, so that he could tower over her.

  “Yeah,” he said, “you do. Thank you for your consideration, Ms. Callahan. I’m moved by your obvious concern for my son. So moved, I’ll be sure to mention it to the principal. Possibly the superintendent, too. John is a friend of mine.”

  His threats, issued in a gritty voice, affected her not at all. She continued to gaze stonily at him. He nodded and walked out. This time his son let the hand holding the ice pack drop and looked at his dad. If there was something worried or even childish on his face, it was fleeting and replaced by his now-current sullenness.

  “We’re going home,” Richard said, and kept walking, leaving Trevor to fall in behind him or not.

  Good. Great. His meeting with Vice Principal Callahan had made him sullen, too, and about as mature, behaving like the average middle schooler, forget high school.

  And now he had to figure out how to be the parent.

  * * *

  CAITLYN SNATCHED A carrot that her mother had just peeled and crunched into it. Molly pretended to slap at her hand but then took another carrot from the crisper and began to peel. She watched with pleasure as Cait plopped her book bag on the breakfast bar, hopped on a stool and hooked her feet on it. Orange bits flew as she chewed and talked.

  “Wow, I don’t know what his problem is, but today Mr. Sanchez was a total—” She grinned at her mother’s raised eyebrow. They’d agreed years ago that she could express honest opinions of her teachers but not use profanity or obscenities to do so. “Jerk. He was a jerk today. He was in some kind of snit because nobody, like nobody, passed his stupid quiz. Of course it’s our fault. Did it occur to him that maybe he failed to successfully teach a concept? I mean, duh.” Another enthusiastic crunch. “So he tried again, and I still don’t get it. Who needs advanced algebra anyway?”

  “Engineers, I’d guess. Mathematicians, computer geeks, scientists.”

  “You know this for a fact.”

  Molly laughed. “Well, no. I confess I got an A in second-year algebra and can no longer remember a single thing I learned. I thank God on my knees daily that you haven’t needed my help.”

  “About that.” Cait reached for the zipper of her backpack. “See, there’s this thing I don’t get…” She giggled at her mother’s expression. “I’ll figure it out myself, thank you.”

  She rambled on for several minutes. Molly would have basked in the pleasure of having Cait talking to her, really talking, if she didn’t know that soon—any minute—she herself would have to drop a bomb on the mood. Obviously, Cait and Trevor had not spoken since he’d slunk out at his father’s side without finishing the day.

  She would have waited until after dinner if it weren’t for the possibility of the phone ringing any minute. Unless Richard Ward had suspended his son’s phone privileges? Yeah, sure.

  Cait finished telling Molly about a friend who was being such an idiot about this guy who treated her like garbage, and why would she put up with that?

  Usually Molly would have commented. Instead, she took a minute to look at her daughter and think, If only you knew how much I love you.

  She’d been so in love with her one-and-only child since the day she was born. It almost seemed unfair that Caitlyn was darn near perfect. Molly had been waiting for years for the other shoe to drop. Life was never this good. People weren’t this good.

  But there she sat, delicate face open and cheerful. She had big blue eyes and a cloud of wavy, strawberry-blond hair. Thanks to her father’s genes, she was both shorter than her mother and finer boned. She gave an impression of fragility that her years in dance belied. Cait could be tough.

  Bracing herself, Molly stirred the homemade chili simmering on the stove. “Cait, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  Her daughter tilted her head. “Wow. You sound serious.”

  “It’s about Trevor.”

  Cait stiffened.

  Get it out quick. “There was another incident involving Trevor. Aaron Latter bumped Trevor in the hall between classes, and Trevor attacked him. He hurt Aaron badly. Mr. Whitlock had to pull Trevor off Aaron. I know how you feel about Trevor—”

  “No, you don’t.” Cait was already scrambling off the stool. “What did you do? You didn’t kick him out, did you?”

  “I suspended him. You know I had no choice.”

  “Oh, right,” Caitlyn said in an ugly voice. The hostility that filled her eyes was shocking. “Did you even ask him his side?”

  “He has no interest in talking to me.”

  “Gee, I wonder why that is? God, Mom. How could you?”

  Molly continued with her dinner preparations. She’d tell any parent not to overreact to teenage drama. Be matter-of-fact, she would say. Explain, but do not justify yourself. Be a reasonable adult. A role model.

  She reached for the olive oil. “You know school policy on fighting. This is his second infraction within a week. And from what I’m told, this wasn’t a fight. It was an assault.”

  “Oh, that’s bull!” her darling daughter snarled. She grabbed her book bag and in a violent movement flung it toward a chair in the dining nook. It skidded across the seat and thudded to the floor. “Aaron Latter is a sneak and a liar.”

  “Cait, there were witnesses. Lots of witnesses.” Explain but do not justify, echoed in her brain. Yes, but where do I draw the line?

  “You know he didn’t ‘bump’ Trev by accident, don’t you? Aaron has been coming on to me. He’s practically stalking me. Trevor told him to back off, all right? So the little passive-aggressive creep thought he could get away with smashing into him in the hall, like oh, oops.”

  It sounded reasonable. It might even be true. It also might not be.

  “You’ve never mentioned having a problem with Aaron,” she said mildly. She sliced a tomato carefully, aware she was clenching the knife handle too tightly.

  Cait wasn’t nearly as pretty when she was sneering. “I don’t tell you everything, you know.”

  “I thought we had a good relationship.”

  Cait’s pointed chin shot up. “I thought we did, too. Until you decided you hated the only guy I’ve ever really liked. The only one who’s ever really liked me.”

  The reasonable adult broke. “Okay, now that’s ridiculous. Boys have been trailing around behind you since you were five years old. Remember Ben whatever his name was, who asked you to marry him?”

  “That was kindergarten!”

  Molly talked right over her. “You were the only girl in Mrs. Carlson’s fifth-grade class to have a boyfriend. Who wrote you poetry.”

  “We were children! Like it’s the same.”

  “Middle school dances,” Molly continued inexorably. “I chaperoned them. Don’t imply you weren’t popular. You were the only freshman in high school invited to the senior prom—”

  “Which you didn’t let me go to.”

  “You were fourteen years old! He was eighteen.” The knife was still clutched in her hand, but she’d given up slicing.

  “I didn’t care about him, okay?” Cait’s pale, redhead’s skin was a furious red. “I love Trevor, and you’re…you’re persecuting him because he likes me, too!” She shoved one of the stools and it crashed to its side on the hardwood floor.

  “Caitlyn Callahan!”

  “I’m through listening to you,” Cait yelled, and raced from the room. The front door opened and banged shut.

  Molly let the knife fall to the cutting board, braced her hands on the tiled countertop and closed her eyes.

  Dear God, she asked, why didn’t we get this over with when she was thirteen? Why did raging hormones have to hit now?

  Easy answer: Trevor Ward.

  “I do not hate Trevor,” Molly said aloud. “I am more adult than that.” She thought.

  * * *

  “TALK TO ME,” HIS father said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  The anger that filled Trevor 24/7 rose like a storm-dri
ven wave ready to crash on the beach. Trevor didn’t know how to handle these violent impulses, this deep hunger to make everyone else hurt as much as he did. He couldn’t have formed all this hostility and sense of betrayal into words even if he’d wanted to, and he didn’t.

  “Nothing’s going on.”

  His father sighed. “Have you ever been in a fight before last week?”

  He shrugged.

  Dad had just slapped dinner on the table—a frozen lasagna nuked in the microwave, salad from a bag and presliced garlic bread, also nuked. He hadn’t said a word during the drive home. When they’d walked in the door, he’d said, “Go to your room and don’t come out until dinner,” and continued toward his home office without looking back. Trevor had hesitated, but Dad hadn’t looked or sounded like himself. There wasn’t anyplace he wanted to be, anyway, he’d told himself, and gone upstairs where he threw himself on the bed and discovered he had enough adrenaline still heating up his bloodstream that he wished Aaron Latter was on his feet again and coming at him.

  Now Trevor only wanted his father to get the lecture over so he could sneak out and meet Cait. So far, she was the only good thing to come out of moving to this crappy little town. When he was with her, his anger settled. He felt more normal. Horny, but normal. He grinned. Yeah, okay, that was normal.

  “You find this funny?” his father asked coldly.

  He kept his head down. “I was thinking about something else.”

  “I guess the first thing I need to figure out is how to keep your attention, then, isn’t it?”

  His first thought was Oh, shit, and his second— Yeah, big scare, what can he do to me anyway?

  Dad held out his hand. “Car keys.”

  The legs of Trevor’s chair scraped on the floor as he recoiled. “What?”

  “You heard me. Your driving privileges are suspended.”

  Rage rose in him. Tide coming in. “That car’s a piece of crap, anyway.” He took pleasure in the slight flinch he detected beside his father’s grimly set mouth. Dad had bought the heap of junk before Trevor had even shown up. He’d been proud that he already had a car for his son.

  Trevor dug in his jeans pocket, pulled out the keys and tossed them toward his father. He wasn’t real sorry when they landed on Dad’s lasagna.

  Without a word, his father picked them up, took the car key off the ring and handed it back to Trevor. “You might want to wash that,” he commented, in the hard voice that didn’t sound like the dad Trevor knew and had thought he loved. Then he calmly wiped his fingers on his napkin and started to eat.

  Trevor stared at his meal.

  “The cell phone is next,” Dad remarked, as if he was commenting on something that happened at work that morning. “One more call from the school. You understand?”

  “I’m not hungry.” Trevor pushed back from the table.

  “Understand?”

  “Yes! I understand! Are you happy?” He hated the tremor in his voice. The little boy in awe of his daddy. The wriggling, squirming need to piss on the floor because daddy was mad at him.

  “Happy?” For a moment their eyes met, the same espresso color. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “May I be excused?” Trevor asked with mocking courtesy.

  “Certainly,” his father said. “Check the refrigerator in the morning. Since you’ll be home, anyway, I’ll post a list of chores for you to do.”

  Trevor didn’t say a word. He left the dining room and went upstairs. He’d already perfected the art of leaving the house via his bedroom window and swinging down from the arbor that covered the back patio. He and Cait were meeting at ten. Fortunately, he could walk anyplace in this nowhere town.

  Tonight he’d get in her pants. She was dragging her feet. She hadn’t done it before, she said. She wasn’t sure she was ready. Furious, he turned on his music loud enough to shake the walls.

  Well, screw that. Screw her. He was ready. Past ready. Desperate. He needed something, and she was it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MOLLY DIDN’T DARE go so far as forbidding Cait to see Trevor. That was about the dumbest thing any parent could do, she had always believed. But oh, how she wanted to.

  He did not appear chastened when he reappeared in school the following Monday. The black eye had already faded to mustard and lavender. All it succeeded in doing was making him look tougher. He seemed not to have shaved that morning, as if making a statement with the dark stubble. Molly noticed, as she noticed most things in her school. That was one of the mornings she greeted students arriving from the parking lot. His eyes met hers briefly, and she had to work to keep herself from taking a step back. The disquieting thing, she realized, was that there was no spark of rage. Instead, if she hadn’t imagined it, he’d smirked. As if he knew something she didn’t.

  A mother’s panic struck her. Cait. That son of a bitch. If he was planning to get to her through her daughter, she’d… Her stomach clenched. Do what? She couldn’t even prevent whatever it was he had in mind, not without locking Caitlyn in her room for the foreseeable future. Sending her off to boarding school. And that was assuming she wasn’t already too late.

  I’ll keep the channels of communication open, she told herself, tamping down the fear. Cait and she had always talked, often and easily. Her daughter’s recent behavior was an anomaly. She’d get over it.

  But that same panic had Molly wondering, When?

  She had spoken at length to Aaron and his mother—his father was apparently too busy to take time to discuss his son’s behavior with school officials. The mother talked about pressing charges. Aaron’s eyes got shifty and he insisted that was ridiculous, he could take care of himself. Molly pushed; he got shiftier. It would appear Cait was right; something had been going on that he didn’t want his mother or anyone else to know about. He was not the complete innocent he had initially seemed.

  “My daughter has mentioned you,” Molly made a point of saying, and Aaron looked alarmed.

  “Cait?”

  “Yes.” Molly had studied him unblinkingly. “Did you know she and Trevor are friends?”

  The mother’s head had been swiveling as she tried to figure out what this digression had to do with anything. Neither Aaron nor Molly enlightened her, but Molly was satisfied she’d made her point.

  She still didn’t like Trevor Ward—although I do not hate him—but she’d decided she didn’t like Aaron Latter, either. Practically stalking, huh? Let him try that again.

  Over the course of the next few weeks, Trevor managed to avoid getting into a fight. He still walked the halls of West Fork High School looking like an escapee gunfighter from the O.K. Corral, minus the black duster and—so far—the gun. Oh, God, horrendous thought—he wasn’t that angry, was he?

  Molly still caught glimpses of her daughter’s shining strawberry-blond head at his side, barely topping his broad shoulder. Caitlin was going to the library to study a lot these days, after school and evenings. Or hanging out with friends, often unnamed.

  “Does it matter?” she asked with apparent indignation. “Like there’s anywhere in town to go.”

  There was Trevor’s house afternoons when his father was at work. That was one place Molly would hugely prefer Cait not go. Or Terrace Park, the peculiar one-acre piece of old-growth forest somehow saved as a city park. The vast, tall, dark trees offered too many hiding places, especially at night. A teenage girl had been raped in the park only last year.

  In her professional role, Molly had no reason to speak to Richard Ward, although she knew several of the teachers had called him. Trevor was not performing to ability in his classes. In other words, he was obliterating his chances of getting into Harvard or Stanford or possibly even the local community college. Coach Bowman had also called Trevor’s father to ask why Trevor was refusing to go out for the basketball team. Coach Loomis had been sulking since school began because Trevor had refused to play football. West Fork had come within one win last year of taking the league championships
. This kid who’d led his team to all-state in California could have taken West Fork to the Promised Land. It was killing Chuck Loomis that Trevor had refused. Gene Bowman was refusing to lose hope.

  Molly wished him all the luck in the world. She’d love to see Trevor tied up every afternoon in basketball practice. Friday or Saturday nights at games. Whole weekends at tournaments! He could take some of his aggression out on the court in a healthy, culturally approved manner. He could be frequently unavailable to spend time with her daughter. Despite the many pluses, however, she was staying out of the campaign to win Trevor over. She had had to assure Gene several times that her intervention would hurt more than it helped.

  One day the first week of October Molly overheard Caitlyn whining on the phone to someone—probably Trevor—that Mom hadn’t let her take driver’s ed this semester, so now she couldn’t get her license until next summer even though she would turn sixteen in April.

  To the best of Molly’s recollection, they’d both agreed it didn’t make sense for her to take the class until spring since it would be almost summer before she’d be able to drive, anyway.

  Of course there was no mystery about Cait’s new passion for getting her driver’s license. When he couldn’t hitch a ride to school with one of his new friends, Trevor had become a walker. Knowing Richard Ward had taken the kid’s car away from him after the last fight did soften Molly’s feelings toward Ward senior, if only slightly. Smart to hit a teenager the hardest where the privileges he or she took for granted were concerned. For a boy, the car had to be number one.

  She would swear she’d never set eyes on Trevor’s father before, but by some evil chance she kept seeing him now.

  One Saturday she was pushing her cart filled with groceries out of the store and came nearly face-to-face with both father and son, striding across the parking lot toward her. Trevor looked sulky—gee, nothing new in that. His father looked sexy, in well-worn jeans and a faded T-shirt that clung to a powerful body. Oh, Lord, she thought, reacting to his loose-hipped, purely male walk.... One, she was disturbed to see, that his son shared.