Anna DeStefano - A Family For Daniel

After graduation, they’d left for their separate colleges, and their friendship should have slowly faded away.

If only it had been so simple.

Amy had always been ambitious. Growing up poor in the South had left its mark on her, and she’d been determined to do better. To be better. To ensure that she and her mother never again went without anything they needed. He’d always admired her beauty, brains and ambition. Right up until the moment she’d produced a big city fiancé who Josh had known instinctively was all wrong for her.

And how had he handled the situation? He’d done the unforgivable, made an ass out of himself, and they hadn’t spoken since.

She’d achieved her success, he’d heard. She’d carved out the dream life she’d wanted. Except her wealthy husband was out of the picture now. And as far as Josh could remember, being divorced and a single parent to boot hadn’t been part of Amy’s plans.

He refocused on his young visitor, shoving aside the unwanted trip down memory lane. It was April in South Carolina, and the kids in school were beside themselves with spring fever. All of them but this child. A study in shaggy blond hair and intelligent green eyes, Daniel sat sprawled in his chair, digging at the monstrous hole in the toe of his right sneaker. No doubt waiting for Josh to make the first move, so the kid could ignore him some more.

Well, let him wait a little longer. Nothing else had worked. Not exactly what they taught you at principal school, but it was worth a shot. Josh continued to flip through his notes, still standing.

“So?” Daniel finally sputtered, making eye contact for the first time.

Josh sat as if he was in no particular hurry to get to the point. He exchanged Becky Reese’s file for Daniel’s even weightier one. He didn’t have to read through his notes. He knew Daniel’s issues by heart: the struggles to conform and get along in the classroom; the confusion; the emotional explosions that so quickly built from simple disappointments. And the kid internalized each failure, each bit of negative feedback, making it that much more difficult for him to try the next time.

“So.” Josh braced his elbows on the desk. “You and Becky got together this morning and decided to toss your classroom?”

Daniel shrugged and picked some more at shoes that looked like last year’s Salvation Army rejects. “She started it,” he mumbled.

“Someone else always does.”

Josh shifted his shoulders, shrugging off the lingering weight of his own personal failures. The guilt still remained from the mistakes he’d made the last few years. The relationships he hadn’t been able to save. But he was learning to let the past go and focus on making the best of now.

At least that was the plan.

But helping a child as angry as Daniel understand that loss and crushing defeat were just part of the game was a different story. What could he say that wouldn’t sound like a bunch of psychological hooey?

Welcome to the club, kid. Life bites the big one. Get used to it.

He gave his head a mental thunk.

“We’ve talked about throwing things in the classroom,” he said. “We can’t keep you with the other kids if we have to worry about one of them getting brained with a book—” he flipped through Daniel’s file “—or your backpack. Or your shoe—”

“I didn’t hurt anyone.”

“You’re down here almost every day, and you don’t get along with any of your classmates—especially Becky Reese.”

“She’s a pain in the—”

“She’s not your problem.”

“She said—”

“She said that your mom was as big a loser as hers.” Josh sighed. “Mrs. Cole told me, and I just got off the phone with Becky’s grandmother. The girl owes you an apology, but you can’t completely lose it every time someone mentions your mother. You and your therapist have talked about that.”

“Good old Dr. Steve.”

Cynicism sounded god-awful coming out of the mouth of a ten-year-old.

“If you can’t keep it together with the other kids in class—”

“No one talks bad about my mom.”

“Having temper tantrums isn’t the answer.” Josh was as disturbed as Daniel by what the little girl had said. It made him want to throw things himself, when up until a few months ago he’d been a pro at keeping his emotions and his job separate.

Everyone at school, including the kids, knew what Daniel had been through—at least part of it. A year ago, he’d come to them an unhappy child, after his mother moved them to Sweetbrook, a place Daniel had never seen before. Then she’d died in a single-vehicle car accident on New Year’s Eve while driving under the influence. Rumors had spread in the four months since that perhaps she’d aimed for that telephone pole, after all, leaving folks in the community to pity even more the lost little boy left behind.

Sweetbrook might be small and antiquated by most standards, but tiny South Carolina communities took care of their own. People wanted to give Daniel the break he deserved. Everyone except Becky. From her first day in school, the child had seemed hell-bent on baiting Daniel with the one thing she knew would hurt him the most—trash-talking the boy’s mother right along with her own.

Damn Amy Loar for dumping her problems in Sweetbrook, while she kicked back and did whatever she was doing in Atlanta.

“I know Sweetbrook has been a bum deal for you,” Josh said with care. Sounding soothing and understanding was tough, when he understood next to nothing these days. “Moving here to be near family you don’t know. Starting over. Then losing your mom the way you did.”

Daniel’s scowl rearranged itself into something fiercer. Something near tears.

Josh’s chest burned. “But you have to keep your hands and things to yourself if you want to stay in school.”

“When did this become about what I want? I don’t want to be in trouble all the time, but that’s what keeps happening.” The kid looked up then, his green eyes glistening. “Maybe everyone would be better off if I wasn’t here.”

“That’s not an option, Daniel.”

Josh refused to let it be. He watched resignation crowd out the grief on Daniel’s face, and he knew exactly how the boy felt. The situation everyone in Sweetbrook expected Josh to handle like a pro was speeding from bad to worse with each passing day.

He’d grilled the Family Services caseworker assigned to Daniel after his mother’s death. He’d read every book available on dealing with kids with Daniel’s issues. Josh was using all the tools at his disposal to help the little boy believe he was wanted. That he belonged here. That he could succeed. But the demons that drove Daniel to strike out every time someone got too close, every time the vulnerability he tried to hide swam to the surface, were unfortunately about so much more than losing his mother.

Josh’s well-thought-out plans to help Daniel weren’t making a dent. The boy’s behavior was defying every logical step Josh took, just as his ex-wife’s had, when she’d left to build the life she’d wanted away from him and Sweetbrook.

“It’s going to get better, you know,” he finally said, following Dr. Steve Rhodes’s lead, even though the words sounded ridiculously shallow. Maybe if Josh kept saying them, he could will the platitude into reality.

Daniel’s total lack of reaction announced that the kid wasn’t born yesterday.

Josh checked his copy of Mrs. Cole’s schedule. “Your class is at recess. You think you and Becky can retire to neutral corners until the end of the day?”

A mumble and a shrug were all he got in response.

“Give it your best shot.” Josh stood and walked around the desk, his stomach tightening at the realization of just how close he was to losing Daniel to whatever dark place he’d gone to after his mother’s death. “We’ll deal with the rest later.”