Lynnette Kent - The Third Mrs. Mitchell

With the doors shut, she twisted around in the driver’s seat of the Volvo to face her niece in the back. “What the hell are you trying to accomplish? Doesn’t your family have its share of problems already?”

Kelsey drew up her knees and curled into a ball. “I’m gonna be sick.”

“I hope so.” Mary Rose turned to the steering wheel and started the engine. “I hope you’re sick as a dog.”

Trace and Kate walked out of the police station as Mary Rose pulled the Volvo to the curb. Mother and son got into the car without a word. The five-minute drive up The Hill and to the LaRue house passed in total silence.

Once inside, the kids started up the stairs to their rooms. Mary Rose opened her mouth to protest but, thankfully, Kate beat her to it.

“Not so fast. We are going to talk about this. Both of you come into the living room.” Kate’s voice was harder than Mary Rose had ever heard it.

And that steely tone achieved the desired effect. Trace and Kelsey retraced their steps down the stairs, then went to sit side by side on the love seat, facing their stepmother as she stood in front of the fireplace. Mary Rose retreated to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. Against her inclinations, she closed the door to the dining room to give them privacy, so the voices—mostly Kate’s, but sometimes the kids’ as well—came to her as wordless mumbles.

More than half an hour passed before footsteps thumped on the staircase once again, announcing that the kids had gone upstairs. A moment later, Kate struggled past the heavy dining-room door and wilted into a chair at the kitchen table.

Mary Rose put a mug of sweet, milky coffee in front of her sister. “Was it very bad?”

“Very.” Kate hid her face in her hands. “I ought to be stern and strong…but they’re so terribly hurt already. How can I punish them when they’re in such pain?”

That question didn’t have an answer. “Did they have reasons? Excuses?”

Straightening her shoulders, Kate dropped her hands to curl her long, slender fingers around the mug. “Something to the effect that Trace’s friends dared him to knock down the mailboxes and Kelsey didn’t think she should let the boys take a car since none of them has a license.”

“And she does?”

“Her learner’s permit.”

“What about the drinking?”

“Kelsey swears that she only had a couple of beers. She didn’t realize how even that would affect her, because she’d never tried it before.”

Damn. “Kate, that’s not true.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I saw her Thursday at the soccer game, Kelsey had been drinking.”

“At school?” Her eyes widened in horror. “How do you know?”

“I could smell whiskey when she hugged me.”

“Whiskey. And you didn’t tell me?”

“I was hoping I was wrong.”

“Oh, dear God.” Kate put down her mug and stared into it blankly. “What am I going to do?”

Mary Rose put a hand on the soft, brown hair. “Katie, honey, I’m not sure. But we’ll figure out something.”

After a couple of minutes, Kate sighed and straightened up. “The reality is that they’re begging for their father to notice what’s going on. To come back home and take care of them. And all that will happen is that he’ll yell at them—and at me—without changing the situation in the least.”

“Would you take him back…if he asked?”

Kate squeezed her eyes shut. “I think I would have to.” Tears crept out from underneath her lashes. “I don’t know what to pray for anymore. Whether to pray that L.T. comes home, for Trace’s and Kelsey’s sakes. Or…or to pray that he stays gone. For mine.”

Mary Rose leaned over to put her arms around her sister. And she wondered whether there was even one man on the entire planet worth the suffering he inevitably caused.

SUNDAY DINNER was a command performance for the Mitchell family. Pete and his brothers were expected to appear in time for the 11:00 a.m. service at Third Baptist Church and then to show up at the front door of the house they’d grown up in not more than thirty minutes after the closing hymn. Fortunately, their mother’s way with oven-fried chicken and angel biscuits made the effort more than worthwhile.

“I took delivery on some engine parts this week shipped by your company.” Pete handed the mashed potatoes to his older brother, a driver for one of the national courier services. “The box was beat up all to pieces. What’s with you guys these days? Playing dropkick with the merchandise in your free time?”

Rick plopped a mound of potatoes next to the chicken on his plate. “What free time? I’m working overtime every night just to get the stuff out there. Talk to the guys at the airport. They’re the ones who mangle the shipments. They put in their scheduled hours, watching the clock instead of their work, then head on home.”

“So few people understand the meaning of responsibility these days.” Denise Mitchell got up to refill her sons’ iced tea glasses. “If the work can’t be done in the time they’re required to be at the job, they just don’t finish. The younger teachers are especially guilty. That bell rings at three o’clock, they’re walking out the door, without even taking papers home to grade.”

Still shaking her head, she went back to her seat at the head of the table. “And the way some parents send their children to school is shameful. I had a boy in just yesterday running a temperature of one hundred and two. He said he’d been sick all night but his mama made him come to school anyway.”

Pete grinned. “Did you call her and give her a piece of your mind?”

“I did. But she couldn’t leave her job, she said.” Denise sniffed in disbelief. “That poor little boy lay on a cot in my clinic until after two o’clock when she finally got there. I’m still thinking about calling Child Protective Services. We’ll be lucky if a flu epidemic doesn’t strike the whole school.”

“She might be a single mom.” Pete’s oldest brother, Jerry, sat across the table. “Maybe she couldn’t stay home because she’d lose her job and that’s the only income the family has. Some women have tough choices like that to make.”

Their mother sat up even straighter in her chair. “I had those choices to make, if you’ll remember. After your dad died, I didn’t have anybody helping me raise you three, with money or anything else. Yet I never sent you to school sick.”

Jerry gave her an apologetic smile. “But not every woman is supermom. You’ve got special powers.”

“Sometimes even two parents aren’t enough to keep kids out of trouble,” Rick said. “I heard at church this morning that the cops raided a big party last night, arrested the whole bunch.”

Pete looked up from his plate. “Were they fighting? I swear, if any of the REWARDS kids were involved, I’m gonna take some skin off their hides.”

“Nah, this was the right side of the tracks, up on The Hill.” As opposed to the “wrong side,” Pete understood, where the kids in his rehabilitation program came from. “The beautiful people’s kids were drinking, getting crazy. Some of them went out cruising, got picked up for driving drunk. There were some private mailboxes knocked down, cars vandalized. The cops found grass in the house. Er…marijuana,” he corrected himself with a glance at their mom’s frown.

Jerry shook his head. “Makes you question what the people with all that money have in their heads for brains, that they can’t raise their kids right, keep ’em out of trouble.”

Pete wondered if Kelsey and Trace had been at the party. He could imagine how upset Mary Rose would be if her niece and nephew were arrested. She’d been worried about them yesterday, obviously caring about the trouble they were having with their parents’ divorce. Years ago, he’d been surprised at how real she was, how easy for a guy from the other side of town to tell his dreams to. To live his dreams with.