Between the Sheets (17 page)

“Ms. Monroe?”

“She broke up the fight.”

He stretched out his hand, trying to shake away the instinct to make fists. “Start at the beginning.”

“Your son was playing by himself and Scott and John approached him. Casey tried to leave, but John grabbed his sweatshirt and tore the pocket. According to Scott, Casey just went berserk. He started punching John.”

“Why?”

“No one knows.”

“Of course they know.”

Mr. Root nodded. “They aren’t saying. In any case, Scott tried to pull Casey off of John but Casey kicked him.”

“How did my son’s nose get broken?”

“Mr. Phillips and Ms. Monroe said that when they found them, Scott was holding Casey down while John punched him.”

Ty stood up. Those words—oh God, how they hurt. Someone held down his son and hurt him. This pain was
searing, like trying to hold onto something that was too hot. He bent over, his hands braced on his knees.

Mr. Root leaned back from his desk and held up his hands. “Please. Mr. Svenson, let me finish.”

“There’s more?”

“When Ms. Monroe broke up the fight Casey ran away, but he shoved her, knocked her over—”

Oh God
. “Is she okay?”

“A minor scrape. But when I found Casey, he was crying in the bathroom stall.”

“Yeah, I can imagine. Because his nose was broken.” Mr. Root shook his head, seemingly uncertain. “He hasn’t told us his side of the story. He hasn’t defended himself, or accused John and Scott of anything. He’s been silent.”

He got where Mr. Root was going. “He’s not really a silent kid.”

“No. He’s not. Most fifth graders who’d been held down and beaten would be pretty quick to tell their side of the story.”

Ty rubbed his forehead. “Every time I come in here I have less clue what I’m doing.”

“I know and I’m sorry.” That Mr. Root sounded sincere was nearly the end of him. It was so much better when Mr. Root was the bad guy. When he was understanding, Ty had no place to put his ugly emotions. He just had to hold onto them.

“Is he suspended?”

“All three boys are. For the rest of the week.”

Four days. Casey would just have to come to work with him.

“Next week, every morning before school I need to have all three of them in my office. I’m going to have some work for them to do.”

“Together?”

“Supervised. They’ll be supervised, but hopefully we
can get everyone past this. It’s a small school, Mr. Svenson. And this kind of thing can be a cancer.”

Ty nodded, his back teeth nearly cracking in his mouth he was grinding his jaw so hard.

“You should know, Scott told us all of this and he was very … very upset.”

“Yeah, I’d imagine holding a kid down while your buddy smashes his face in would be upsetting.”

Mr. Root said nothing, as if Ty’s sarcasm was totally warranted. “Like I said, it’s a small school, Mr. Svenson. A small town. Scott and John have been friends since kindergarten. John’s parents have been going through a very ugly, very public divorce.”

“Are you defending them?”

“No. I’m …” He shook his head. “I think I’m just trying to give you some context.”

Fuck your context
, he thought. “I’m not interested in gossip, Mr. Root.”

“Fair enough.”

“Can we go?”

Mr. Root nodded. “I can’t … I can’t tell you how sorry I am that this happened at our school. It should be a safe place.”

“Yeah,” he said, in total agreement. Casey didn’t have a whole lot of safe places left. “Is Ms. Monroe in class?”

Mr. Root shook his head. “The teachers’ lounge.”

“Thanks.”

Ty opened the door, and at the sight of his son’s scuffed shoes and the torn pocket of his red hoodie on the floor in front of him, he was struck to the core by a moment of such painful, terrible doubt.

“Mr. Svenson,” Mr. Root said.

“You can just call me Ty,” he said, staring at that red hoodie.

“Ty. Try to get him to talk to you. To talk to anyone.”

Ty looked over his shoulder, surprised by his change of heart regarding counseling. “I will,” he said.

He just had no clue how.

“Let’s go, son,” he murmured. He put his hand under Casey’s elbow to help him stand up, but Casey twitched away, doing it all on his own. Casey scooped his hoodie up from the floor and dumped the cold pack and the paper towels on Colleen’s desk.

“Thank you,” he murmured to her and walked out of the office. Ty could only follow.

Chapter 11

In the hallway, Casey was at the doors heading outside before Ty could catch up with him.

“Hold up, Casey. You know where the teachers’ lounge is?”

Casey looked back, his blue eyes so clear in his red, swollen face. His nose was twice its normal size and the bruising was showing up under his eyes. He would have two shiners in the morning.

“Why do you want to go to the teachers’ lounge?” he asked, so wary.

“Because we need to see if Ms. Monroe is okay.”

Casey let the door close shut behind him and walked down the opposite way, through the hallways and the empty gym to a small set of stairs on the other side.

“Up there,” he said.

“You’re coming with me.”

“Kids … kids aren’t allowed.”

“They are right now.”

Ty went up first, because he understood the holy mystery that was the teachers’ lounge to a fifth grader, but he heard Casey’s footsteps behind him.

He opened the door at the top and found Shelby sitting at a round table with a man.

“You don’t want a bandage?” the man was asking, pulling away the cold compress that she was holding to her cheek. The guy sat close, close enough that he was touching Shelby in about four different places, and surprisingly, Ty felt jealousy blast through him.

“It’s a scrape,” she said. She was flushed pink. “Hardly worth all this.”

“Shelby,” the guy breathed, looking at Shelby as though he wanted to wrap his arms around her, and Ty cleared his throat, shattering this little scene in front of him.

The guy jumped back and Shelby’s wide brown eyes flew to his. At the sight of him she stood and looked behind him, where Casey was standing.

“Casey,” she said. “Are you okay?”

Ty stepped sideways trying to get out of the way, but Casey kind of stepped with him. He was hiding behind him. Christ, this was all so strange.

Shelby glanced up at Ty and he shrugged, because he had no clue what was happening.

“Are you okay?” Casey asked, from behind him.

“I’m fine. It’s just a scrape. See?” She came around the table and turned her face. She had a bright red scrape across her cheek. “Are
you
okay?” she asked. “When I saw—”

“I’m sorry I pushed you.”

She stepped closer and when Casey shuffled back until he was almost backed into the corner, Shelby pressed a quick hand to her mouth. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Casey just turned and walked out the door. By the sound of his footsteps, he ran down the steps.

Ty met Shelby’s eyes, and there was nothing either one of them could say that would dissipate this black cloud. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said, then jogged down the steps to catch up with his son.

Casey had slowed down and it was obvious his face hurt. Silently they left the school and got into the truck. Instead of heading through town toward the house, he headed back toward the interstate.

“Where are you going?” Casey asked.

“We need to get your nose checked out.” He watched Casey lean sideways against the door. “Does it hurt?”

Casey nodded.

“You going to tell me what happened?”

“Mr. Root already did, didn’t he?”

“I know you threw the first punch and I know that Scott held you down while John punched you.”

“That’s all,” Casey said, his eyes shut.

“Why’d you throw the first punch?”

Casey didn’t answer.

“Were they making fun of you?”

More silence.

“Casey?”

Nothing.

“Is this about your mom calling?”

“No!” The venom with which he spat the word would indicate otherwise.

“We can talk about it—”

“I don’t want to.”

He turned into the parking lot at the clinic and switched off the ignition.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry she called. You don’t have to ever talk to her if you don’t want.”

“I don’t give a shit about her.”

That was clearly a lie and Ty didn’t know what to do about it. It sat between them, steaming and rotten. Casey cared about the call. He cared about all of it.

“When she calls, there’s this recording saying that an inmate at the prison is calling. You have to accept the call before you even hear her voice.”

“I … I don’t want to hear her voice.”

“Then you just hang up. If she calls again, we’ll just hang up.”

He stared at Casey, trying to gauge if his words gave him any comfort, but he was still curled around himself as if waiting for another punch.

The deep breath Ty took filled up his whole body, blew out his chest, cleared out his brain, and he decided he just had to be honest. There was no point in trying to protect Casey—he’d failed at every turn. This kid was doing it all himself. He’d been fighting his own battles … God, he couldn’t imagine how long. How bad things must have been with Vanessa. And in those foster homes. That walk across the river. He handled all that shit himself.

There was no protecting this kid.

He had to just get into the trenches with him.

“I’m so scared, Casey,” he breathed. “I’m so scared I’m screwing things up for you. You walked across that bridge.” His words squeezed past the heavy rock of emotion in his throat. “You walked into that garage, and that was the fucking bravest thing I’d ever seen.”

The American flag on the pole at the entrance to the clinic snapped and twisted in the wind against a stone-gray sky. It was ragged, that flag; the seams between the red and white stripes were splitting. Frayed.

“I’ve never done anything half that brave in my life and I just want to deserve that. Give you something that’s worth the risk you took. I don’t know if I’m ever going to figure out how to be your dad. Or if we’re going to figure out how to be a family. But God … I just want to help.”

He blinked back the hot tears behind his eyes and turned to face Casey, who was staring back at him. His blue eyes wide and bright and awful in that red, swollen face.

“I … I ah, I don’t know if I ever told you this, but I moved in with my grandparents when I was thirteen.” Of course he’d never told Casey this. He’d never told Casey anything about his life, scared that it would make him seem weak or that Casey would take one look at all
the mistakes he’d made and follow in his footprints. He’d thought his parenting style would be to pretend he’d been a different person. But Casey had found his old footprints anyway and seemed pretty damned determined to follow him.

“My folks had been killed in a car accident,” he continued. “And I know that sounds sad and it was, but it was kind of the best thing that ever happened to me. They weren’t nice people. They weren’t nice to each other or to me; we moved all the time because they couldn’t keep it together to hold down jobs or pay rent. I don’t know what would have happened to me if they hadn’t died. Pop was the one who got me started with bikes, riding them, fixing them, refurbishing the old ones. About two weeks after I moved in with them, I’d gotten into all this trouble at school. A lot like the trouble you got into today. Some kids were mouthing off about my hand-me-down shoes and high-water pants and my secondhand backpack, and I just took a big swing at one of them. They ganged up on me and I got the crap kicked out of me.”

He shot his son a wry look, but Casey remained silent.
So much like Pop
, Ty thought with no small amount of affection.

“Well, your mom was right about me: I was a troublemaker. And so the weekend after I got in all this trouble, Pop took me out to the garage and I thought he was going to beat the living tar out of me. Pop was huge and he had monster hands.” He held up his own hands, remembering suddenly what it felt like when Pop’s big hand landed on his shoulder. How comforting, how he’d thought Pop and those big, strong hands could fight back anything that would try to hurt him. Those hands made Ty feel safe—for the first time in his life.

Had Ty ever done that for Casey? Ever made him feel safe?

“It’s what my dad would have done,” Ty said. “But instead Pop had this old Royal Enfield and he said we were going to fix it. And I couldn’t figure out how we could fix this thing. I mean you should have seen it.” He nearly laughed at the memory. “It was rusted and old and dented and just looked like scrap to me. But Pop said, we fix it one piece at a time.”

One piece at a time. He’d forgotten those words when it came to Casey. He’d tried so hard to wipe his past clear, wipe out all the trouble and all the problems that had driven Casey across the bridge with that address in his pocket. That had been his first mistake—Casey was never going to forget where he’d come from, just like Ty had never forgotten. He remembered it all, the very, very bad and the very, very good.

“Did you fix it?”

“No, actually. The motor was shot and we couldn’t find the right parts, and eventually we just used the thing for scrap.”

Casey burst out laughing and then groaned, holding his nose. “That was a terrible story.”

“I guess it was.” Ty couldn’t help laughing either. He popped open his door. “Let’s get your nose looked at.”

Chapter 12

The end of the day was a relief. Shelby just wanted to go home, take a hot bath, and try to get hold of Ty to see how Casey was. It would be a very long time before she would forget the look on his face when he’d turned to face her in the school yard. Bloody and beaten, but wild and terrified.

And so sad.

And then in the teachers’ lounge when he wouldn’t look at her.

She couldn’t stand the idea of him beating himself up that he’d hurt her.

The beautiful weather from the weekend had taken a turn, and while the sun was still clear and bright, the January chill was back in the air, so she zipped up her coat against the wind as she crossed the parking lot to her car.