Over His Head. Carolyn McSparren

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СКАЧАТЬ important thing was that he wouldn’t be working eighty hours a week as he had in Chicago. He could devote himself to their needs. He’d sacrificed his career, the potential of a principalship—all the additional money and prestige—for them. He owed them for the years he’d let Solange raise them practically on her own.

      He swung the SUV off the highway and onto a narrow lane lined with big old trees that transformed the road into a sun-dappled tunnel.

      He drove past the small rectangular common in the center of the village. The Bermuda grass lawn had turned brown in the heat, and the white fence needed a coat of paint.

      The only place to eat in Williamston was a log cabin on the corner of the green. Today a big sign outside read Closed. Tim hoped that meant for dinner and not for good.

      One more left, up a hill and past the big moving van. He pulled onto the grass verge at the far side of his grandfather’s house and cut the engine.

      “Home at last.”

      “No way,” said Jason.

      “Way.”

      “There’s supposed to be a town. Where is it?”

      “You just drove through it.”

      “A field and a log cabin?”

      “Yuck, some palace,” whined Angie, who leaned across Eddy to stare out the window. “No one could possibly expect a human being to live in that—that hovel.” She frequently vacillated between teenage colloquial and Victorian supercilious in the same sentence.

      Eddy had woken up and was rubbing his eyes.

      “Well, Eddy? Care to add your comments?”

      Eddy ignored him.

      “Gross, gross, gross!” Angie’s hands fluttered. “I’ll bet you can’t even buy a CD for a hundred miles.”

      “CD, huh! Try a loaf of bread. You said it was a town.”

      “Williamston is a town. Just a very small one. More like a village.”

      “More like a big fat nothing.”

      “Looks like an old barn,” Jason said as he stared up at the house. “At least I won’t have to share a room with Ratso any longer.”

      “Don’t call your brother names,” Tim said. Now that he had done this insane thing, had committed his whole family to this change, he was scared to get out of the car. “The house has five bedrooms. One downstairs for me, one for each of you, and one left over for guests.”

      “For Gran’mere,” Eddy whispered from the back seat.

      “Yes, Eddy. Your grandmother will come to visit as soon as we get settled.”

      “No, she won’t,” Jason said with finality. “Not after we tell her what this place is like.” He leered over his shoulder at his brother. “We’ll never, ever see her again.”

      “We will, too!”

      “Jason, stop teasing your brother. Eddy, your grandmother will come to visit. She just can’t move down here with us. I’ve explained all that.” His voice said he’d explained it until he was blue in the face and wasn’t about to try again.

      “If she loved us, she’d move.”

      “Eddy, it’s okay, she does love us,” Angie said. “Jason, stop being a butthole.”

      “Angie,” her father said, but without much heat. He was too tired of driving and refereeing to be upset by much less than ax murder.

      “It’s a prison.”

      “I want to go back to Chicago.”

      “I’m hungry.”

      “I want a soda.”

      “Can’t we stay in a motel?”

      “I hate this place.”

      “I have to pee.”

      He’d decided to feed them a catfish dinner at the Log Cabin. Now he’d have to find someplace else nearby, assuming there was another restaurant this side of Memphis, fifty miles away. They’d be a captive audience. He’d tell them some more stories of his wonderful summers. Tomorrow maybe they’d all go for a long walk. He really wanted his children to love this place, too.

      But he was willing to have them hate it if it kept them safe from crime and gangs and drugs and alcohol and drive-by shootings.

      He would even fight his own children to get them to twenty-one sound of mind and body.

      CHAPTER TWO

      “OH, NUTS. That’s all I need,” Nancy Mayfield muttered as she turned the corner by the village green into her lane. A huge moving van blocked not only the lane itself, but her driveway. There was no way to reach her garage except by driving across her lawn. Even though the ground was July hard, she preferred not to smash what little grass had survived the drought.

      She pulled to a stop a couple of feet from the rear of the van. A large man who seemed to be dripping wet stood on of the tailgate with a psychedelically painted chest of drawers balanced precariously on a dolly.

      “Hey, lady, move it!”

      She glared at him.

      “What’re ya, deaf? Back it up. Move it.” He waved her back with one hand.

      Slowly and carefully she climbed out of her Durango, shut the door softly so as not to wake up Lancelot, snoring softly in the passenger seat, and turned to the man with a sweet smile. “No, you move it, buddy. You’re blocking my driveway and I would like to park my car.”

      “Aw, jeez.” He yelled toward the house, “Hey, Mac, lady out here wants us to move the van.” He laughed. “Lady, ya got to be kiddin’.”

      “Not at all. Blocking access to a private driveway is a crime in the state of Tennessee. If you remain where you are, I will have a sheriff’s deputy here to give you a nice, big citation before you can get that thing down the ramp.”

      “It’s a chest of drawers,” said a baritone voice from behind her.

      “It looks as if it’s been trapped in a riot in a paint store.” She tamped down her temper and turned slowly to look at the newcomer. This must be the “Mac” the mover had been calling. No doubt the driver of the van.

      This Mac certainly looked as though he could move refrigerators without much effort. He was wearing dirty jeans, equally dirty sneakers and a soggy Chicago Cubs T-shirt that needed a good bleaching. He wasn’t quite as tall as Dr. Mac, but he was probably at least six-two.

      He might be even brawnier than Dr. Mac. Moving refrigerators no doubt built muscles. His light brown hair was soaked with sweat, and his eyes were concealed behind fancy mirrored sunglasses. Nancy hated not being able to see people’s eyes.

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