Loving Thy Neighbor. Ruth Scofield

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СКАЧАТЬ a foot, marking the boundary line between the small property she now owned from the huge yard next door. She surmised it had been planted thirty years before, at least.

      Not very tall, Quincee couldn’t see over, but she spotted the back of a man’s dark head. At the hedge’s base, child-size gaps between the old plants positively invited a peek into the world beyond. It wasn’t hard for her to imagine the children crawling through, wanting to explore.

      She gave Kyle’s shoulder a reassuring pat.

      “Hello?” she said in her friendliest voice, the one she used to welcome her fifth-grade classroom on a new week of school. “I understand the children have—”

      The neighbor turned, his square chin practically sitting on top of the neatly clipped hedge. Quincee stopped speaking abruptly. For the briefest moment, she thought she was hallucinating. Surely, it couldn’t be. But it was.

      Although unshaven, his dark hair unruly, the man had cool, unforgettable gray eyes.

      “Judge Paxton!” Her voice nearly strangled in her throat.

      Her first thought was that he looked much younger than he did in his judge’s robes. Her second thought was that she was in trouble yet again. She nearly groaned aloud. His scowl expressed a decided unhappiness over a situation she was only now beginning to understand might be a major infraction.

      And he had no heart.

      His straight brows lowered another quarter of an inch, his nod of recognition a reactionary one. “Miss…Fluff…er, Miss…”

      Miss Fluff? He thought of her as Miss Fluff?

      Had it been her looks, then, with her strawberry-red hair curling around her face like feathers, or that she’d worn a bright lipstick the day she’d gone to court? Or the misfortune of her driving record?

      The resentment from that day in court rose in her chest like a flood.

      Quincee straightened and stood as tall as her five feet would let her. She may be small of stature, but she wasn’t quite without an authority of her own. Of sorts. At least with children.

      She cleared her throat. “Quincee Davis, Judge Paxton.”

      “Ah, yes. Quincee Davis.” He blinked before his face melted into a cool demeanor. “Are you by any chance in charge of these children?”

      “Yep.” She gathered her forces to answer with in-your-face pride. She would not allow an intimidation of his position to rob her or the children of her protective shield. Whatever they’d done, they were good kids. They didn’t normally get into trouble. “They belong to me. This is Kerri and Kyle.”

      “I see. What are you doing here, may I ask?”

      “We just moved into this house.”

      His jaw tightened as he stared at her in disbelief. “The Denby house?”

      “Yes, I bought it. We couldn’t move until school was out. I’m a teacher, you see, and though we closed on the house last month, there were too many things to clear up before we could make the move.”

      She prayed he wouldn’t ask her how the move had taken place without her driving here. Or, until she could get around to clearing out the decrepit garage at the rear of the property, who had driven her car, which clearly could be seen parked in the drive.

      Hoping to divert that direction of thought, she asked, “Do you live there?”

      Actually, she’d been blessed in her move. A number of her teacher friends from school had pitched in to truck hers and the children’s few belongings from the old apartment to the house. Although she’d driven her car, as well, piled high with boxes, they’d done it in one clean sweep.

      But she’d counted on running errands this afternoon, and buying groceries. What could she do now? She still had three weeks before regaining her driving privileges.

      “Yes,” the judge answered, his gaze riveted on her. “We includes you, the children and…?”

      “Just us.” She glanced at Kyle. He hadn’t dealt well with his mother’s death and he wasn’t inclined to use Quincee’s softer explanations of what had happened. But Quincee knew Kerri needed the reassurance of knowing where her mother had gone, and so she’d told them what she honestly believed—that Paula now lived in Heaven.

      “Yes, we’re a team. We do just fine on our own.” She finished with a firmness she didn’t always feel.

      “Oh?” It sounded like a scoff. One of his pronouncements. His jaw hardened, while the gray eyes continued to study her. She almost shivered in their cool depths as he muttered, “I see.”

      There was no help for it, this was going to be a difficult neighbor with which to deal. I can do all things through Him Who strengthens me….

      Quincee took a deep breath and plunged. “Um, Judge Paxton, Kerri said something about picking cherries?”

      “That’s right. These two were in my cherry tree. I have peach and apple trees, too, in the back corner of my yard. The pie cherries are beginning to ripen. I caught your children eating them right from the tree.”

      “Kyle? Kerri?” She turned to look at the children. “What do you have to say for yourselves?”

      “Nobody else was there,” Kyle said, defending himself. “We didn’t know they weren’t our cherries.”

      “You must have known, Kyle. They were on my side of the hedge.”

      “Didn’t know it was your yard,” Kyle challenged, defiance in the lines of his stance. “We thought they were just there.”

      “Well, you were trespassing the moment you crawled through the hedge. You must’ve known that was wrong.”

      “What’s that?” Kyle asked, looking to Quincee for an explanation.

      “Going onto someone else’s property without being invited,” she said to supply the explanation. Both the children’s jeans-clad knees were streaked with mud, evidence of their having crawled through the gap in the hedge.

      The children had known their limits when they lived in the apartment. The parks she and Paula had taken them to had been open ground offering pure freedom to run as wide and satisfyingly hard as they wished. A yard of their own was new to them.

      “That’s right.” Judge Paxton pursed his mouth. His steady gaze, not really unkind, Quincee noted with surprise, locked onto the boy’s before engaging Kerri’s. “And you took something that didn’t belong to you. Do either of you think that is right?”

      “No, sir.” Shame came with Kyle’s solid answer, but Quincee could tell he didn’t like the embarrassment that came with it. She’d have a quiet talk with him later.

      “No, sir.” Kerri’s eyes began to tear, and her lip trembled.

      Quincee’s pride in the children rose. She placed her hand on Kerri’s head. They may have behaved without thought, but they didn’t lie about what they’d done. They understood what it was to tell the truth.

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