Safe from Harm (9781101619629) (6 page)

“Seriously?”

I nodded, “It's a safety measure, Phoebe.”

That earned me a hard look. “I'm not afraid of you, Mr. Wells.”

“It's not about
your
safety, Phoebe.”

Her mouth made an
O
. “For real?”

“For real. We can talk in my nice, comfortable office, with the very discreet Mrs. Rutland to hand, or we can talk here, in the aquarium.” I gave a wave to Rebecca, who could see the entirety of the room from her desk, and she waved back. Sherry, who oversees our toddler-through-third-grade program, passed by with a load of books cradled in an arm. She gave a friendly wave, too. Phoebe looked over her shoulder in time to see the wave. It ticked her off.

“With the door shut, no one can hear you,” I said, “And I won't repeat what you say. Unless you're about to confess to a crime, and then I'm going to advise you to call the police, and if you don't, I'm going to do it for you, just so we have that straight. Now, what can I do for you?”

Phoebe gave an eye roll that made the full circumference of her eyeballs before she pulled the chair out and sat down. I was relieved to have that expanse of leg underneath the table. None of this had gone the way Phoebe had envisioned it. I didn't know how to rescue her.

“Why do you think I'm here?” It was a challenge.

I won't play the “guess what?” game with my own girls. It's a time waster.

“Why don't you tell me, Phoebe?”

“I want to know what you think, tell me what you think. I got dressed up and I came down here and . . .” She trailed off, shook her inky hair off her face and raised an eyebrow.

I considered, and then put the pen down and gave Phoebe my full focus.

“All right. You asked what I think. I think when you come to my house, it's not Jo you want to see, it's Annie Laurie, for which I don't blame you, because I like to spend time with her, too. Because you miss your mom. And Annie is a good mom.”

Tears filled Phoebe's eyes and she gripped the arms of her chair. Her chin went up.

“But teenage girls don't usually visit other girls' moms, so you were ‘visiting' Jo, and since Jo was rude to you the other night, you don't feel like you can do that anymore and you're mad and embarrassed and—”

Phoebe pushed back from the table and stood.

“—hurt and maybe you're looking to give some of that back to Jo.”

Phoebe turned her back on me and walked out of the room. I heard the clatter of her heels on the stairs.

“And maybe the best way to do that was to embarrass me,” I finished in the empty room. I made a big
X
on the tablet in front of me and blew out my breath. “Well done, Brother Wells. Handled like a pro,” I told myself. But I didn't go after her. It wasn't likely I'd come up with anything better if I tried again, even if Phoebe would let me try again.

My belly hurt, which meant I'd been a tad tense during the encounter. I went back to my office.

When I had eased myself carefully behind my desk again, Rebecca came in with a cold can of Spicy V8 and a glass of ice chips.

She said, “That went well.”

“Did you see her departure?”

“Bear, the whole building saw her departure. I'm not sure you won a soul for Jesus today.”

I laughed and then groaned and held my stomach.

“Thanks for the juice.” I held the glass aloft.

“You're so welcome. You want to tell me about it?” Rebecca sat down.

I shook my head no. I wanted to talk to Annie Laurie and I wanted to talk to Carol Thompson who would have been less defensive and more effective with Phoebe, but then she's a female therapist and I'm a male minister. I wanted someone else to tell me if I should go see the Pickersley-Smythes. I was out of my league. Way out. And this wasn't a league I wanted to play in.

•   •   •

Phoebe's payback came the very day she made her visit to my office. I was going to tell Annie everything when I got home that night. See, any way I looked at it, it came up as entrapment. Yes, that sounds dramatic. But there was the way she was dressed, her insistence on complete privacy and the amateurish seduction moves—I do think it was meant to be seductive, even if I didn't think for a second that Phoebe had any more interest in me than she did in Big Bird. So I was going to see how Annie Laurie thought we should handle it. But Phoebe made her move first. I got a call from a jubilant Annie.

“Jo and Phoebe have made up, Bear! It's the best thing! They're going to the movies together and then spending the night at Phoebe's. It was all Phoebe's idea. Oh, it's such good news. That girl has been sitting on my heart. She seems such a lost thing.”

No. Not the best thing. Not good news. What the heck was Phoebe playing at?

“I don't know, Annie. We need to talk about Phoebe. I think Phoebe has some issues.”

“Oh, my gosh. Her mom died, she's living with her stepmom and Liz isn't an easy person.
I'd
have some issues. Did you tell me you didn't want Jo to go out with Phoebe?”

I hadn't had time.

“Did you tell me anything about Phoebe that should, ipso facto, mean I shouldn't let Jo go out with Phoebe?”

I was about to tell Annie Laurie about Phoebe's appearance in my office that morning, but when Annie Laurie starts borrowing her dad's lawyerspeak, it's time for me to get off the phone.

When I texted Jo, all I got back was “brb,” and I don't know what that means.

Annie laughed at me when I told her about Phoebe's visit. The more I tried to explain, the harder she laughed. It was this close to being insulting. Annie made it very, very clear that she thought I was “reading too much into it,” and said I shouldn't worry and could I please get ready because we were due at the Sugar Land Skeeters Grand Opening Gala in an hour. It was “cocktail attire” or “vintage jerseys.” I wanted to wear my old UT jersey but Annie wouldn't let me because she didn't think a football jersey was what they were talking about since the Sugar Land Skeeters play minor league baseball. If she didn't want me to wear my old football jersey, she should have bought me an old baseball jersey. I put a suit on. I try to keep Annie happy because she keeps me happy. And it's easier than dealing with her when she's crossed.

Annie and I went to the function where I made the rounds, greeting everybody I could and making lowball bids at the silent auction because I wanted to participate but I sure as heck didn't want to win anything. I checked my phone every ten minutes or so but heard nothing from Jo. When we got back to the house at last, I made myself a cup of hot tea and went to bed.

Our house is fifteen years old and with the Gulf Coast's extreme shifts in temperature and ground moisture, a homeowner can expect their house to make some unexplained noises. There was a time when I would have slept through any nighttime noise that didn't involve running water. That would have been a time before I got shot. When I heard the noise upstairs, I went from deep asleep to wide awake.

I slipped out of bed and grabbed the first thing my hand touched as I passed the bookcase—a three-inch-thick dictionary. Maybe I could pound the interloper over the head with it. Or hold it over the place where I got shot so I didn't get shot there again. I started up the stairs.

There was a shuffling noise coming from behind Jo's closed door. She usually leaves it open—Bear likes to sleep in Jo's room even when she isn't home. A couple of months ago I discovered that Jo had been using the bedroom window that opened onto the top of the garage as her own private entrance and exit to the house. It was possible she had shared that trick with someone else and . . .

I flung the door open into the room.

“Dad!” Jo hissed. She was in the middle of pulling a sweaty T-shirt off over her head. She yanked it down quickly. “Can you
knock
?”

Can anyone do outrage and indignation like a teenage girl?

Baby Bear watched the scene from Jo's bed—a sure sign that he hadn't been expecting Jo, either. He's not supposed to sleep on Jo's bed.

I said, “Your mom said you were spending the night at Phoebe's. And it's . . .” I checked the Hello Kitty clock over her bed. “Jo, it's two thirty. How'd you get home? And why didn't you use the front door instead of climbing in your window like a cat burglar?”

“I'll tell you, but could you please bring me an ice water? I'm dying.”

“How about you tell me first?”

“Dad, please?”

I stared at my child in the dim light from her goose night-light. She looked okay. Hot and sweaty, but okay. I put the dictionary on top of her bookcase and went downstairs and filled a giant plastic glass with ice and water, added a cup of apple juice to get some calories into my girl, and brought it up to her. Jo sat cross-legged on her floor, a clean T-shirt on, her discarded sweaty clothes in a pile on the floor.

I handed her the glass, sat down on Jo's spare bed and said, “Start talking.”

“Okay. Baby Bear, move over or get down.”

“He's not supposed to be up there.”

“Dad . . .” She squeezed in next to him on her bed. “Okay. First you have to promise not to get mad.”

“Honey,” I said, “I'm mad already.”

Big sigh and a flip of her long, dark braid over a shoulder. Jo drank some more diluted apple juice.

“So Phoebe comes up to me at school and says can we talk and I say yes even though I don't want to and no matter what you and Mom say I'm not sorry for what I said that night at dinner because it was only the truth.” Jo took a drink and I nodded my head because, so far, I'm keeping up.

“Phoebe lays down this whole ‘I didn't know I was crowding you' and ‘if you'd only said something.' She still wanted to be friends but she would respect my space and everything and just to show how sorry she was, she'd spoken with Alex and we'd all go to the movies and then out to dinner and then back to Phoebe's house to spend the night—no, Dad, don't give me that look, not for Alex to spend the night, me and Phoebe.”

Baby Bear lifted his heavy head and dropped it in Jo's lap. Jo set her glass down on top of an issue of
Pointe
and picked up a grooming comb off her nightstand to work at a matted place on Baby Bear's ear.

“First off, that didn't feel like she was respecting my space all that much, I mean, she makes all these plans with
my
boyfriend—”

I winced at the word.

“—without ever asking if it's something I'd even want to do, but I texted Alex and it seemed like he wanted to . . . just whatever. I said okay and I called Mom.”

“We're talking about getting home at two thirty in the morning and crawling in the window, right?”

She gave me an impatient chin jerk. “I'm
telling
you, Dad. Mom says okay and she brings me up an overnight bag because Phoebe wanted to go straight from school, she didn't want me to come home first even though I didn't see what the big hurry was.”

Phoebe didn't want Jo coming home and hearing what I had to say about Phoebe's morning visit, that's what the big deal was. I wouldn't have told Jo. But I wouldn't have let her go if I had been home for the call.

“Phoebe drives me and Alex to the movies and somehow I'm in the backseat, Alex is in the front seat with Phoebe, and on the way over she starts with, ‘Alex, what are you going to do all summer with Jo up in New York? That's going to be so hard.'” Jo put a wheedling edge in her voice while she was voicing Phoebe.

I tap my wrist where a watch would be if I still wore one. My question is still out there, getting cold.

Jo holds a finger up, telling me she'll get to it. “She wouldn't let up. The whole movie she's texting us, I mean, we're sitting right next to her, but she has to be texting the whoooole movie? Like, ‘You do love Alex, don't you?' and she sends Alex this message, ‘Has Jo SAID she loves you?' Like it's her business.”

I
wanted to know if Jo had told Alex she loved him, too, but I wasn't asking. Kids throw that word around and they start
using
it and then they start
acting
on it and . . .

“Then she wants to go get something to eat after the movie. That was the plan all along, but by the time we get out of the movie, it's nine thirty, and you know, I told Mom I'd be back at Phoebe's house at ten. She acted like having a curfew meant—”

I said, “If you went to the movie straight out of school, why did you get out at nine thirty?” I felt like I was missing pieces of the story.

Jo ducked her head and finished the last of her drink, excused herself and went to the bathroom. After a while she came back with her glass refilled with water and a wet washcloth to wipe her face.

“Messing around,” she said. “Stuff.”

Uh-huh. We'd get back to that.

I said, “You
are
working up to telling me how you got home at two thirty in the morning and why you used your window instead of your door, aren't you?”

“Dad. Yes. If you could be patient.”

I nodded that I would try.

“Phoebe says we'll go back to her house and have something to eat there, because she and Alex need to be understanding about curfews for
younger
people. You got that? Like I'm ten or something?”

I pushed the pillow up against the headboard so I could lean back. If I wanted my answer, I was going to have to follow down the road of a story Jo was telling. We might get there in the end.

Jo sighed. “I tried to come home then. After the movie. I said I had a headache but she's all ‘Oh, Jo—I didn't mean to hurt your feelings—she's very sensitive, isn't she, Alex?' And I said she hadn't hurt my feelings and Alex said no, I wasn't very sensitive, so of course then Phoebe's saying, ‘Is she
in
sensitive, Alex? Is that why she's able to leave you all summer?'”