“Professor?”
At first he wasn’t sure if Morgan’s voice came from the swirling thoughts in his mind, or from the door of his office. But when he looked, there she stood, looking beautiful and real and…
“What’s wrong?” If her son had run off again…
“I… Nothing.… You said I should stop by.”
Her eyes told a different story. And concerns about his own situation fled.
“Come on in,” he said, rising to usher her to a seat on the couch that sat in front of a floor-to-ceiling wall of books—dark bound tomes and gray encased references, fiction and literature and poetry, too.
Closing the door, he joined her, sitting close, but not too close. “How’s Sammie?” He asked the first, and most obvious, question.
“Fine.” Head slightly bent, she glanced his way, smiled at him. Resting her elbows on her knees, she clasped her hands. Unclasped them. Clasped them again.
“He wasn’t hurt, then?”
“No.” She shook her head. Smiled again. “He was good as could be. Spent the night on my father’s property at a campsite he’d set up in preparation for his great adventure. He ate well, had plenty of water and extra batteries for the handheld gaming device my mother had given him that they’d neglected to tell me about.”
Cal didn’t understand why Morgan’s parents couldn’t see that it was hard enough for a young woman to raise a son on her own without interference from them.
“He was at their place all night?”
“On their property. My father has a lot of acreage, with no road access, that he doesn’t fence because he wants the animals to roam freely so that every fall he can hunt them down and kill them.”
Her knuckles were white. He resisted the urge to cover them with his hand. Morgan was strong. Capable. She didn’t need his assistance.
“He fired his security team.”
“They were responsible for your father’s hunting ground, too?”
“No, but he fired them anyway. For not knowing that someone had set up camp there. Thing is, Sammie was only able to do so because he had access to the land from the grounds at Mom and Daddy’s place and the team had no reason to suspect he was there. They didn’t see him on Friday, of course. They’d have known to report that. But his visits weren’t monitored, which allowed him to get everything set up. Daddy had told his team to let Sammie run free on the property because young boys need to test themselves, to taste freedom, to become men. He believes I coddle my son too much. That I’m making him into a wimp.”
“He lives and breathes sports. Basketball, baseball. Or did I misunderstand that?”
“No. You’re right.”
“From what I gathered, Sammie’s about as much of a boy as you can get.”
Gaze directed at the floor, she nodded. And he saw her chin start to tremble.
“So what did the police say? Did they press any charges?”
“No. And they didn’t call child protective services as it was so obvious that Sammie was just trying to prove a point. I’d taught him well enough that he’d been able to pull the whole thing off without putting himself in much more danger than if he’d walked to a friend’s house after school. He didn’t hitchhike, or stay out on the streets after dark. He didn’t talk to strangers—he said the basketball player wasn’t a stranger, and he only asked directions for the bus because he was so excited to see the guy it was all he could think of to say. He went straight to his campsite on his grandfather’s property and stayed put until Saturday morning. He was heading home when he saw the replay of the press conference on a TV in the window of a fast-food place and called me.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Yeah. The police admonished him pretty severely, of course. He wasted a lot of people’s time and resources, not to mention the hell he put us through… .”
“Do you think he got the message?”
“I’m certain he did. He’s been apologizing ever since. Detective Martin asked that I take him to counseling, though, in exchange for letting everything else go. We start tonight.”
“Is he resisting?”
“Nope. Not at all.” No sign of a smile. Her face was drawn, her eyes more vacant than not.
“Hey.” He moved over, covered hands that were strangling each other. “What’s going on?”