A mother’s panic struck her. Cait. That son of a bitch. If he was planning to get to her through her daughter, she’d… Her stomach clenched. Do what? She couldn’t even prevent whatever it was he had in mind, not without locking Caitlyn in her room for the foreseeable future. Sending her off to boarding school. And that was assuming she wasn’t already too late.
I’ll keep the channels of communication open, she told herself, tamping down the fear. Cait and she had always talked, often and easily. Her daughter’s recent behavior was an anomaly. She’d get over it.
But that same panic had Molly wondering, When?
She had spoken at length to Aaron and his mother—his father was apparently too busy to take time to discuss his son’s behavior with school officials. The mother talked about pressing charges. Aaron’s eyes got shifty and he insisted that was ridiculous, he could take care of himself. Molly pushed; he got shiftier. It would appear Cait was right; something had been going on that he didn’t want his mother or anyone else to know about. He was not the complete innocent he had initially seemed.
“My daughter has mentioned you,” Molly made a point of saying, and Aaron looked alarmed.
“Cait?”
“Yes.” Molly had studied him unblinkingly. “Did you know she and Trevor are friends?”
The mother’s head had been swiveling as she tried to figure out what this digression had to do with anything. Neither Aaron nor Molly enlightened her, but Molly was satisfied she’d made her point.
She still didn’t like Trevor Ward—although I do not hate him—but she’d decided she didn’t like Aaron Latter, either. Practically stalking, huh? Let him try that again.
Over the course of the next few weeks, Trevor managed to avoid getting into a fight. He still walked the halls of West Fork High School looking like an escapee gunfighter from the O.K. Corral, minus the black duster and—so far—the gun. Oh, God, horrendous thought—he wasn’t that angry, was he?
Molly still caught glimpses of her daughter’s shining strawberry-blond head at his side, barely topping his broad shoulder. Caitlin was going to the library to study a lot these days, after school and evenings. Or hanging out with friends, often unnamed.
“Does it matter?” she asked with apparent indignation. “Like there’s anywhere in town to go.”
There was Trevor’s house afternoons when his father was at work. That was one place Molly would hugely prefer Cait not go. Or Terrace Park, the peculiar one-acre piece of old-growth forest somehow saved as a city park. The vast, tall, dark trees offered too many hiding places, especially at night. A teenage girl had been raped in the park only last year.
In her professional role, Molly had no reason to speak to Richard Ward, although she knew several of the teachers had called him. Trevor was not performing to ability in his classes. In other words, he was obliterating his chances of getting into Harvard or Stanford or possibly even the local community college. Coach Bowman had also called Trevor’s father to ask why Trevor was refusing to go out for the basketball team. Coach Loomis had been sulking since school began because Trevor had refused to play football. West Fork had come within one win last year of taking the league championships. This kid who’d led his team to all-state in California could have taken West Fork to the Promised Land. It was killing Chuck Loomis that Trevor had refused. Gene Bowman was refusing to lose hope.
Molly wished him all the luck in the world. She’d love to see Trevor tied up every afternoon in basketball practice. Friday or Saturday nights at games. Whole weekends at tournaments! He could take some of his aggression out on the court in a healthy, culturally approved manner. He could be frequently unavailable to spend time with her daughter. Despite the many pluses, however, she was staying out of the campaign to win Trevor over. She had had to assure Gene several times that her intervention would hurt more than it helped.
One day the first week of October Molly overheard Caitlyn whining on the phone to someone—probably Trevor—that Mom hadn’t let her take driver’s ed this semester, so now she couldn’t get her license until next summer even though she would turn sixteen in April.
To the best of Molly’s recollection, they’d both agreed it didn’t make sense for her to take the class until spring since it would be almost summer before she’d be able to drive, anyway.
Of course there was no mystery about Cait’s new passion for getting her driver’s license. When he couldn’t hitch a ride to school with one of his new friends, Trevor had become a walker. Knowing Richard Ward had taken the kid’s car away from him after the last fight did soften Molly’s feelings toward Ward senior, if only slightly. Smart to hit a teenager the hardest where the privileges he or she took for granted were concerned. For a boy, the car had to be number one.