The Homecoming (Thunder Point #6)(14)

“I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Troy said.

“Sassy was kind of mean.”

“Rachel seems to be enjoying similar popular status, though she’s a junior this year. Beautiful girl and I’ve never seen her be mean. She’s very sweet. Know anything about her family? Home life?”

Iris folded her hands on top of her pile of papers. “Where’s this going?”

“Maybe nowhere. Just that I have this hunch...it’s possible she’s being abused.”

“In what way? What gave you your hunch?”

“Either she’s one of the klutziest girls in her class or someone’s knocking her around. A few weeks ago, I noticed some bruising on her neck and shoulder and asked her what happened. She said she got tackled playing football on the weekend. A few weeks later she claimed to have taken a volleyball in the face, causing her black eye. Since then she’s wearing lots of sweaters and high necks.”

“It’s getting cold,” Iris said.

“Yeah, I know. I touched her arm yesterday to stop her from leaving class so I could give her back her paper, which was very well done and I wanted to praise her. But she winced and jerked away. I asked her if anything was wrong and she said she was sore from a big workout. She was very nervous and not too convincing.”

“Do you have any experience with this sort of thing?” Iris asked.

“I have some experience at how people cover it up. When I was growing up our neighbor was physically abusive to his family. He was such a smooth-talking bastard, all smiles, always had the best of everything. Except his wife and kids had no freedom of movement and everything had to be perfect. The wife and mom—she couldn’t even visit at our house for a cup of coffee. My mother kept saying it was all wrong, my dad kept saying she had a wild imagination and should mind her own business. Then one day the police came. The oldest girl was taken away in the ambulance, the rest of them were bruised and shaken up and he was arrested. It had been going on a long time, we learned. My mother could tell. My father wanted her to leave it alone. That’s it,” he said. “That’s all I’ve got. Could be she’s really clumsy or maybe her father is hitting her.”

“Actually, her father isn’t in the picture just now. She, her mom and two younger brothers are living with her mom’s sister and brother-in-law and their kids. It’s very crowded and it’s not a big house. I suppose that could be an issue, but Sassy and her sister were always close. And if you knew Sassy—she wasn’t one to take any crap. From anyone.”

“Is there anything you can do about this?”

“Uh-huh. There’s lots I can do. I can give the PE teacher a heads-up to let me know if Rachel has signs of problems that include injuries. I can talk to her teachers from last year and ask if they had concerns about her. I can check for absences or illnesses, look over her grades, watch her movements around campus. If someone is hitting her or otherwise hurting her, there will be other signs. And then, of course, I can talk to her.”

“She’s a good student,” Troy said. “And she’s not isolated. Batterers usually isolate their punching bags. Rachel is popular and has quite a posse.”

Iris grinned at him. “Why don’t you get your master’s and work with me? You have such good instincts about this sort of thing.”

“Why would I want to go back to school when I can surf and ski and dive on my time off?”

That was Troy, Iris thought. The fun guy. Active, busy, always on the move, dive trips to faraway waters, ski trips to exotic runs, very athletic and every sport was extreme and on the edge. It was one of the things she had enjoyed about him even if she didn’t share his kind of fun—he was untamed. Adventurous. He was a little younger than Iris—just turned thirty. And he was an exceptional history teacher.

“You can leave this in my hands,” she assured him. “If you think of anything more, let me know.”

Four

Seth hadn’t expected his return to Thunder Point to mean he’d spend so much time with his mother, but he visited her several times a week. He had planned to spend more time with both parents, gradually wearing down Norm’s orneriness. Every week or ten days he’d wrangle an invitation to dinner. “Don’t mention to Pop that I’m coming or he’ll find a reason he’s needed at the station,” he told his mother.

“Oh, I think I know your father by now,” she said. And Seth could see by the look on Norm’s face that he was always surprised to see his youngest son present.

While Seth wasn’t making much progress with his father, something he hadn’t intended at all was showing on his mother. She was growing stronger, more confident and happier because he came around so much. He brought flowers or sweets sometimes. He happily ate her leftovers for his lunch—pot roast and potatoes, chicken, stuffing and gravy, meat loaf, lasagna—all the calorie-rich meals he grew up on. He worked out a lot so he needed those calories. Norm was cursed to be skinny but strong as an ox while Gwen grew ever rounder and softer, her exercise coming from housework and cooking. But her cheeks were definitely rosier, her eyes sparkled again.

The sparkle had left Gwen’s eyes for the first time when he’d been in that accident and lay in a hospital in Seattle, fighting for life, fighting for his leg. And then again some years later when her next-door neighbor and best friend, Rose, died. Gwen was strong—she had carried on. But it was apparent that having Seth home, obviously trying to reconnect with the father who had once been so proud of him, was filling her well.