Love, Marriage And Family 101. Anne Peters
go to the police station and find Corinne?” Hally finished for him when he hesitated. And as everything inside her yelled, No, no, no, she heard herself say, “Sure. Though you realize I won’t be able to spring her.”
“I know. I’ll get there myself just as quickly as I can. And, Halloran—” He gripped Hally’s shoulder and stopped her as, with a quick nod, she started to move away to go to her car. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” Hally said, averting her eyes because the weary gratitude in his was making her feel like a phony. The last thing she wanted to do was to go to that police station. She moved away from Mike’s touch, thinking, How do I get myself into these things?
It smelled of dust, sweat and unwashed humanity. People were everywhere. Some clean, some not so. Some drunk. All of them unhappy to be there, even the police officers on duty, it seemed to Mike. Certainly they had long since given up on cordiality or even professional courtesy.
Tempers were short on both sides of the counter.
As promised, Hally was there, waiting for him. She had ascertained that the van carrying the adolescent miscreants had arrived and that the kids were being held in one large cell at the back of the building.
Irate parents were demanding the release of their offspring, Mike included. Harried officers were wrestling with the paperwork that would allow them to let go of their unwanted guests in the back, and thus clear the station of the throng of outraged citizens in the front.
Conversation between Mike and Hally was sparse as they waited for Corinne to be escorted out. At odd moments throughout the drive home with Pam, on the subsequent drive in his own car over to the station, and even during his dealings with the law, Mike would recall that he wasn’t alone in this fight for and with his daughter, and he’d experience a sense of wonder that left him puzzled and discomfited. And not a little scared.
Scared because Halloran McKenzie was the first woman since Becky who’d stirred in him a desire to know her better. A whole lot better.
Which, of course, simply could not be. He had enough on his plate without adding the complications of a romantic fling. If he knew what was good for him, he’d best get things back on a strictly professional footing right away.
“Ms. McKenzie.” Taking a deep breath, he slanted her a strained smile. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Then don’t,” Hally said. She was tired and also a bit put off by the waves of reserve now emanating from this brooding man like chilled air from an open refrigerator. She spoke curtly. “I’m heading home, but I expect to see Corinne in my office a half hour before class tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll see to it,” Mike promised, uncomfortably aware that he had affronted her, but in no condition, emotionally, to try to rectify the situation even if he wanted to. Which he didn’t.
The woman was his daughter’s teacher and assigned counselor. It was in the latter capacity that she had rushed to the stadium, looking to help. It had not been him personally she had aided out there, or even here at the station—it was the parent of one of her charges.
As she spoke to him, her face, smudged with dirt and lined with fatigue, was stern. And her tone was cool and professional.
“As we agreed,” she said, “I’d like you to pick Corinne up from school as well as drive her to school for the next several days, just to let her know we’re working in concert and that tabs are being kept. Please understand, however, that my interest can, of necessity, not go beyond her performance at school. I’ve got nine other students to counsel and I’d be a nervous wreck if I got personally involved in their home situations beyond what pertains to their studies. You do see that?”
“Absolutely,” Mike said, telling himself that was exactly what he wanted from her and no more. “Our family problems have nothing to do with you.”
“Well, at least not directly. So—” Hally shoved back her hair and met his eyes “—I’ll say good-night then.”
“G’night.” Mike half raised his hand as she backed away from him toward the exit. “Thanks again.”
Out on the sidewalk Hally congratulated herself on having made her position clear. Having done her good deed for the day, she told herself, she could now get on with her life. Future contact with Mike Parker would be minimal, confined to her office and school hours.
Bone-weary and longing for a bath, she stuck the key in the driver’s side door of her car. Turning it, her gaze slid down and sideways, past the front wheel to the pavement. Only to snap right back to the front tire with a gasp of dismay. It was flat. The darned tire was flat!
What next? Momentarily overcome by what was definitely the last straw, Hally let her forehead drop to the roof of the car.
What have I done to deserve this? she questioned whatever unkind fate had decreed she shouldn’t go home just yet. I’m tired, I’m hungry….
“Ms. McKenzie?”
Hally’s head jerked up. She took a deep breath and slowly turned around. In front of her, looking concerned, stood Mike Parker. And next to him, managing to look both truculent and defiant, stood Corinne.
“What’s the matter?” Mike asked, frowning. “What happened?”
As Hally wordlessly pointed; her gaze remained on her student. “Are you all right, Corinne?”
The girl gave a careless shrug and looked away, lips set in a stubborn line. But something had flickered in her eyes before she had averted them, and now she visibly swallowed.
She’s not as tough as she wants us to believe, Hally thought.
And knew with a kind of sinking feeling that all the rhetoric she had spouted earlier to Mike and herself about not getting personally involved had likely been just that—rhetoric. Looking at the girl, involvement seemed somehow inevitable.
As it usually had been in at least one case, with at least one student, every year for as long as Hally had been teaching.
Maybe it was because she could have used a sympathetic counselor herself when she was young and lost and so terribly at odds with the world. Her mother, dear friend that she since had become, had at the time been too miserable in her crumbling marriage herself to have been much support to her bewildered and unhappy younger daughter.
Whatever, some kids simply struck a chord; kids who needed understanding and support above and beyond the job description. Corinne Parker was one of those kids.
And it had nothing to do with the girl’s father.
To underscore that, Hally replied brusquely to Mike’s offer of help. “You get your child home, Mr. Parker. I’ve changed tires before, thank you very much.”
Ignoring his taken-aback expression, she bid both of the Parkers good-night and went to get the jack, wrench and spare tire out of her trunk.
Only to be elbowed aside, and not very gently. “I’d appreciate it, Ms. McKenzie,” Mike said without making a secret of the fact that it cost him to approach her after her outright rebuff, “if you’d have a word with Cory while I tend to this. She refuses to speak to me.
“And, yes…” He grimly forestalled the protest he was sure Hally was about to make. “I do realize that my request exceeds the boundaries you established, but—”
“I wasn’t going to refuse,” Hally interrupted, not bothering to argue any longer with him about the tire he was wrestling out of the trunk. “If you’ll hand me your keys and point out which car is yours, Corinne and I will go sit in it.”
“It’s the Buick,” Mike said, handing her the keys. “Seems like I owe you thanks all over again.”
“No, you don’t,” Hally said. “I haven’t done anything yet.”