36. Samantha
36
SAMANTHA
I t’d been a long time since I’d attended an event at Fallen Crest Academy. My old school. We came in for a meeting with the administration when we enrolled Maddy and had a quick tour. They had built a brand new school, with an Olympic-sized pool and state-of-the-art facilities. A new track. A new football field. Tennis courts. A soccer field. The school resembled a small university now, and they charged for it. The place was impressive, but I missed the old school. Somewhat.
When we paid and stepped inside the football stadium, the looks and whispers began almost immediately. People pulled their phones out to take pictures. This was always what it was like going to anything football-related with Mason.
He stepped close to me, his chest brushing the back of my shoulder. “I’ll grab stuff at the concessions if you want to make sure our children are alive and also not killing anyone else’s children?”
I shot him a glare.
He only smiled, moving off. He looked too fucking good in the henley he grabbed on the way out of the door. Then again, Mason always looked good. He only seemed to get better looking as he aged. It wasn’t fair. His broad chest. Chiseled jawline. Slim hips. Those big muscled shoulders. And those green eyes.
He was all mine.
What had he said?
Right. I needed to make sure our children hadn’t killed anyone.
Maddy had let us know during our discussion about why she violated her grounding three times, that she believed she was a sociopath. At first she’d been wavering between psychopath or sociopath, but she’d watched a video on YouTube and drawn her conclusion. She was a sociopath. She promised me one night that she’d use her abilities for good. Like Dexter , without the sibling stuff.
I’d not watched Dexter , so I didn’t know what she meant, and I made a note never to watch it. Though I was sure it was a lovely sitcom.
“Sam?” A woman was coming over.
She looked familiar. Brown hair past her shoulders. She was wearing a Fallen Crest Academy sweatshirt, with their new colors. White and gold. I remember Malinda telling me they’d voted to change their colors. Fallen Crest Public did theirs, and a month later, FCA was doing the same thing.
Lydia . That was her name. She used to be a good friend, until I learned she never had really been a good friend. Her and Jessica. When I dated Jeff. Shit. The memories.
I struggled not to show my surprise. She looked good. A little heavier, but we were all older. Age happened. It was biology. The extra weight looked good on her. She was almost glowing. A button was pinned to her sweatshirt. It was an FCA football player, kneeling and smiling widely.
“Hi, Lydia. Wow. Hello. How are you?”
“I’m good. Wonderful, actually.” She saw I was looking at her pin and beamed, gesturing to it. “My son’s on the team. Number twelve. Patrick Heimler.”
“Mom!”
Hearing Nolan’s voice, I turned to find her darting my way. Her eyes were big, a little dilated, but she got like that when she was having fun. Her cheeks were red and as she hit my side, her hand caught mine. It was clammy.
“Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi.” She tipped her head back, an adorable impish smile on her face.
“Hey, honey.” I hugged her to me before checking her temperature, just to be sure. She felt fine. I ran my hand through her hair, trying to calm it down. It was all frizzy, though Nolan never seemed to care. “Where is your brother and sister?”
She rested the side of her face against my arm, tucking into my side. “I don’t know. They’re here somewhere.” She looked back up, rising to her tiptoes. “You don’t need to worry about them,” she whispered. “Worry about Dad tonight.”
I frowned. She was like this sometimes. My little girl who saw things we didn’t and knew things no one was supposed to. She rested against me again. I threaded my fingers through her hair.
“This is one of yours?” Lydia was smiling at her.
Nolan narrowed her eyes, tilted her head to the side, and her face went blank. She shuffled around, giving Lydia her back. “Mom. I need to show you something.” She pushed me in the direction she’d just come from—where the concessions were and judging by the wave of gold and white, where the FCA people sat.
I held up a hand to Lydia. “It was nice seeing you again.”
“You too!” She bobbed her head up and down, a hand in the air. “Let’s catch up another time. I’d love to hear how you’re doing.”
“Mom!” Nolan whined, taking my hand, and switching sides to pull me along. “Let’s go. Hurry.”
“Uh…” I looked between her and Lydia. “Sure. Yeah.”
“Homecoming!” Lydia shouted, just as we were swallowed by a group of people. As soon as we were out of sight, Nolan stopped dragging me. “Oh thank God.”
“What?”
She was peering behind me, a fierce frown on her face. I looked too, not seeing anything in particular. “Honey.” I stepped close to her, smoothing my hands down the sides of her face. “What was it that you needed to show me?”
“Oh. Nothing.” She dropped my hand and wrapped her arms around my waist. “I just didn’t want you around that woman. She’s not good people.”
“What? Lydia?”
Nolan shrugged. “I don’t know her name, just know she’s not good people. She’s one of those people who say one thing, but mean something else, and the something else is always not good for you. Steer clear of her and people like her.” Her body tightened, and she tipped her head back again. “Don’t worry, Mom. She keeps her not-nice side hidden, but I’ll teach you how to see that. You can still learn.” She ripped herself away from me, running off. “Dad!”
I shook my head and checked to make sure Nolan was at her dad’s side. He was heading my way with two beers and some food.
Nolan was jumping around him, poking at him. When he gave her a nod, she reached into his pocket and pulled out a bag of candy.
I scowled.
He met my gaze and smirked. Smartass . But I couldn’t stop from grinning. He was not the disciplinarian parent. Every one of the kids knew to go to him if they wanted something. He was the softie.
Another arm moved around my waist, and I jolted before recognizing my son. He hugged me the way his twin had been moments before, scooting under my arm, watching Mason and Nolan heading our way.
“Word’s out, I see,” he mumbled.
I looked down. How did my eighth-grade son sound so world weary and tired. I hugged him to me. “You okay, sweetie?”
He watched as a few kids ran up to Mason, asking for autographs.
Mason indulged. He generally tried to be accommodating until we needed to find our seats for the game. He was good at drawing a boundary. He’d learned how to handle his fans long ago. The kids sometimes got tired of it, but Mason was a good dad.
Still, I’d not heard this from Nash before. I tipped his head up to look at me. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Nash,” I warned.
He blinked and his gaze cleared. He smiled up at me, looking genuine. “I’m good, Mom.”
“Will you tell me later?”
He searched my gaze, probably seeing that I wasn’t going to let this go.
He sighed and nodded. “Yeah.”
I held up my pinkie. “Promise?”
He snorted, but grinned. He wrapped his pinkie with mine and we shook. “Promise.” He stepped aside, looking back at Mason and Nolan. One of his hands went to his hip. “It’s not a big deal, Mom. Just…there’s a lot of kids who are talking about him.”
“What are they saying?”
He shook his head, and his usual excitement gleamed back at me. He loved football. Loved playing it.
I tugged on his Fallen Crest Academy football shirt. “How was your practice?” He’d made the junior varsity, which was early for someone in his grade. They hadn’t had a game today.
“It was good.” He yawned, looking around. “Oh!” His eyes rounded. “My coach wants to talk to you and Dad after the game tonight.”
My eyebrows furrowed. “What’d you do?”
A ghost of a smile flashed over his face. “Mom.”
I grinned back. He was like me in some ways, but if you pissed him off, he turned Mason in zero-point-two seconds. People thought he was easy going, and mostly he was. He and Nolan were good kids, but I knew my son had a vicious streak. I’d witnessed it. The other kids didn’t seem wary of him so far, but it would happen. That’s how it had been before. The other boys learned not to mess with Nash. It started happening as early as second grade. I’d been tense as he grew up, worried about whether I should say something or step in, because I didn’t want him to hurt another kid. But no parent ever came to me about it. Then one night Nolan had whispered in my ear that I didn’t need to worry about it. “ He only does something if someone is trying to mess with me or him ,” she’d said . “ And he’s smart, Mom. He’s better at handling bullies than Maddy is .” She had rolled her eyes. “We both are.”
I’d been surprised, a little relieved, and then worried. Because how many bullies did they deal with? Her comment about Maddy also concerned me, until I’d discovered what she was talking about when I was called to Maddy’s school. A group of girls had been trying to bully my daughter. Maddy turned the tide and ended up bullying them, or so they claimed. When the girls wouldn’t say what exactly Maddy had done to them, the meeting was dismissed, but I laid down the law when I got home. Maddy spilled the details. A girl tried to cyberbully her, so Maddy had befriended a hacker who got into the girl’s phone and shared all of her private messages publicly. I’d blanched when I heard that. Another girl tossed something in Maddy’s locker, and it destroyed some of her books. Maddy got even by going to that girl’s house, pretending she was a friend, and hooking up a hose in the nearest bathroom. She soaked the girl’s entire room.
To this day, I had no idea why that girl’s parents never said anything. We should’ve been on the hook to pay for the damage, but Maddy laughed when I shared that concern.
“ She wouldn’t dare open that window ,” she’d said. “ Once the parents are involved, she knows I can get more dirt I’ll spill to her parents. She’d be so grounded she’d never see her friends until she was fifty. These kids nowadays, Mom. They aren’t all saints, not like they were when you grew up .”
“ Maddy, I’m not that old ,” I’d told her.
She’d rolled her eyes. “ Yeah. Okay. But you’re so old, you can read a map that’s on paper .”
I stopped bringing up our ages after that conversation.
Nash shrugged at me now. “It’s nothing. I think they want me to start dressing for the varsity games.” At that moment some of his friends ran past. Nash yelled to them, giving me a rushed kiss on the cheek. “Love you, Mom. I’m going to sit with the guys. See you after!” He tore after them, and I was left with a strange wave of nostalgia.
He was so tiny. Or he should’ve been.
My little boy.
Now he was going to start dressing with the varsity team? I had a feeling he wasn’t going to be dressing and standing on the sidelines. They wouldn’t need to talk to us about that. They were going to start playing him.
My baby.
They grew up fast, too fast.