18. Zane
18
ZANE
Z ane looked across the table at Nick the next afternoon, feeling heartbroken for the boy.
They’d had a talk after school yesterday, of course, and Nick had listened to Zane’s speech without saying a word, an expression of shame on his face the whole time.
When he was finished, Zane had asked Nick if he had anything to say, and he buttoned his lip and shook his little head. Zane was proud of the boy for not trying to deny what he’d done. But he had just looked so sad .
Normally, when Nick got into trouble he was either defiant, or he lavishly apologized. Either way, he always had lots to say—to the point that Zane often found himself trying not to let the boy see that he was hiding a smile.
But the silence and shame were something new. Zane was worried they reflected his own feelings too. They both had flown too high and been brought back down. He hoped this wasn’t going to make things even tougher for the boy.
Things were certainly harder now for Zane—having let himself fantasize that he was falling in love. He was overwhelmed now with a loneliness that he hadn’t really noticed before.
It must be even harder for this sweet little boy, who had been told for a short time that he was bright and had now been branded a cheater.
“Are you ready for the snowball fight?” Zane asked Nick, hoping that the idea of some fresh air and fun would revive him.
Cal had been helping his grandma with cookies since dawn over at the farmhouse, but Nick hadn’t wanted to go. Instead, he was following Zane like a shadow. Nick hadn’t even wanted to go for a hike on the wooded hillside. The most Zane had been able to coax out of him was a quiet game of chess.
“Well, I’m excited for the snowball fight,” Zane fibbed when Nick didn’t answer right away, trying to keep his spirits up.
“Um, Dad,” Nick said in a small voice.
“What is it?” Zane asked.
“I think maybe I just want to stay home today,” Nick muttered.
Zane felt his heart crack open all over again. Nick was clearly feeling ashamed. He didn’t want to go into town where other people might know he was getting moved back to the other class for cheating. Maybe he also felt like he needed to punish himself a little.
But the thing that troubled Zane most about the whole incident wasn’t that the boy had cheated. Children made mistakes—it was how they learned.
What he didn’t understand was why Nick had cheated. Nick had never done particularly well in school, but it had never seemed to impact his confidence or his sense of who he was until now.
And to Zane, the cheating meant that Nick suddenly didn’t feel that he was good enough as he was anymore.
“Nick,” Zane said carefully. “Do you know why Uncle Tag does one of the daily milkings?”
“Because you have little boys and no one to help you,” Nick said right away. It sounded like something he must have overheard, and Zane winced a little.
“That’s one of the reasons,” he said. “At least it was at first. But you and your brother are old enough now that I could go down to the barn and leave you on your own or with Grandma, right?”
Nick nodded.
“The reason that I’m still working in the creamery is because we figured out that I’m good at it,” Zane said. “Better than I am at milking, and better than my brothers are with the ice cream. It’s where I belong.”
Nick nodded.
“Uncle Tag is really good with the animals,” Zane said. “It’s where he feels at peace, just like Grandma. And Uncle Tripp gets restless, so he likes filling in tasks and helping out all over the farm, so he doesn’t get bored. Does that make sense?”
“I guess so,” Nick said, nodding.
“We weren’t all especially good in school,” Zane told him. “And none of us are really using all the things we learned there on a daily basis, except maybe your Uncle West. But all of us have something to contribute here on the farm—or out in the world, if that had been what we’d chosen.”
“But I like school,” Nick said, then buttoned his lips again.
Zane waited a moment, but Nick didn’t seem like he wanted to say anything more.
“I’m so glad you like school,” Zane told him. “I did too. I used to love seeing all my friends and playing sports and doing activities in class, even if I never liked the tests or the homework much.”
Nick nodded slowly.
“Your brother happens to be really good at schoolwork,” Zane said. “And you’re really good at making new friends, right? Both of those things are okay. Both of them are amazing.”
Nick looked down, his expression blank.
“It’s important to me that you’re well-behaved and respectful to your teachers at school,” Zane said firmly. “And it’s important to me that you try your best and be honest.”
Nick nodded.
“But as long as you’re doing those things, I don’t care if you don’t have good grades,” Zane told him honestly. “I love you no matter what. I’m so glad you’re my son, and I’m so proud of you that I want to hang your picture up on billboards on the highway. That’s my boy. ”
Nick couldn’t help a tiny smile at that.
“You just be you, Nicholas Lawrence,” Zane told him firmly. “That’s all I’ll ever want.”
Nick was up from the table in a heartbeat, his arms wrapped around Zane’s neck as he hugged him hard.
A few hours later, Zane was standing in the park, the boys jumping up and down with excitement as they watched the end of the snowball fight.
Nick and Cal had performed well for the first hour or so, but they got lazy and silly after that, probably because they were tired, and they were both eliminated at once in a pretty impressive move by one of the older kids.
After a quick ice cream break, they had come back to cheer on the remaining contenders. Once that was over, they planned to grab some lunch and come back for the tree-lighting ceremony at sunset.
She’ll be singing in the choir, he remembered, feeling his stomach twist.
But he would be seeing Becca a lot in town, since she lived here too. And of course, she would still be Cal’s teacher for the rest of the year. He was going to have to get used to bumping into her.
“We’re going to the tree thing, right, Dad?” Cal asked breathlessly when the snowball fight was finally over. “And we’ll stand up close, so we can hear the singing?”
“Don’t bother,” Nick said. “It’s never gonna work.”
“What’s not going to work?” Zane asked.
The boys exchanged a look.
“I want you to tell me what’s going on,” Zane said firmly.
“We just wanted you to see Miss Hawthorne,” Cal admitted. “So you would fall in love with her.”
Thunderstruck, Zane just stared down at his boys, completely at a loss as to how he should respond.
“We made sure you saw her at ice skating,” Cal went on. “And yesterday at the shop, we made you bump into her again. Today was supposed to be third time’s the charm. ”
That’s why Charlotte was being weird about asking for that barrel of ice cream. She didn’t ask for it. She was just covering for the boys…
“But it won’t work now,” Nick said darkly, before Zane could respond. “She doesn’t like me anymore. She won’t want to be my mom.”
“ No ,” Zane said a little too loudly. “She likes you so much, Nick. She was in that meeting fighting for you.”
“She was?” he asked, brightening up.
“She didn’t like it one bit that everyone was saying you cheated,” Zane went on. Leaving out the rest of his thought— even though it was obvious that you did. “And when they decided to move you back, I never saw a teacher so unhappy to have one less student in her classroom.”
Nick was grinning now and looking very pleased with himself.
“I’m glad you boys like your teacher,” Zane said. “And I appreciate that you want to find me a girlfriend…”
“A wife ,” Cal put in firmly.
“A wife,” Zane allowed. “But I’m very happy with things just the way they are. The three of us are enough, right?”
“Sure,” Cal said. “But the four of us are better.”
He couldn’t blame the boy for thinking that—he’d thought the same just a day ago.
“Well, Miss Hawthorne is younger than I am,” Zane told them. “And she is going to be very busy with her new work schedule for a while, as she gets used to being a teacher. She doesn’t want some old boyfriend?—”
“ Husband ,” Nick said.
“Husband,” Zane agreed, sort of liking the sound of it, “holding her back from working as much as she needs to. And when she does want a husband, she’ll choose someone more like her—maybe another teacher or something.”
“People are good at different things,” Nick pointed out, handing Zane back his own speech from earlier in the day. “And that’s okay.”
Zane was glad the boy had listened, even if he was using his own philosophy against him.
“You just don’t know anything about love,” Cal decided sadly.
Zane figured the boy was probably right. But he also knew they needed to look up to him. If he was going to pour his heart out about his insecurities, he’d better track down one of his brothers, or better yet Allie.
“Let’s get some lunch,” he told them. “Would you like to go to Bean Counters and have breakfast for lunch?”
That got a big enough reaction to take the boys off the case for a moment. With any luck, they’d be too sleepy after a nice warm lunch to throw him off anymore with their talk of love.
And he could get back to pretending everything was just fine before he saw Becca again at the tree lighting.