Chapter 3
Chapter Three
"Idon't see why I have to get up at the butt crack of dawn," Mason muttered, throwing a disrespectful glance in Ben's direction.
Ben, off duty from his small-town sheriff position, pressed his lips together and tried to keep the anger from erupting inside of him.
"You can't lay in bed all day. It's one o'clock in the afternoon. I'm not asking for anything outrageously weird to have you up before noon."
"On a Saturday? There's no school. What do I have to be up for?"
"Why would you feel the need to sleep the day away? You went to bed at a decent time last night."
At least Ben had thought he had. But Ben had to admit, he hadn't checked on his fifteen-year-old son before he had gone to bed at midnight.
And even at his age, thirty-five, which wasn't exceptionally old, although he didn't have the energy of youth, he had felt well rested by eight o'clock in the morning.
Why did his son go to bed earlier and sleep later?
"You didn't tell me why it matters," Mason said, grabbing cereal from the cupboard and slamming a bowl down on the counter.
Ben bit off the words to tell him to stop slamming things around. He was already giving him a hard time for not getting up, and he'd mentioned that he needed to keep his room slightly neater. He didn't want to constantly pick at his son.
"I was hoping we could go fishing today. But at this rate, it's going to be dark before we get ready to leave."
"Fishing is stupid and boring," Mason spat his words, irritated and condescending, like Ben had suggested they go to McDonald's and play at the play place.
He didn't know how to reach his son. Hadn't for a while.
He bit his tongue again as Mason slopped wet cereal onto the counter as he dumped milk into his bowl, then Mason just left the entire mess as he grabbed the bowl and a spoon and walked into the living room to sit down in front of the TV.
He had already used the remote to turn the thing on before Ben found his tongue.
"We eat breakfast at the table," he said, feeling like all he'd done that entire morning was nag his son about all of the things he was doing wrong.
And at the same time, he felt like he'd let a hundred things slide that should have been corrected.
Where did he start? He wanted to have a relationship with his son, and he knew that wasn't going to be possible if all he did was complain about his behavior.
Still, his behavior had been abhorrent, and there hadn't really been anything to praise.
"Are you serious? Why'd you wait until I sat down before you told me that? What's wrong with watching TV? It's better than just sitting down at the table across from you and feeling your condescension drip from every pore."
Mason made no move to either come back into the kitchen from the living room nor to turn off the TV set. In fact, Ben could've been wrong, but he was pretty sure Mason turned the TV up louder.
Some kind of weird music Ben didn't recognize thumped and pounded its way into his brain, making the headache that had been skirting around the edges of his temples start paining him in earnest. He had moved in with his mother, who was at a ladies’ aid meeting, and she would be upset at the mess in her house.
Not for the first time, he had to stop all the nasty thoughts that wanted to march through his mind over the way his ex-wife had acted.
Not only had she cheated on him, but when she divorced him, she'd demanded custody. He hadn't wanted to fight, but he'd also argued that Mason needed to be removed from the bad influences that he had fallen in with when he'd turned twelve.
His wife hadn't listened, and she'd insisted that not only did she get custody, but Ben had to stay in the same town and couldn't move away.
Thankfully, he'd been able to show the judge what a terrible idea that was, but not until Mason had turned fourteen and chosen to live with his mother.
He'd gone from bad to worse until Peyton, his ex, had said she couldn't handle him anymore.
He was disrupting life with her live-in boyfriend, and they were expecting a child together, planning a wedding.
She couldn't have an unruly teen who was in with the wrong crowd of people hanging out at her house.
Of course, she blamed all of the kid's problems on Ben, saying that he hadn't spent enough time with his son since the divorce.
Funny, because he would've lived in the same house with his son if Peyton hadn't felt the need to cheat on him and then leave him and divorce him.
Ben failed to see how that was all his fault, but it didn't really make any difference.
Mason had gotten caught in the crosshairs, and he was the one who had really suffered.
Not that Ben hadn't suffered, because he had.
Having a person's wife cheat on a man did something to his psyche that Ben almost thought was irreparable.
But as broken as he felt inside, he had to try to be the adult for his son.
He walked into the living room, grabbed the remote, and switched the TV off. Standing between the TV set and his son, he waited until his son looked out from underneath his brows, his mouth full of cereal, before he spoke.
"Go to the kitchen table."
He didn't raise his voice, but he used the tone that he would've used had he been on duty and needed someone he’d stopped for speeding to get out of their car. He wasn't asking. He was telling.
For a heartbeat and a half, he was afraid Mason wasn't going to listen.
Honestly, he wasn't sure what he was going to do if Mason decided to defy him.
At fifteen, Mason was almost as tall as he was, although Ben was heavier and definitely stronger still.
Still, he didn't want to have to use brute force in order to get his son to listen.
But he might have to use some tough love, and he wasn't sure exactly what all that entailed to get his son back on the straight and narrow.
Or at least headed in the direction of the straight and narrow, because from the road that Mason was on right now, the straight and narrow wasn't even visible.
After giving him a scowl, Mason yanked his bowl, spilling more milk and cereal, and stomped into the kitchen before slapping himself down on the chair and practically throwing his bowl on the table. Milk and cereal slopped out everywhere.
For the time being, Ben ignored the mess his son had made in three different spots so far in the last five minutes.
"This is how you pour cereal without spilling it," Ben said calmly, as he took the same cereal that his son had left open on the counter and poured it into his own bowl. "And if you don't fill it up too full, then it doesn't spill out."
"Like I care," Mason muttered.
"You should care, because now you have a mess to clean up in three different spots in my house, and if you had been more careful in how you handled your bowl and how you filled it up in the first place, you wouldn't have to waste your time on that, and you could get right to the other chores on your list."
"Chores? I have chores?" Mason asked, acting like the idea was preposterous. He huffed out a breath. "I should've known you just wanted a slave."
All right, Ben had to admit that he had to bite back a grin. A slave?
"If I were going to get a slave, they would be a lot more docile, and they wouldn't go around making messes that then I had to take the energy to try to then get them to clean up."
"Then why don't you just clean them up yourself? That would save you some time and energy, old man."
"My theoretical slave would also be slightly more respectful. They would not draw attention to my advanced years, but instead would regard my wisdom with awe and respect."
For the first time that morning, the scowl left Mason's face as he seemed to be trying to figure out what exactly Ben was saying.
He could almost see the wheels turning in his son's head, trying to figure out how to turn that so it was somehow insulting him so that he could get offended over it and have some kind of flippant, arrogant, disrespectful comment.
It seemed to be too much for his adolescent brain, because he looked back down at his cereal bowl and stuffed another spoonful into his mouth.
"I guess that settles that," Ben said, not because he had to, but because the silence felt oppressive. "I did make a list for you, and I do want you to work while you're here. A house needs regular maintenance, and the people who live in it share the burden."
"I knew it. A slave. That's why I'm here. Shall I call you master?" Mason shoved another spoonful of cereal into his mouth.
Ben was kind of surprised at his lack of animosity towards his son.
He definitely needed a good takedown, and he needed to have respect for his father, but this did not seem to be the time.
Not when Ben was trying to develop a relationship with him.
And on top of all of that, Ben knew that Mason knew that what he was doing was wrong.
It was true that Ben had worked while Mason was growing up, but Mason had been a well-behaved and well-mannered young man until the divorce. Most likely his attitude was due to that and also to the fact that he had fallen in with the wrong group of people.
Hopefully this move to Mistletoe Meadows would change all of that.
Plus, Ben had enjoyed the time that he and his son had spent together, and he had a lot of good memories of the things that they had done. Sure, the divorce had marred some of those, and the fight that he and Peyton had had over custody, with Peyton eventually winning, had marred them as well.
Ben didn't know how to solve the divorce crisis. He didn't know how to make his wife want to keep her vows and to stay with the man that she'd married. Had he been such a terrible husband? Had she really needed to leave? Had she really needed to break up their family?
He didn't understand it. Didn't understand why Peyton's happiness was so much more important than Mason's childhood.
But Peyton had assured him that it was. Or she would argue that it wasn't more important, but it was just as important, and that she wasn't really doing anything to Mason that hadn't happened to millions of other kids who had turned out just fine.
Ben wasn't entirely sure that they had turned out just fine, but he had yet to win an argument with Peyton, and he'd learned to just keep his mouth shut and let her yell at him for whatever she felt like.
Which, when his mouth was closed, she was yelling at him because he wasn't talking to her, but when he opened it, she argued with everything he said. It was a no-win situation.
Maybe Mason felt slightly the same, although Ben couldn't really commiserate with him on that because he refused to talk badly about Peyton in front of his son.
"Mom is right. You're emotionally stunted and don't know how to relate to people. And you act like a child." Mason shoved back away from the table, set his bowl in the sink with a clatter, and started to walk out of the kitchen.
Ben supposed it shouldn't surprise him that his ex-wife had spoken badly about him and said those things.
"Come back here, Mason. I have your list."
Mason slowed, and Ben held his breath until he stopped, turned slowly, and walked slowly back.
"Yes, master?" Mason said sarcastically.
Ben pulled out his phone where he had written down the things that he wanted Mason to do, copied and pasted it in a message and clicked send.
"I just sent it to you. I don't want you to do anything else until those things are done. Once they are, we'll talk about going fishing."
"Maybe I don't want to," Mason said, but he didn't sound quite as belligerent as he had.
Ben guessed Mason probably was desperate for love and attention and probably did feel like Ben had dropped the ball by letting Peyton take him.
Or maybe Mason was upset that his mother had basically said that she didn't want him.
It was a complicated situation, and Ben supposed Peyton was right in a way. He didn't relate to people very well. That was why he went into law enforcement instead of some kind of teaching or counseling career.
"I'll be the first person to admit that I'm not perfect," he said, his voice low-pitched and devoid of anger.
"You can say that again," Mason said.
"I'm so glad I have a perfect son to use as my example so someday I can attain perfection just like him." Maybe Ben shouldn't be using sarcasm, but he couldn't help himself.
Mason rolled his eyes.
"How am I supposed to clean the gutters?"
"Do you see beside that line where it says I'm going to do that with you?"
Mason sighed, a drawn-out, imposed-upon sound that made it clear that having to work with Ben was akin to being on a chain gang. "Do I really have to work with you? It's going to take all day. You're slow and old."
"I think we've established the fact that I'm old. And I might be slow, but we'll get the job done right so we only have to do it once."
"Whatever," Mason muttered. "I'm going to my room. You can call me when you're ready."
"No, you can go out to the garage and get the ladder. I'll meet you out there as soon as I'm done eating. But before you do that, you can wipe up the messes that you've made on the kitchen counter, here on the table, and also on the coffee table."
Mason glared at him, but he went reluctantly to the sink, grabbed a wet rag, and cleaned up the messes.
Ben sighed inside. It was going to be a long day.