Stranger in Town (Dundee, Idaho #5)(38)
Author: Brenda Novak

“She already left. She said she had to hurry or she’d be late for church.”

Patti didn’t usually go to church. Hannah wondered if she was really in that big of a rush, or if she’d simply chosen not to come in. “Did you have fun last night?”

“Yeah. Uncle Joseph played me in Battleship and I won!”

“Good for you, sweetheart.” Hannah covered a yawn. She’d gotten little sleep last night. Even after Gabe had dropped her off, she’d lain awake in bed, thinking about him. “Go tell your brother it’s time to get up, okay?”

“He won’t listen to me,” Brent complained.

“Tell him he’s going to miss the car show if he doesn’t get a move on.”

Brent started from the room, but his footsteps went only halfway down the hall before his voice came back to her. “He’s up, Mom—but there’s something wrong with his face.”

“Shut up, you little mutant.”

Something was wrong with his face? Hannah was so surprised by this comment she didn’t react to Kenny’s less than kind response to his brother. She glanced over her shoulder as they both entered the kitchen—and dropped the egg she’d been about to crack. “Kenny, what happened to you?”

He slumped into a chair at the table. “Nothing. When’s Dad coming?”

Russ was supposed to arrive any minute, but Hannah didn’t pass the information along. She was too shocked to see her son’s fat lip and black eye. “How’d you get hurt?”

“How do you think?” he said. “I was in a fight.”

She’d checked on him when she came in last night, found him already sleeping in his bed. She hadn’t noticed the injuries, but with his blinds drawn, it had been dark in his room, and she never would have thought to look that closely. “You haven’t been in a fight since third grade, when Chris Amberzini stole the cupcake out of your lunchbox.”

He said nothing.

“Who were you fighting with?”

“Some jerk on the team.”

“What’s this jerk’s name?” In a town as small as Dundee, she was almost guaranteed to know him or his parents, maybe both.

“Sly Reed.”

“Coach Blaine’s nephew?”

“Yeah.”

“Sly’s always fighting,” Brent volunteered. “He’s mean.”

Hannah was too interested in getting to the bottom of the story to pay any attention to the peanut gallery. “Did he attack you?” she asked Kenny.

“No.” Kenny scowled. “Can we just forget about it?”

“Of course not!” she said. “Tell me what happened.”

He folded his arms and glared up at her. “Fine. Tuck and I went to the Arctic Flyer. Sly was there. He started getting in my face, saying some stupid shi—stuff,” he quickly corrected. “So I hit him. That’s all.”

Hannah covered her mouth. This wasn’t what she’d been expecting. Sly was the bully. “You started the fight? Kenny, how could you? You know better than that.”

Between his glower and his injuries, Kenny looked awful. “Sly deserved it, Mom,” he said, and she was grateful to hear a flicker of the sweet Kenny she’d raised come through in his voice.

Knowing her son, Sly must’ve done something to provoke him. Kenny wasn’t easily angered and had never been a problem child. He was popular, well-liked. But she hadn’t heard anything yet that would warrant the use of violence. Why wasn’t he coming forward with a clear explanation? “This happened in the lobby of the Arctic Flyer?” she clarified, still grappling to get the facts straight.

“In the parking lot, behind the building.”

“Did someone stop the fight, or….”

“Mr. Campbell came out and said he was going to call the police.”

Harvey Campbell owned the Arctic Flyer restaurant and often complained about the number of teenagers who hung out there on weekends. They made a mess, distracted the workers and spent precious little money. Hannah could easily imagine how well a fight in the parking lot must’ve gone over with him. “So you ran off?”

“Are you kidding? Tiffany Wheeler was there. I wasn’t about to run anywhere.”

So this had something to do with salvaging his pride?

“How did it end?”

“Booker Robinson pulled me off Sly and gave me a ride home.”

“Booker Robinson was there?”

“He and his wife were in line at the drive-through.”

Thank goodness, or Hannah might have had to pick her son up from the police station. “I don’t believe this, Kenny,” she said, no longer sleepy in the least. “Did you hurt him?”

“He definitely took the worst of it,” he said triumphantly.

“Kenny got in a fi-ght…Kenny got in a fi-ght,” Brent chanted.

“Shut up,” Kenny growled.

Hannah pressed a hand to her suddenly aching head. “Brent, please.”

Brent gave her a sheepish look and stopped taunting. Hannah turned back to Kenny. “What did Sly say that got you so mad, honey?”

“He told Tiffany we were going to lose next Friday.”

“That’s all?”

“He told her we were going to lose because of me, that I was going to play a sucky game.”

“I can see where that wouldn’t make you happy, Kenny. But I can’t see why you’d get mad enough to hit him. Just prove him wrong.”

Kenny’s shoulders rounded and he stared at the floor. “You don’t understand.”

She didn’t deny it. “Let me see your hands.”

Grudgingly, he held them out to her, and she made a note of the nicks, gouges and swollen knuckles. “Do you think you might have broken anything? Do we need to get X-rays?” Money was tight this month. If he needed X-rays, she wasn’t sure how she was going to pay for them. Because medical insurance was so expensive for the self-employed, she carried a policy with a high deductible.

He flexed his battered fingers. “No.”

That was good news, at least. But she was willing to bet that what had happened last night wasn’t over yet. There’d be some fallout from it, most likely in the form of a call from Sly’s mother. “What am I supposed to say when Sandy Reed contacts me?”

“Tell her I want her son to stay out of my face and leave me alone,” Kenny said.

Hannah went to the cupboard for some Tylenol—for both of them. “What did Tuck do while this was going on?”