you’re either going to have to do that, or get your mom to sign some things.”
“She’ll sign anything,” Emmett said. “She doesn’t care about me. She just wants me out of her hair.”
West would have loved to argue with that, but it was true. She didn’t want them around. She wanted to be able to do her own thing. She loved to talk about her kids when they were doing well. But that was it. She did not like to take care of them. She didn’t like to deal with their failures.
She wanted them to be convenient accessories. Evidence of the fact that maybe she hadn’t just wasted her life on men who didn’t much care for her, and the endless grind of jobs that she hated.
They were a double-edged sword for her.
Incontrovertible evidence of the passing years, but also a potential reminder that she’d done something that had mattered.
But whatever they were, it was only ever when she felt like it, and on her terms. That was just a fact.
“Well, today, Jamie is demonstrating some riding techniques. We ride a lot of horses around here. You ever ridden a horse?”
Emmett shook his head. “No.”
West felt that like an echo of failure down through his soul.
“You’re going to learn,” Gabe said.
“What is this?” Emmett asked. “Cowboy school?”
“Might as well be.” Gabe grinned. “Join the other kids.”
“Okay,” Emmett said, taking a step toward the other boys. They jostled, and moved slightly away from him.
“Are they going to be dicks?” West asked.
“For a while. But then they’ll get over it.”
And that was true, West knew that it would be.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets, not quite willing to leave just yet. And shocked that he wasn’t. That he was nervous for his half brother. Emmett could find a place here, if he wanted to.
West just had to hope that he would want to.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ANOTHER DAY, another panel interview, this time with more people. Pansy was entirely unimpressed with the timing of the event. And she knew that Barbara would be there, raising hell.
In fact, it went even worse than Pansy could have ever imagined.
It was clear that Lana was on her side. And there were obviously a few people who appreciated the route she’d taken with Emmett. But Barbara wasn’t the only one that had concerns over her leniency.
It made Pansy want to scream.
How could so many grown people who had benefited from having a support network in their lives not understand that a boy like Emmett needed a community to come together around him, not shun him?
They kept saying that by not punishing him she was going to turn him into a hardened criminal, but Pansy had a fair idea of what made a criminal, and in her mind it was more things like this. Desperation and a lack of hope. A lack of accountability. If nobody cared about you then you didn’t care about anyone in return.
The kid needed to feel a sense of responsibility to the community. To the people in it. Carl Jacobson was going to help with that. By having Emmett work off his debt, Carl was going to make Emmett feel a sense of responsibility for the place.
People like Barbara would make him feel poisoned against it.
She had said as much, and she knew that the people who liked her anyway thought it was great.
And those who didn’t were yet more skeptical.
The ultimate decision lay with the city manager, but, the way that all of it went, each panel meeting and the final community meeting would bear weight.
She didn’t know how Officer Johnson’s panels were going. But considering he could show up and be a man she imagined it was all going well.
He hadn’t made a controversial decision, recently or ever.
And his general normalcy was going to serve him well.
He looked like every police chief they’d ever had. He did things the same as everyone else. Or at least, people could assume that he did things the way they wanted because they didn’t know how he did things, because he didn’t do much.
She was feeling surly by the time she dragged herself back to her house. But some of the surliness abated when she pulled up and saw Emmett working on digging fence postholes with West.
“I didn’t know I was getting a new fence too,” she said.
“I figured you might as well. I had extra supplies,” he said.
“Well that’s...nice.”
“I am pretty nice,” West said. “Once you get to know me.”
“Pity I don’t have a reason