“I’m trying to teach him some manners,” Marsh said in a tone that made it clear he thought Tracy was interfering.
“Do it somewhere else, okay? I’d love an apology, only not this one.”
Marsh started to say something, but Bay interrupted.
“I didn’t kick you that hard.” He paused. “I didn’t mean to kick you at all. But you got in my way.”
“I know. I kicked somebody myself this morning. Metaphorically, that is.”
“What does meta-forkly mean?”
“Metaphorically. It means I didn’t use my feet, I used words.”
“Did you apologize?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t enjoy it. I’m not used to it. Kind of like you.”
“I shouldn’t have kicked you.” He narrowed his eyes again. “And you shouldn’t have gotten in my way.”
“Thanks for the first part. When you grow up, come back and thank me for the second.”
Bay rolled his eyes. “Fat chance.”
“Well, now that we all know where we stand…” Marsh said.
Tracy straightened. “So, are there more of these little charmers at home? Baby Inlet? Little Estuary? That last has a catchy ring to it. Estuary Egan. I bet you’ll have to fight off the boys with a baseball bat.”
“Bay, get back in the truck. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Surprisingly, the boy did as he was told. A few seconds later something distinctly country came roaring from the truck’s speakers. Tracy pictured any and all nearby fish heading straight out to sea.
“He looks like you,” Tracy told Marsh over the wailing. “Only more presentable.”
“You have kids?” Marsh asked.
“I had excellent birth control. Condoms work pretty well, too, I hear. I suggest you give them a try.”
“Raising kids isn’t as easy as you seem to think.”
“I don’t think anything about it. Don’t want them. Not even sure I like them.”
“I can see why. They do compete for attention.”
She smiled her sweetest. “It was so nice of you to drop by. Do it again in, say, a century?”
He turned away, as if he were planning to get back in the pickup. “I’m sorry he kicked you,” he said. “He was just having a bad day.”
She stared at Marsh’s back; then she stepped forward and wrapped her fingers around his arm to stop him. “I’m sorry? A bad day? A bad day is when a kid doesn’t make a goal in soccer. It’s when his teacher curtails his playtime because he didn’t turn in his homework. That’s a bad day. This kid of yours has a bad problem. He runs away, he can’t control his temper, he uses physical violence when he’s frustrated. He needs help a lot more than I needed an apology.”
He faced her, and she dropped his arm. Gladly.
“You don’t know anything about it,” he said.
“I know what a well-adjusted kid looks like.” She lowered her voice, although there was no chance Bay could hear them over Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy, Breaky Heart.” “I hope you’ll think about getting him some help. Bay’s really a cute kid, but he won’t be in a couple of years. And you’ll be so busy bailing him out of jail, you won’t have time to chain yourself to anything.”
“Not a parent, not a psychiatrist, not an expert,” he drawled.
“Your loss, not mine. I’ll stay out of his way.”
“You do that.”
“I don’t suppose I could convince you to stay out of mine?”
“What are the chances, Miss Deloche?” This time he did round the truck. She stepped back, and in a moment, the pickup was a cloud of dust on its way back to town.
Inside the house, Tracy slapped together her usual dinner, a handful of this, spoonfuls of that. To forget Close Encounters of the Egan Kind, she spent the next hour on the Internet trying to find a cheap handyman who could do everything. A local company called Handy Hubbies fit the bill, but the man who answered told her they usually left tile up to the experts, and he wouldn’t be able to get her an estimate until the end of the week.
She wondered exactly what the hubbies were handy with and made an appointment for one to look at the repairs on Wanda’s cottage. They settled on Thursday and a time. None of her other phone calls were that successful.
Tracy turned off her computer and stared out the window. At some point between the Egans’ happy little visit and her frustrating computer session, the sun had gone down. She poured herself a glass of wine and turned on the news. Two hours later she woke to a reality show. A British nanny was trying