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That was enough for Jane, who considered her guardianship work done for the day.
Although Cecelia celebrated her sixteenth birthday, there were no immediate plans for her to learn how to drive. Someone in the family still picked her up from Winchester Academy every day, unless she was getting a ride home from a friend or heading somewhere already prearranged with Jane. This system worked well enough since Jane either left the office early to work at home or someone like Rebecca was usually available to cruise the SUV through the long line of parents picking up their kids from the Winchester Academy grounds.
On one bright late winter’s day, it was Jane’s turn, and the line had never been longer.
“This should be bloody illegal,” she vented when Cecelia opened the passenger side door and tossed her bookbag into the backseat. Jane was mindful that a long line of cars remained behind her. Not only did she have to deal withtheirhonking, but the number of high school students and faculty attempting to pull out of the big school parking lot while parents and nannies eked by was… atrocious. “Why today of all days?”
Cecelia shrugged, already face deep in her phone.
Jane’s grunt was the only thing to comfort her as she leaned forward on her steering wheel and inched down the driveway. Getting to where students loaded and unloaded was the first trial. Getting out? A second hell.
A text message appeared on her phone, currently mounted on the dash so Jane could see the latest traffic developments.“Fancy seeing you here.”
Jane peeked into her sideview mirror. While most of the cars in line were some variation of “black SUV with tinted windows,” she would know Damon’s silver Mercedes anywhere.
She activated the voice command on her phone and said, “Are you picking up your spawn today? Don’t you have a nanny for that?”
“I got off work early today,”he texted back.“Alice is at the doctor with my mother and the nanny has the day off.”
“Good for you. Being an active, involved father and all.”
He mentioned something about sensing her sarcasm dripping from her fangs. Cecelia looked at her aunt as if she were nuts for talking to herself.
The elementary school was the last building on the drive out of the Winchester grounds. Jane glanced at the line of kids waiting patiently on the front lawn while several teachers supervised their behavior.
Apparently not well enough, though.
“Whoa.” Cecelia lost all interest in her phone as she pressed her face against the window. “Those kids arefighting.”
Jane glanced over. Even through the rolled-up windows, she heard the heightened voices of two girls calling each other names before she saw the flash of two skirts racing by the car.
She recognized the blond girl in a pink dress before she saw the dark brunette in blue.
“Jesus!” Jane didn’t know what propelled her to throw open her door and hop out of the SUV. It wasn’t like she was either kid’s parent. “Stay here!” she told Cecelia before rounding the front of her car and rushing to the scene of the scuffle, where Clarise Monroe landed a smack on Abigail Warren, two teachers taking their sweet time to rush up before Jane got to them.
They were not alone.
“I didn’t start it!” Clarise’s Mary-Janes kicked in the air as her father lurched her up, disentangling the second-grader from the blond first-grader. “It was her! She started it!”
Jane had never heard a kid scream so loudly and with such intensity. While Damon threw his daughter over his shoulder, Jane dropped beside Abigail, who was soon surrounded by the two teachers who had approached with too little, too late.
“It wasn’t me!” Tears streamed down Abigail’s round face as she pushed herself up, a sight for pitiful eyes with grass stains on her pink skirt and white socks. “She called me a… a…”
The only person strong enough to shove Jane and the teachers aside was the woman who had come rushing out of the back of a red sedan as soon as she saw the commotion. “What is goingon?” Monica, with a mother bear’s ferocity, yanked her daughter off the ground and pulled Abigail into her arms. “Control your daughter, Damon!”
“Mydaughter?” With Clarise’s legs still kicking up in the air as she pounded futilely against her father’s back, Damon turned her away from the scene. It only made Clarise’s misplaced ragemore evident as anger tore across her face, her thick black hair matted against her forehead. “According tomydaughter, it’syourdaughter who relentlessly picks on her!”
“I donot!” Abigail insisted through more whimpering sobs. “Shehit me!”
Despite her petite stature, Monica hoisted her daughter against her chest and turned her away from the culprits. “We will be speaking about this!” she barked at the useless teachers who had done nothing to stop the fight. “When my husband hears about this, I guarantee that your endowment from the Warren Estate will be at risk!”
“Yourendowment! It’s because of us they had a garden for the first graders this year!”
Jane stayed back while Damon burned two eye-sized holes into the back of Monica’s head. “So…” She crossed her arms with a lack of anything else to do. “I’m guessing that’s a no on setting aside your rivalry to make some more money together.”
Damon didn’t calm down until he was rest assured that Clarise wasn’t hurt. When he put her down, she clung to his side, burying her face in his coat while he rubbed her head.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “All I know is that as long as my kid is throwing punches at hers, we can kiss any goodwill goodbye.”
