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He laughed. “It’s a prank.”
“Benjamin Colfax, you will not put a frog in the teacher’s desk.”
“No,” Brody said solemnly. “You really don’t want to turn out like me. And that is the Brody McCloud path. You don’t want to walk on it.”
“Why not?” Benny asked.
“I... Because,” Brody said.
He hadn’t expected to get stumped by a child. Well, the truth was, he could tell him why, but it would be a longer, more complicated story than Benny would have patience for, and there would be details his mother wouldn’t appreciate him sharing at all.
The kid shrugged and started skipping around in a circle, looking at imaginary markers on the ground, as if he was trying to hit each one.
“Do you have homework?” Elizabeth asked.
“No. Mrs. Everett said she doesn’t give homework. She doesn’t believe in it.”
He saw Elizabeth mouth a prayer of what looked like thanks, and he definitely felt like he was looking into a window at a life that he didn’t understand.
His parents had never cared if he had homework. Hell, his mom hadn’t even stuck around.
“It’s more work for me than it is for him,” she said quietly. “Of course I have to openly support whatever the teacher chooses to do. But I really don’t like fighting about fractions over dinner. I didn’t care about them when I was in school. Caring about them on behalf of a cranky child is a bridge too far.”
He chuckled. “I can’t imagine caring about anything other than what I want to care about at a given moment.”
“Kids have a way of doing that to you,” she said.
It underscored an important difference between them. Something they should both pay attention to.
“Do we have trails here?” Benny asked.
“Yeah,” Brody said. “Lots. Mostly we ride horses on them, but you can definitely hike on them.”
“Can you show me?”
Elizabeth’s eyes went wide. “You mean you want to do something other than play video games?”
“The trails around here are really cool,” Benny said.
“Yeah,” he said. He tried to rack his brain to think of a place that might be cool to take a kid. Immediately he thought of the caves. “There’s a pretty quick hike that goes down toward the creek, and there’s a couple of caves back in there. We used to go down there looking for gold nuggets.”
“Can I see?”
“Yeah,” he said, and then realized that Elizabeth was staring daggers at the side of his head. “If your mom says it’s okay,” he said.
“Supervised,” she said.
“Well, you’re welcome to come with us.”
How was this happening? How had he gotten himself roped into this?
You roped yourself, dumbass.
“I’ll have to change,” she said, indicating the prim dressage attire that she was wearing. Those very tight breeches, and the tall black boots.
“Better hurry, we only have about an hour and a half left of daylight.”
“I don’t want to get stuck in a cave in the dark,” she said.
