Ask Me for Tomorrow (2 page)

‘Great. Coffee would do me good about now.’

Marty turned back to what he’d been doing and Dean led Alice through the roller doors and out into the wild winter morning.

As goosebumps rose on Dean’s flesh and his body tensed, bracing itself against the cold, he pocketed his hands and turned into the wind. Alice lifted her shoulders, shuddered, then offered her hand to Dean. They shook.

‘Well, I’m keen,’ he said, and grinned. ‘If you want a job with Foster’s Garage, you’ve got one.’

She didn’t speak for a moment, then emotion flooded her eyes and she smiled. ‘Eight-thirty tomorrow, then.’

‘I’m looking forward to it. Welcome to the team.’

They said their goodbyes and parted ways.

He watched her cross the driveway, sit behind the wheel of her white Holden Commodore, then check her mobile phone. As she lifted it to her ear, he wondered if someone had wished her luck or rung for news, and if she was freer with her words with people she knew.

It was hard to imagine that a woman could be so succinct, not when Dean had Sam and Liv as yardsticks. They could talk to each other without pause for hours on end. Dean, on the other hand, was glad the interview hadn’t lasted much longer than it had. Small talk wasn’t his specialty, which had never been a problem until he’d met a woman with a similar disposition.

It was looking likely that Alice’s and his daily exchanges were going to be brief. She wasn’t a sharer and he wasn’t a chatter. What a team they would make.

His phone vibrated in the pocket of his pants at the same moment that Alice’s car rolled off the lot and accelerated down the street. He’d been expecting a call – his nearest and dearest couldn’t keep their noses out of his business longer than the time it took to drink a cup of coffee – but it wasn’t Ethan or Cal, or anyone else wanting to know if Foster’s Garage had welcomed a new face. It was Lana Ward, the receptionist from Rowan and Nina’s school.

She rushed through the pleasantries and got straight to the point of her call. ‘Rowan is with the principal. He started a fight with another boy at recess. Things got pretty physical.’

‘Rowan started a fight?’ It seemed so unlikely, so out of character. Anxiety trebled Dean’s heart rate.

‘It floored us too,’ Lana said.

Some hated it, but as a father of two young kids, Dean was often grateful that everyone knew so much about everyone else in this town. The tight-knit community could be suffocating some days, but then there were days when familiarity saved everybody a lot of time and confusion. Rowan’s teachers knew him well enough to know that this was extraordinary.

‘I’m on my way,’ he said, already hurrying into the office. He ended the call and shoved his phone deep into the pocket of his jeans, then snatched up his keys and wallet. Minutes later, he was parking on the street in front of the school.

He moved fast through the gate, over the frost-burned grass and into the main building. Very little had changed since his time at the school. A different generation of artists was responsible for the colourful pictures stuck on classroom windows, and school bags were cluttered on long, low shelves now instead of on the floor against the wall, but the Year Ones were still in the northern-most classroom, and Mr Crawley still taught Year Five in the classroom opposite. Dean had been standing under Mr Crawley’s Ford Falcon in the garage less than twenty minutes ago.

Lana stood from behind the desk when Dean reached the reception area. She hurried forward, gently squeezed his arm then steered him towards the principal’s office. ‘Everyone’s waiting for you.’

‘Everyone?’

‘Ben and his mum too.’

‘Great. Thanks, Lana.’

She knocked briskly, then Dean stepped inside.

His eyes found his son first. Rowan was sitting on the nearest chair, his face screwed up with indignation, annoyance and . . . something else.

When Rowan’s arms were crossed the way they were now, Dean couldn’t get anything out of him.

This
was Rowan. Whenever something bothered him, he became silent and withdrawn. He’d been mute for days after his mother had passed away. It seemed impossible that he would wake up today, suddenly a fighter. And was it likely that he would choose the enormous kid sitting beside him as his first opponent?

The boy was a head taller than Rowan, wider across the shoulders and waist, and a few years older. Yet he was the one gingerly touching a bruise under his left eye, and Rowan seemed to be nursing little more than a temper.

‘Mr Foster,’ principal Jessica Harris said from where she sat behind her well-ordered desk. ‘Thanks for coming so quickly. This is Benjamin and his mother Ms Jaye.’

Dean looked away from the boys and into the face of furious maternal instinct.

Alice Jaye, it seemed, finally had something to say.

Chapter Two

There was a lot to be said for silence. Dean was a big fan of it. It had the power to unravel things – such as secrets – and it created the space to acknowledge others. But when his son wasn’t speaking and the boy he’d struck refused to tell his side of the story, Dean, the principal and Dean’s newest employee, Alice, had been forced to adjourn the meeting. And they were all far from satisfied.

Another student had told a teacher that Rowan had hit Ben for no reason. The bigger boy had been on the oval near the roadside fence, and Rowan had run the length of the field to reach him. Rowan had shouted something, Ben had said something back and Rowan had made his point with a fist to the cheek.

No one overheard what had been said and now the boys couldn’t seem to lift their eyes from the floor.

Dean touched his fingers to the back of Rowan’s shoulder and steered him aside. The kids were getting sent back to class but he had a few things to say first.

Rowan allowed himself to be led to a corner and looked up when his father dropped to his haunches. His eyes level with his son’s, Dean sighed. ‘Ro, you hit a kid. When have you ever hit anyone?’

Rowan, predictably, didn’t answer. His grey eyes were shining and his brown hair was a tangle of curls and knots, so much like his uncle’s. Ethan reborn.

‘I know something big happened,’ Dean continued. ‘It must have for you to do that; but it almost doesn’t matter, do you hear me? You never resolve anything by hitting a person. We’re going to talk about this more after school and you’re grounded for a week.’

Misery and fury flashed across Rowan’s face. Dean swallowed and shifted, a complete amateur at disciplining his son. Rowan had rarely needed it before today.

‘Tell Toby he can’t come over this afternoon. And don’t drag your feet when the bell rings, come straight to the garage.’

Rowan nodded. A single tear dropped onto the top of his shoe. Dean shuffled a little to the left, shielding Rowan’s distress from the others as the boy lifted his shoulder and pushed his cheek against his shirt.

They were next to the sick bay, and the scent of antiseptic cream made Dean think of grazed knees, cut fingers and bee stings. Dean’s best friend Cal and Ethan were always in sick bay when they were at school. Everyone Dean was closest to had mischief as their middle name. Was it inevitable then, that the next generation would follow the pattern?

His daughter Nina hadn’t got there yet. Maybe she never would. He could only hope.

When he turned there was only Alice standing in front of the principal’s office. He patted Rowan’s shoulder as a signal to return to class. When the sound of Ro’s shuffling joggers faded, Dean walked over to Alice and tried to think of the right thing to say.

‘Rowan will apologise to Ben, and he’ll never touch him again.’

Alice pushed a hand from her forehead to the nape of her neck. A bobby pin fell from her hair and pinged on the linoleum between them. Standing close, beneath harsher lighting than that of his office and garage, Dean noticed new things about the woman who’d seemed so unflappable not so long ago.

Her hair was coloured blonde but with a finger’s length of sandy regrowth. Her clothes, although pretty, weren’t expensive, there were scuffs on her heels and bags under her eyes.

‘Big day for you,’ he said, and smiled weakly.

Alice pressed her lips together and nodded. When she opened her mouth, she couldn’t seem to find the words. There was a sudden vulnerability about her that contradicted the strength she had shown in her interview.

Dean was thinking how to comfort her when his classic-rock ringtone interrupted the moment.

He apologised and took a step back as he pulled his phone from his pocket.

Ethan spoke first, not waiting for a greeting. ‘I’m here and you’re not. The reception desk joinery’s getting finished up and Marty tells me you ran out like a man on fire. What’s going on? Are the kids okay?’

‘Everyone’s fine. Do me a favour?’

‘You want me to drink the Coke in your fridge? Mate, done. Like, five minutes ago.’

Dean smiled. ‘Can you call John Potter and tell him Toby can’t come over this arvo? I’ll explain later. Apologise for me.’

He could tell Ethan was concentrating on two things at once – his brother’s answer was clipped and distracted. ‘Call John, no Toby. You’ll explain it to me later and you’re sorry.’

‘I’ll explain it to
John
later.’

‘Not before you explain it to me. See you when I do.’

Dean said goodbye and ended the call. Turning back to Alice, he said, ‘Rowan’s grounded.’

This news appeared to please her, but it didn’t erase the worry in her eyes or lift the downturn of her mouth. She nodded.

‘Listen, I don’t know how to ask this without sounding rude . . .’ He took a moment to further collect his thoughts, then said, ‘Does this happen to Ben a lot? I mean, is he the type to provoke someone?’

‘Are you implying that black eye is
his
fault?’

‘No, but it’s often the kid who fights back who gets caught.’

The change in Alice’s expression suggested he was lucky that Jess Harris chose that moment to step out of her office. ‘Sorry,’ she said, her tone light and friendly, ‘I had to grab a call. So how are we feeling about this? What are the next steps?’ She waited, brows lifted. Grudgingly, Dean told her about the looming father-to-son talk and removal of privileges. Alice said nothing.

‘Ben might have been the victim in this instance,’ Jess said to her, ‘but without knowing what was said between the boys, it’s impossible to determine if Rowan was provoked. I encourage you to dig a little deeper, and be prepared to learn that Ben may share some of the blame for today.’ When Alice’s eyes narrowed, Jess held up a hand, palm towards her. ‘I’m not saying that he does, I’m just urging you not to discount the possibility. Now, these boys don’t have much cause to spend time together—’ Dean and Alice glanced at each other, ‘but nevertheless they should settle this. It’s too small a school for two students to be at odds with each other.’

Dean was keen to leave. It didn’t seem fair that he was getting a longer lecture than his son had, and keeping his expression inscrutable in the face of Alice’s incessant stare was starting to give him a bit of muscle strain. Too much more of this, and Dean was probably going to misbehave as well.

They were released back to their lives ten long minutes later. Despite the sombre, no-nonsense expression Lana had donned for the occasion, she waved as Dean passed. It wasn’t until he was striding along the front path that he realised he’d thoughtlessly followed Alice in the wrong direction. She noticed when she unlocked her car and he halted by the gate.

‘You walk here?’

He shook his head. ‘This going to be okay tomorrow?’

She levelled him a look that dropped his blood temperature a degree or two. ‘I’m not giving up my job because your kid’s a bully. See you at eight-thirty.’ She opened her door, got in the car and accelerated away from the school, giving Dean no chance to respond to her infuriating reply.

He swivelled on the heel of his boot and strode across the oval to where his car was parked on the adjacent street. It was certainly going to be interesting having Alice Jaye working at Foster’s Garage. With any luck, she would prove to be the strong, silent type he’d thought he’d recognised during her interview, because the last thing he needed was someone else telling him how and where he was screwing things up.

Not when he was doing the best he could.

Ethan’s coffee was strong enough to make his heart dance. He drank it black, with more sugar than was good for him, and curled his hands around the warm mug. It had been another frosty day and there was a predicted overnight low of one degree to look forward to. Now that he wasn’t moving he was struggling to keep warm, especially because Dean had been too preoccupied to turn the heater on when he’d got home with the kids.

Ethan stood at the kitchen sink with his brother, staring out the window at the darkening sky and the two small silhouettes by the creek.

‘Nothing,’ Dean said, for what had to be the fifth time. ‘We sat there for over an hour and he said nothing.’

Ethan privately thought Dean wasn’t giving Rowan enough credit; Ro was his father’s son. If there was something to be said, Dean could always whittle it down to a short sentence or two, and if there was something he didn’t want to say, he clammed right up.

Apples falling from trees, and all that.

Nina squealed and clambered onto one of the two high-backed wooden deckchairs outside. She jumped up and down a few times, then leapt back to the grass. Rowan chased her to the creek’s edge, feigned pushing her in then darted around the trunk of the willow tree they were playing beneath.

‘When I finally gave up he went straight out to Nina,’ Dean said, his gaze following the kids and his knuckles white from gripping the counter edge.

‘Maybe to distract himself?’ Ethan volunteered. He always felt ill equipped to offer advice or insight – he wasn’t a father, and if he were he wouldn’t be in Dean’s league. Dean had done a spectacular job raising those kids with Bree, and he hadn’t dropped the ball since losing her, despite Dean’s opinion to the contrary. Rowan and Nina wanted for nothing that Dean could provide. ‘I mean, he had a mate coming over, like you said. Maybe Nina’s taking his mind off being grounded?’