LITMIR.BIZ

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Cassie asked, still struggling to grasp the idea that strangers had actually sent her son over two thousand dollars. That was more than she earned in tips in several months.

      “Just some stuff,” Jake mumbled.

      “Baseball cards, Pokémon cards, rare Beanie Babies,” the sheriff said, reading from that same report. “Looks like he’d been watching the site. He knew exactly what items to list for sale, which ones would bring top dollar from kids and collectors.”

      “And where is this money?” Cassie asked, imagining it squandered on who knew what.

      “I’ve been saving it,” Jake explained, his studious little face suddenly intense. “For something real important.”

      “Saving it?” she repeated, thinking of the little metal box that contained his most treasured possessions and those dollars that his grandmother sent. Had he been socking away that much cash in there? All of his friends knew about that box. Any one of them could steal the contents.

      “Where?” she asked, praying he’d put it someplace more secure.

      “In my box,” he said, confirming her worst fears.

      “Oh, Jake.”

      “It’s safe,” he insisted. “I hid it where nobody would ever find it.”

      There was a dull throbbing behind Cassie’s eyes. She resisted the temptation to rub her temples, resisted even harder the desire to cry.

      “But why would you do something like this?” she asked, still at a loss. “You had to know it was wrong. I just don’t understand. Why did you need so much money? Were you hoping to buy your own computer?”

      He shook his head. “I did it for you, Mom.”

      “Me?” she said, aghast. “Why?”

      “So we could go back home for your reunion and maybe stay there for a really long time. I know you want to, even though you said you didn’t.” He regarded her with another touch of defiance. “Besides, I miss Grandma.”

      “Oh, baby, I know you do,” Cassie said with a sigh. “So do I, but this…this was wrong. The sheriff is right. It was stealing.”

      “It’s not like I took a whole lot from anybody,” he insisted stubbornly. “They just paid for some dumb old cards and toys. They probably would have lost ’em, anyway.”

      “That’s not the point,” she said impatiently. “They paid you for them. You have to send every penny of the money back, unless you have the toys to make things right.”

      She figured that was highly unlikely, since Jake spent his allowance on books, not toys. She met the sheriff’s gaze. “You have a list of all the people involved?”

      “Right here. As far as I know, it’s complete.”

      “If Jake sends the money back and writes a note of apology to each one, will that take care of everything?”

      “I imagine most of the people will be willing to drop any charges once they get their money back and hear the whole story,” he said. “I think a lot of them felt pretty foolish when they realized they were dealing with a third-grader.”

      “Yeah, well, Jake is obviously nine going on thirty,” Cassie said. At this rate he’d be running real estate scams by ten and stock market cons by his teens.

      This was not the first time she had faced the fact that she was in way over her head when it came to raising her son. Every single mom struggled. In all likelihood, every single mom had doubts about her ability to teach right and wrong. Cassie had accepted that it wouldn’t be easy when she’d made the decision to raise Jake on her own with no family at all nearby to help out.

      And it should have been okay. They might never be rich, but Jake was loved. She had a steady job. Their basic needs were met. There were plenty of positive influences in his life.

      Maybe if Jake had been an average little kid, everything would have been just fine, but he had his father’s brilliance and her penchant for mischief. It was clearly a dangerous combination.

      “If you’ll give me that list of names, Jake will write the notes tonight. We’ll be back in the morning with those and the money,” she said grimly.

      “But, Mom,” Jake began. One look at Cassie’s face and the protest died on his lips. His expression turned sullen.

      “Jake, could you wait outside with Earlene for just a minute?” the sheriff said. “I’d like to speak to your mother.”

      Jake slid out of the chair and, with one last backward glance, left the room. When he’d gone, Joshua faced Cassie, eyes twinkling.

      “That boy of yours is a handful,” he said.

      “No kidding.”

      “You ever think about getting together with his daddy? Seems to me like he could use a man’s influence.”

      “Not a chance,” Cassie said fiercely.

      Cole Davis might be the smartest, sexiest man she’d ever met. He might be the son of Winding River’s biggest rancher. But she wouldn’t marry him if he were the last chance she had to escape the fires of hell. He’d sweet-talked her into his bed when she was eighteen and he was twenty, but once that mission had been accomplished, she hadn’t set eyes on him again. He’d gone back to college without so much as a goodbye.

      When she’d discovered she was pregnant, she was too proud to try to track Cole down and plead for help. She’d left town, her reputation in tatters, determined to build a decent life for herself and her baby someplace where people weren’t always expecting the worst of her.

      Not that she hadn’t given them cause to think poorly of her. She’d been rebellious from the moment she’d discovered that breaking the rules was a whole lot more fun than following them. She’d given her mother fits from the time she’d been a two-year-old whose favorite word was no, right on through her teens when she hadn’t said no nearly enough.

      If there was trouble in town, Cassie was the first person everyone looked to as ringleader. Her pregnancy hadn’t surprised a single soul. Rather than endure the knowing looks and clucking remarks, rather than ask her mother to do the same, she’d simply fled, stopping in the first town where she’d spotted a Help Wanted sign in a diner window.

      In the years since, she had made only rare trips back to visit her mother, and she’d never once asked about Cole or his family. If her mother suspected who Jake’s father was, she’d never admitted it. The topic was off-limits to this day. Jake was Cassie’s alone. Most of the time she was justifiably proud of the job she’d done raising him. She resented Joshua’s implication that she wasn’t up to the task on her own.

      “Are you saying Jake wouldn’t have done this if his father had been around?” she asked, an edge to her voice. “What could he have done that I haven’t? I’ve taught Jake that it’s wrong to steal. The message has been reinforced in Sunday school. And, believe me, he will be punished for this. He may well be grounded till he’s twenty-one.”

      Joshua held up his hand. “I wasn’t criticizing you. Kids get into trouble even with the best parents around, but with boys especially, they need a solid male role model.”

      Cassie didn’t especially want her son following in Cole Davis’s footsteps. There had to be better role models around. One was sitting right in front of her.

      “He has you, Joshua,” she pointed out. “Since you’ve been coming around the diner, he’s spent a lot of time with you. He looks up to you. If anyone represents authority and law and order, you do. Did that help?”

      “Point taken.” He regarded her with concern. “Are you going to take that trip Jake was talking about? Obviously, it’s something that he really cares about.”

      “I don’t see how we can.”

      “If

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