She looked so lost, Laura patted her hand. “Don’t second-guess yourself. I think sending her to school was exactly the right thing. A few days off last week was understandable, but longer would just have made coming back that much harder.”
“That’s exactly what I told her,” Diana said.
“The whole staff kept a very close eye on things today. There may have been a few whispers which unquestionably upset her, but no one was openly ganging up on her. We will stay on top of this, Diana. I promise you that.”
“Thank you,” Diana replied, then straightened up, her expression determined. “Now, tell me what I can do to help you with Mariah Litchfield’s vendetta. Whatever you need, consider it done.”
“Thanks,” Laura said. “Just be there for the rally on Saturday. I tried to convince Misty to say a few words about this experience. I think it might help her to reclaim her self-esteem if she feels she’s in charge of her life again and can speak out to help others who are being bullied. You could encourage her to do that, if you agree.”
Diana nodded. “I do agree. Bullying needs to have a face and a voice. Who better than Misty, if she feels up to it? I won’t push her, though. I can’t do that.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Laura said. “She’s a great girl, Diana. You and your husband have done a wonderful job with her. She’s smart and ambitious, and there will come a time when this will just be a small, unfortunate blip in her life.”
“I hope so,” Diana said. “Teenagers take things so seriously. Everything’s life or death to them. It scares me when I think how easily a good kid’s life can be derailed by an incident like this. This could so easily have turned into a tragedy.”
Laura understood her distress. “But it didn’t,” she reminded Diana. “Misty has a lot of support. She’s going to be fine.”
Unfortunately, even as she spoke the confident words, she worried she might be tempting fate just a little.
* * *
After a frantic week of preparations for Saturday’s rally on the town green, by Friday Laura was exhausted and stressing out. J.C. took one look at her when he picked her up and shook his head.
“We’re skipping the football game,” he announced, his jaw set determinedly as he anticipated an argument.
She gave him a halfhearted one. “We can’t,” she protested. “I should be there, if only for appearances’ sake. Besides, you love going to the games. And we promised Cal and Maddie we’d meet them there.”
He handed over his cell phone. “Call and tell them we’re not coming,” he said. “You need a break from everything related to that school, if only for tonight.”
She frowned at him. “When did you turn so bossy?”
“It’s a tactic I usually reserve for my most stubborn patients,” he admitted. “It seemed appropriate tonight.”
“I’m not some six-year-old who won’t take her cough syrup,” she grumbled, but she did make the call to Maddie.
“J.C.’s apparently made other plans for tonight,” Laura told her, then listened, a smile breaking across her face. “Yeah, that’s what I told him.” She glanced pointedly at J.C. “No, he hasn’t told me how he’s planning to entertain me, but it better be good.”
She was grinning when she disconnected the call.
“I suppose Maddie had a few ideas about how I should keep you occupied,” he said. “It seems she usually does.”
“Oh, yes,” Laura said. “Mostly X-rated.”
J.C. chuckled. “I could get behind that. How about you?”
“I’m not so sure yet. I’m a little annoyed by your presumptuousness.”
“No, you’re not. You’re relieved not to have to sit in the stands and listen to the people around you taking sides.”
“Okay, yes,” she finally conceded. She regarded him curiously. “Are you as shocked as I am that there are people who actually believe Annabelle’s punishment was too harsh?”
“Sadly, no,” he said. “I’ve dealt with a few of them in the office since this happened.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. It never ceases to amaze me how some parents can fail to take something like this seriously. One father, who brought his son in for a shot, then berated him when he cried, said kids these days need to toughen up. He says we’re raising a generation of sissies.” He shook his head. “Just the kind of message an impressionable boy needs to hear from his dad.”
“How old was his son?”
“Four,” J.C. responded wryly. “Guess you can’t start too young with the stoicism in some circles.”
“Good grief. What did you say?”
“That life has plenty of hard knocks that can’t be avoided, but children deserve to be protected and kept safe from this kind of nonsense for as long as possible or at least until they’re old enough to know how to handle it.”
“How did he take that?”
J.C. shrugged. “He was the third parent of the week to threaten to take his child to another doctor.”
Laura regarded him with dismay. “J.C., I’m so sorry.”
“Why? Because I spoke my mind and some idiot couldn’t take it? That’s life, too.” He gave her a chagrined smile. “Fortunately Bill thinks we’ve got too many patients as it is. He figures being abandoned by a few of the impossible ones isn’t a huge loss.”
“Good for Bill Townsend. That’s just about the first totally admirable thing I’ve ever heard about him.”
“He’s not the complete jerk some people think he is,” J.C. said, feeling compelled to defend Bill. “Cheating on Maddie the way he did and parading his pregnant girlfriend around town was wrong, but no one is sorrier about that than Bill is. It cost him everything. He realized way too late that he was still in love with Maddie, but by then she was with Cal. His girlfriend recognized that he’d never truly love her the way he did Maddie and left him to move back to Tennessee with their child. His relationships with each of his kids has suffered. I’m not suggesting that he’s some kind of a saint, just that he paid a heavy price for his mistake.”
“I guess I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective,” Laura admitted.
“I doubt those Sweet Magnolia friends of yours would encourage that slant. From what I hear they’re loyal to their own and not very forgiving of anyone who messes with them.”
“They are that,” Laura confirmed. “When
