But niggling doubts keep crowding his head. As much as he loves his granddaughter, she has always had a bit of a devilish streak. A quick tongue and an even quicker temper. There was the time when Jordyn was about six and the school called saying that Jordyn pinched a girl in her class so hard it left a bruise. “Why?” Tess had asked, wanting to understand.

Jordyn scowled and said, “She took my spot on the carpet. I told her to move but she wouldn’t.”

There was the time when Jordyn was benched in soccer for purposely trying to trip her opponents. Jordyn promised she didn’t do it on purpose and Thomas wanted to believe her but there was also the incident last year when Jordyn slammed a locker door on a classmate’s hand, breaking two of her fingers. Again, Jordyn insisted it was an accident but the injured party disagreed and so did her mother. Jordyn was suspended for a day.

But these examples are eons away from stabbing someone and Thomas pushes the doubts away. He tosses Jordyn’s damp jacket in the dryer, sets the dial to permanent press and then goes out to finally get that cup of coffee. His head pounds from lack of caffeine and the sharp ammonia fumes.

He checks his watch. They need to be at the police station in fifteen minutes and he can still hear Jordyn banging around up in her bedroom. Thomas grabs a broom leaning against a corner and lifts it, soundly tapping it against the ceiling, and Jordyn stomps her foot two times in response. Normally, Tess would scold them both for this noisy mode of communication but over the years it has become a game between them. Today he finds no humor in it.

Thomas pours a cup of coffee into a mug that Jordyn made for him when she was in second grade and takes a tentative sip. His stomach bubbles with nerves. When the boys were young, a visit from a police officer or a sheriff’s deputy wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise given Donny’s and Randy’s lack of supervision. It was a catch-22, Thomas thought. If he and Tess kept the boys at the bar where they could keep an eye on them, the questionable clientele and their bad habits were sure to rub off on them. And if they let them run wild they were bound to go searching for trouble with no chance of Thomas or Tess being there to yank them out of harm’s way. It was no wonder that Donny and Randy found themselves in a number of scrapes with the law.