“You’ve got every right to be upset for as long as you want.” Teena nodded. “I vote the four of us take care of Wyatt.” She started humming the old Dixie Chicks song “Goodbye Earl.”

Polly giggled. “I’ve got some wooded area back behind my house. We can put the body there. And I also know where there’s a real deep well that no one uses anymore.” She winked. “Anyone that would treat their own kids like that should be shot for sure.”

Just as Lily opened her mouth to say something, her phone rang.

She managed to fish it out of her purse and answer it before it went to voice mail and was surprised to hear a strange guy’s voice. “Mrs. Anderson, this is Daniel Wallace, the principal at the Comfort Middle School. We have a problem, and it would be best if you could be here in person.”

It took a minute to register the name with the face of the man who’d been in a hurry at the school on the day she enrolled Braden. “Is my son hurt or in trouble?” she asked.

“Both, but there are no broken bones,” Mr. Wallace told her.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Lily said, and ended the call. When she turned around, all three women had stunned expressions. “You heard?”

“Daniel’s a loud talker,” Polly said.

“Go!” Sally said. “We’ll all be right here when you get back, and if you need support, just call us, and we’ll come running.”

Lily’s blood pressure must’ve shot up because she could hear her heartbeat thumping in her ears as she drove toward the school way too fast. Braden had never been in trouble at school. Sure, he might have engaged in quite a bit of mischief outside of it, but Lily had never been called to come take care of a problem. Not once in all of his school days. She burned a few miles off her tires when she braked hard and slid into the parking lot, then again when she whipped into a spot. When she reached the principal’s office and saw Braden sitting in a chair in front of his desk, she felt all the blood drain from her face. He had a black eye and a blood smear across his nose. He was holding a bloody tissue, and his lip was cut.

“What in the hell happened to my child?” she demanded as she clamped a hand on Braden’s shoulder. “Are you all right, son? Who did this to you?” Then she whipped her head back around to glare at the principal. “What are you doing to the kid who hit my son?”