Braden patted Lily on the arm and said, “I kinda got into a fight, and the other two look worse than I do, Mama. They’re over there in another room. Isaac done told his story, and he’s gone back to class.”

“You were fighting with Isaac?” Lily’s eyebrows shot up. “He’s your best friend.”

“No, it was kind of because of Isaac,” Braden started to explain.

Mack pushed through the door before he could say anything else. His expression reminded Lily of a violent Texas tornado tearing up everything in its path. If he was that angry at Braden without even letting him explain, then he could damn well pack up his goats and get off her property.

Mack dropped down on one knee in front of Braden and gently touched his eye. “Who did this to you, son?”

“We had a dustup out front just before school,” the principal answered for Braden. “He wouldn’t say a word to defend himself until both of you got here. We’ve been waiting.”

Both? Why would her son want both of them there? She was the parent, and only parents got called to solve problems. Mack was only her roommate. No, that wasn’t right—he was more than that even if she couldn’t put a name to what they were. Even so, he wasn’t Braden’s father.

“Braden?” Lily said.

“Other than your eye, are you all right?” Mack’s face relaxed a little as he got to his feet.

“It’s kind of like this”—Braden inhaled and let it out slowly—“Lester and Martin are in the eighth grade, and they’ve been pickin’ on us. They mostly just called us names and said that we—” He blushed and shrugged. “I can’t say the rest of what they said. It’s too nasty to say out loud.”

“Isaac wrote it down,” the principal said.

Braden took a deep breath and went on. “Yesterday they made us give them our lunch money, and today they were going to do it again. I wasn’t going to do it, but they said if we didn’t, they were going to”—he swallowed several times—“they said they were going to hurt our sisters. I told them that my sister could whip them both with one hand tied behind her back, but they just laughed at me and said they had high school buddies that would hold her down for them. And they told us just how they were going to do it, so we didn’t fight them. This mornin’ when I got off the bus, they had Isaac on the ground. They were goin’ through his pockets, and when I yelled at them to stop, they threw me in the dirt and tried to pull my jeans off. Lester’s elbow hit me in the eye when I was tryin’ to get free.”

“What did you do?” Mack asked.