Day of Wrath Read Free

grow into, but she was still very much “daddy’s girl,” even though she tried not to let that show, especially around her friends. And she was obviously ticked off that Dad was running late. Her morning gossip circle awaited in homeroom. She could barely spare a quick glance to her dad as he pecked her on the cheek, then she was back to her cell phone, texting away and chortling about how someone named Janey was definitely going to get it good today for being caught kissing the boyfriend of some girl named Hallie.
    He glanced at Kathy and said nothing. Wasn’t that supposed to start when they were fifteen or so? Even though he taught middle school, he still looked at his charges as children, though popular culture had been putting girls such as Miley Cyrus at age fifteen on the cover of Vanity Fair for years.  
    Kathy made no comment about the scandal at school as she tucked a packed lunch into Wendy’s backpack, leaned up, and kissed Bob on the cheek.
    “Have a good day.”
    He kissed her back and looked over her shoulder to Shelly, their one-year-old, sitting in a high chair at the kitchen table. She was happily smearing her face and hair with chocolate pudding, laughing away at whatever was the inner delight of one-year-olds when putting on disgusting displays.
    Wendy spared a quick glance at her kid sister and gave a grunt of disgust.
    “You were just as gross at that age,” Bob offered. She simply rolled her eyes.
    “I was perfect compared to that,” Wendy bragged, but he could see a bit of an affectionate smile regarding “the brat’s” display.
    “Wanna trade jobs for the day?” Kathy sighed, eyeing Shelly then back at the two of them heading off to school.
    “You were the one who said it’d be fun to have another,” he replied a bit defensively.  
    “Yeah,” was all he could muster out of her. “Just one day, come on! You guys can stay here, clean up the smeared chocolate, change the diapers, watch that damn purple dinosaur dancing around on television, and I can at least have a five-minute intellectual conversation with some twelve-year-olds.”  
    She looked at the two wistfully, eyebrows raised, head tilted to one side, and with a trace of an impish smile, the look that could always nail Bob and leave him a bit weak in the knees even after all these years. He realized she was actually half serious and that if he said yes, she’d dash off to the bedroom, slap some makeup on and be out the door with Wendy, telling their principal that she was his sub for the day.
    Wendy looked at her mother with sympathy but her glance indicated that she also thought her mother’s appeal must be insane.
    “Intellectual conversation? Seventh grade? Come on Mom, you gotta be kidding.”
    “Next year,” was all Bob could offer, not sure if she was really lamenting or just trying to make them feel guilty as they headed out for another day in the world.
    Kathy smiled, that same winsome smile that had caught him on the day they met when he could have sworn that her eyes actually sparkled with light the first time he gazed into them. She brushed back an errant wisp of red hair from her face, leaving a smear of chocolate pudding on her jawline and neck, which made him laugh softly and half kiss, half lick it off her.
    “Don’t do that,” she whispered so that Wendy, standing expectantly by the door would not hear, “You'll get me thinking and I’m stuck here alone without you.”
    “Maybe tonight,” he whispered.
    “Come on Dad, we’re late!”
    The two peeked over at their twelve-year-old standing at the doorway who gazed at them with a look of exasperation and judgmental embarrassment at parents who act too affectionately.
    Kathy pushed him away.
    “Get going…"
    He paused, drawn to the television screen on the kitchen counter.
    “Today’s lead stories we’re covering after the break. The shooting incident yesterday at Robert Morrison High School outside Syracuse, New York, that left four people