Free Bringing Baby Home by Debra Salonen Page A

talk trash. It doesn’t mean anything.”
    “Or maybe it does. Are you willing to take that chance? This might be your last opportunity to turn this boy around. Are you going to blow it because your ego is on the line?”
    Crissy reached out and took her husband’s hand. To Zeke, she said, “What do we do?”
    Zeke sat down. “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. Pay attention. If any of this doesn’t get done, your son is going to find himself spending a night—maybe longer—in juvie.”
    Liz listened to the agenda Zeke laid out for the couple. Their son would apologize to her in the morning, face-to-face. He would give Zeke the names of his friends, whose parents would also be informed of their sons’ activities. The three couples and their sons would visit Zeke in his office, no later than Thursday. At that time, they would give him an item-by-item accounting of what repercussions had been decided upon, in particular, what community-service projects and counseling the young men would be participating in. He ended his lecture with a warning. If Liz or her roommates were negatively affected in any way by this unfortunate incident, he would return…and he’d leave his good manners at home.
    Liz kept her gaze on the ground as they left. She was glad to have the confrontation over. Despite Zeke’s threat, Lizwould bet her relationship with Crissy—and the homeowners’ association, which had elected Crissy president—was going to deteriorate. From bad to worse.
    She closed the door behind her with a grateful sigh, but she knew the evening wasn’t over yet. “It went better than I expected,” she told her mother and roommates, who eagerly awaited a full recap of the confrontation. “Thank goodness Zeke was there. I don’t think I had enough fight left in me to take on Eli, Senior. The smaller version was bad enough.”
    Her mother gave Zeke a smile that Liz hadn’t seen in a long time—not since her father’s stroke, in fact. The look in Yetta’s eyes held a certain satisfaction, as if life were starting to make sense again and this man was helping.
    The pounding in her head intensified. Liz wanted her mother to be happy, but she really couldn’t deal with any more emotional upheavals tonight. She was too tired.
    “Thanks for your help, Zeke, I’ll keep you posted,” she said, letting her mother know it was time to leave. “And for the record, I’d like you to call off your search for info on David Baines. He’s a decent guy who went out of his way to help a relative stranger. That makes him okay in my book.”
    Zeke and her mother took the hint and left a few minutes later. Lydia and Reezira settled down in front of the television. And, Liz was finally free to escape to her room and her computer. To visit India and Prisha. Where her heart was safely waiting.

Chapter Six
    “Dammit, Liz, if you don’t get off your duff and get over here in twenty minutes, Kate and I are coming to your house to roust you out of your funk ourselves. And let me warn you, there will be blackstrap molasses and cod-liver oil involved.”
    Liz laughed out loud for the first time in a week. A week? She couldn’t believe seven days had passed since her confrontation with her neighbor’s son and his friends. “Isn’t that what Dad used to threaten us with when we were slow getting up in the morning?”
    “Exactly. Neither of us is sure how much of each to use or which end it goes in, but we’re willing to experiment if it helps you get back on your feet.”
    She laughed again. “You’re crazy.”
    “And you’re not. So are you coming to Mom’s?”
    Liz considered the steps involved in that sort of undertaking: shower, finding and putting on clothes, lacing shoes, locating the key to her car, driving said car through morning rush-hour traffic…no, the whole thing made her slightly queasy. “Next week. I promise.”
    “Kate,” Alex called to someone apparently well across the room from her. “You find the