Silence.
“Sister Grace, I’ll be more than happy to come to camp and discuss possible solutions to this predicament with you, the other camp counselors, my daughter, the girls involved and their parents. So please call me back when you’ve set up a time for that meeting to take place. God Bless.” She hung up and tossed the phone aside. Bracing her hands on the counter, she closed her eyes, giving herself a mental pat for the foresight to end the conversation, rather than making it worse by tearing into a nun.
They’d call back. They had to. So she had some time to calm down or come up with a plan of attack.
Bad choice of words.
Carson moved in behind her. Those strong arms wrapped around her—just like she needed them to—and he placed a tender kiss on the back of her neck. “What can I do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to be one of those mothers who rushes in and defends her child, regardless if that child is in the right or the wrong, so the kid never learns to deal with the consequences. We’ve always made the boys deal with this stuff. I’ve never swooped in after one of their many, many, many fist fights.” She took a breath. “I tell myself it’s different with Keely, not because she’s the baby, but because she’s a girl. I tell myself that boys are boys, and McKay boys come by their need to solve problems by using their fists naturally.”
“Evidently so do McKay girls.”
“Carson—”
“Sugar, I’m not bein’ flip.” He turned her around. “When the boys were wronged, damn straight we made it our business to get to the bottom of it. Remember when Colt was in junior high and Mark Whaley tried to get him kicked off the basketball team by claiming Colt was beatin’ on him in the locker room? Then Mark showed the coach the bruises to prove it? We backed our son, took the Whaley kid and his parents to task, and the truth came out in the end. Colt didn’t have it in him to be a bully. We knew that.” He lovingly tucked her hair behind her ear. “We’ve stood behind our sons, and this sorta thing has happened to each one of them at least once, partially because their last name is McKay. You know that’s something I dealt with for years. As did my brothers all because our dad was the original instigator and folks around here have long memories.”
“And short fuses,” she murmured. “I remember I’d watch cowboys squaring off in the bars and then beat the tar out of each other. The next weekend they were best drinking buddies only to mix it up in the parking lot a few hours later. So I’d convinced myself it was a cowboy thing.”
“That’s part of it. Add alcohol and most guys think they’re ten foot tall and bulletproof. But I also wanna point out that when Carter went after John Cagle and busted his nose and two teeth? We didn’t defend his actions because Carter was in the wrong that time, fightin’ over a girl. We made him deal with the consequences of his actions.”
Carolyn slid her arms around her husband’s waist and buried her face in his neck. “My man. Always the voice of reason. Thank you.”
“Anytime, sugar.” He kissed her forehead. “It’s been important that me’n you are on the same page when it comes to disciplining our kids.”
She looked at him. “So what do we do if these girls said something that ticked Keely off, and because she’s a hormonal teenage girl she just decided to start throwing punches?”
“That girl has one trigger for her temper: when someone talks down her family. The level of crap that’s said to her is proportional to whether she hurls verbal insults back at them, or if she punches them in the mouth to get them to shut it.” He paused and his eyes slid away.
Her eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Or the other option is our sweet and sassy, but sly daughter decided she’d had enough of church camp and knew exactly what it’d take to get kicked out.”
She sighed. “That thought had crossed my mind too.”
“If that is the case…gonna be a long, shitty summer for her. And I do mean shitty, ’cause I’ll have her scraping up cowshit, and horseshit and I’ll even lend her to her Aunt Kimi to clean up chickenshit.”
“Agreed. I wonder how long it’ll be before they call back?”
The phone rang.
“Might not be them,” Carson pointed out.
Carolyn sidestepped her husband to grab the phone but she kept her hand on his chest. “McKays.”
“Mrs. McKay? This is Sister Grace again. We’ve set up the meeting for three hours from now. You’ll be able to make it?”
Just barely. It was a two hour and forty-five minute drive to the camp. “Of course. Thank you, Sister Grace, for handling this so quickly. I’ll see you soon.”