the good ol’ days when she could be at home or hanging out with her friends. Nope, Jade just went along with it, eager to please and ever determined to show the Lattimores that they didn’t make a mistake in choosing them.
Glancing at the calendar again, Gideon rolled through the mental dates in his mind before pulling his phone from his jean pocket. With a few swipes, he found the information he needed before looking up to Sandra, who was still talking about the starburst pattern she wanted to make on the quilt.
Holding his phone face out, he looked from Sandra back to Jade. "You have a ‘Young Engineers of Tomorrow’ meet that day," he reminded them.
If he wasn't looking so closely, Gideon would have missed the faint tensing in Jade's shoulders.
"Oh, but you can go to those meets any time, sweetheart," their mother began in her most wheedling tone, a high pitch sound she used to get her way on everything. "But we must go to this competition because Monica Cornish will—"
Gideon couldn't take it. "No," he said, trying to be polite, but even he could hear the hard steel coating the word. Feeling Jade stiffen like a board next to him, he softened his tone as he gave Sandra a firm look. "There are only four more meets, and they all link up. If she misses even one of them, she is taken out of consideration for the scholarship."
Though it wasn't a huge scholarship, only about five thousand dollars’ worth, Gideon would be damned before he’d watch her blow it on a goddamn quilting show that had no cash prize.
Like a seasoned actress, Sandra's large grayish-blue eyes began to shine with the telltale sign of oncoming tears.
The sudden hand on his thigh stilled him from all other movements and, more importantly, sound. Looking down at his thigh, he watched as Jade's slender fingers sank into his jeans with a death grip in warning. Reaching out to their mother with her other hand, Jade placed it over the woman's hand and gave her an understanding expression.
"Please don't cry," she begged, and Gideon could feel his bones turn to stone as anger flared through him at her capitulating words. "I don't have to go to that meet, I can just go with you to-"
"No," the resounding voice of authority from Gideon's right felt like the saving grace of the first drops of rain on a raging brush fire.
In unison, everyone turned to look at Henry, who carefully sat down his silverware on his empty plate. Leaning back in his chair with the grace of a man who ate way too much, he placed one hand on his thigh as he sat back comfortably and gave his wife a firm look.
"Jade will go to her meet at school, and if there is time afterward, she can go to your quilting show with you then," he offered diplomatically.
"But Henry," Sandra shifted in her chair, her face becoming red with frustration.
Setting one meaty fist onto the table without a sound, the silent movement was the equivalent of a gavel in a riotous courtroom. Immediately, all sound from everyone hushed, and Jade's grip on Gideon's thigh froze before being snatched away.
"School is more important, Sandra. I shouldn't have to explain this," Henry said, his naturally low, calming voice coming off like a warning fog down a foreboding black mountain.
With a wide stocky build of a blue-collar man who enjoyed a nightly beer or two after a good meal, the large graying man with the huge handlebar mustache looked a lot like a retired biker who should be sitting at a bar instead of a dinner table. When Gideon first came to live with the Lattimores years ago, he had told the giant of a man just that and received a roaring laugh in response. He winked at Gideon and told him that he was the first one brave enough to tell him that directly to his face. Though having been around plenty of bikers over the years as an over-the-road long-haul trucker, Henry had never actually been one. Henry had stuck to driving semi-trucks since he graduated high school and never turned back. With his shoulder-length graying, brown hair pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, and his thick mustache always perfectly trimmed, the older trucker looked intimidating with his tall stature and naturally gruff face hidden behind the extreme facial hair. It was only the twinkle of laughter in his