Marriage by Mistake

practice, since I got expelled."
    Expelled? "Oh." Kelly cleared her throat. She hadn't realized...though she supposed she could have guessed. He should have been in school. "Uh, what happened?"
    Instead of answering he started pushing the button of his joystick. Explosions burst onto the TV screen. Then, abruptly, he admitted, "I ran away."
    Kelly thought of the recent tree house business and wondered just how ingrained this habit was. "Oh."
    Robby turned to glare at her. "I hate living in a dorm . With a roommate . Roommates are the worst ."
    Kelly's eyes blinked wide. A roommate? Why, that meant boarding school. Good heavens, he was only nine. They were already farming him out to boarding school? Not giving him a family life?
    "Um..." Since Kelly didn't dare express the outrage she was suddenly feeling on Robby's behalf, she switched back to her original goal. Expelled or not, Robby needed something social and constructive to do. "I...well, listen," she said. "If you're bored with the video game, then...see, I am so bored, too, and desperate to get out of here. Would you—?"
    "What?" Robby sat up straight. He stared at her, little-boy appalled. "You're going to leave? Already?"
    Kelly was taken aback by his expression of distress. "Well—"
    "You can't leave," Robby stated.
    "Anywhere?" Kelly blinked.
    "No. I made a bet with Troy that Dean could keep you at least two weeks."
    Kelly's jaw dropped.
    Robby jumped to his feet. "Look, I know he seems a drag, all stuffy and 'should' and 'shouldn't'-ing, but he's a straight-up guy, you know. Always there when you need him."
    "...Always there."
    "Right. Like when they kicked me out of school. Dad was nowhere to be found but Dean came to get me." Robby's gaze skittered sideways. "He always does."
    Kelly spoke very slowly. "I'm...not leaving Dean." At least not yet , she added silently to herself. At the same time, she thought: Robby and Troy had made a bet? And Troy hadn't thought Dean could keep her two weeks?
    Robby visibly relaxed. "Good. I mean, not even my Dad has had a marriage that lasted less than two weeks."
    Kelly stared at him. Was that so ? "Yes, well." Carefully, she cleared her throat. "All I'm asking is to get out of the house. You know, like to a park."
    "A park?" Robby's look of relief changed to one of bewilderment.
    "Yeah. Grass, trees, maybe a swing set or a baseball diamond, you know the kind of place."
    Robby looked even more bewildered. "You don't have to go anywhere for that. We have it all here."
    Kelly rolled her eyes. "You do not have everything here." Like other boys to play with, for one thing. "Let's ask Jackson."
    Kelly put Robby's bet and his disconcerting description of Dean out of her mind as she located Jackson and talked him into driving them to the nearest public recreation facility. Her goal was to get Robby doing something worthwhile, outdoors and physical. But in the car, luxuriously ensconced in the back seat, Kelly found the Dean problem return to mind.
    Always there when you need him . Was that the flip side of Dean's heavy authoritarianism, that he was always there when you needed him, totally reliable?
    She felt peculiar even considering the question, so she latched onto Troy and Robby's bet, instead. They assumed she wasn't going to stay with Dean. Rather, they assumed Dean wasn't going to be able to keep her.
    Just like his father couldn't keep any of his wives.
    Kelly chewed on a finger and stared out the car window at the pristine country estates flowing by. Wives, plural. Very plural, if Kelly'd understood correctly. She wondered if 'wives' was the way things had been in Dean's youth, too. Had a succession of stepmothers passed through his childhood?
    I know a lot about this type of situation he'd told her. Kelly frowned and kept chewing her finger. Had Dean given his boyish heart to one after another of his father's multiple brides? Was that what made him now so cold? Why he'd warned Kelly away from Robby?
    In the car, Kelly lowered her bit finger. All right, so maybe Dean had had a lousy childhood, a lonely one. That didn't make up for his arrogant and unfriendly manner. He was a big boy now. He chose how he behaved.
    But it could explain some things. Yes, Kelly had to admit, looking out the window. It could explain a lot.
    ~~~
    The sun was high, the sky was blue, and the ball Troy sent over the tennis net whizzed with vicious accuracy to a corner just beyond his opponent.
    "For the love of— You killed me. Again!" Emery