Castaway Cove by Joann Ross

grabbed his daughter up, and held her tight against his hip even as she squirmed to get away and her fists continued to flail.
    Kenny’s mother went the cajoling route, which didn’t seem to be working, since the boy leaped to his feet and charged at Emma.
    “That’s enough,” Mac said, even as he lifted Emma higher. He’d pulled out his military voice, which apparently still possessed some authority—Kenny stopped in his tracks and Emma quit swinging. “Stop. Now.”
    “She started it,” the boy insisted, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “By hitting me first.”
    “Because he said bad things about me and Poppy,” Emma countered. “He said that no one should be allowed to play with me because I could give them the Alzheimer’s. Like chicken pox. I told him Alzheimer’s was not catching but he kept saying that Poppy was dangerous and it was a good thing he was locked away in that home.”
    Mac felt his own temper rising and resolutely tamped it down. Kids, he remembered from his own school days, could be unbearably, often casually, cruel. And many, as it seemed Kenny did, knew just what buttons to push to get a response.
    “Kenneth Fletcher,” his mother said, her moonlight-and-magnolia-sugar tone sharpening, “that’s a very cruel thing to say. And absolutely not true. What happened to Emma’s great-granddaddy is very sad and you owe her an apology, young man.”
    “She hit me first,” he repeated sulkily, wiping his bleeding nose with the back of his hand. “And Peter Potter said that
his
grandfather has the Alzheimer’s and had to be locked away because he kept getting mad and getting in fistfights with strangers and that he even hit a man in the checkout line at the grocery store. So
he
was dangerous.”
    “Poppy wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Emma insisted. “Just because Peter’s grandfather got in fights with people doesn’t mean my poppy would. He just has a sick head. But his doctor is giving him medicine for it. Right, Daddy?”
    “That’s right. Alzheimer’s affects everyone differently and your poppy might get a little grumpy from time to time, but he’s never hit anyone.” Deciding that the combatants seemed to have reached some sort of detente, he put Emma back on the ground.
    “See.” Unwilling to totally surrender, she jutted her chin out and stuck both small but surprisingly dangerous fists on her hips. “I told you so.”
    “But you still owe Kenneth an apology for hitting him,” Mac said.
    Emma stuck out her bottom lip in a pout that he was getting used to seeing. No longer was she the totally acquiescent little girl who’d greeted him with such joy when he’d returned from war. Mac’s father told him that was a good thing, that it meant she was trusting that he wouldn’t leave her again, so she no longer felt as if she needed to be on her best behavior. But there were times, like now, when he wished she didn’t possess such a strong streak of both her parents’ stubbornness.
    Not quite ready to wave the white flag of surrender yet, she folded her arms across the front of the grass-stained T-shirt. One elbow, he noticed, was skinned, probably from falling onto the cork below the jungle gym.
    “First he has to take back what he said about Poppy.”
    “Emma.” Mac had learned that his military tone could roll right off his daughter’s back. “Hitting people is never the way to solve a problem.”
    “Sometimes it is,” he heard her mutter beneath her breath.
    “What was that?” he asked, giving her a second chance.
    Truthfully, he didn’t blame her. If he’d been six years old, and someone had said anything against either of his parents or his grandfather, he’d probably still be rolling on the ground, fists flying.
    Her long, exhaled breath ruffled her corn-silk bangs. “I’m sorry I hit you.” Her tone held all the sincerity of a politician trolling for campaign dollars. “But Poppy’s
not
contagious. He just forgets things sometimes,