To Be a Family (Harlequin Superromance) by Joan Kilby

brought Tuti home to
Summerside. She needed to settle in.
    He tossed the newsletter aside. Nope, nothing of interest.

CHAPTER FIVE
    K ATIE IGNORED THE tittering going on in her class to answer the door and let in the
sixth-grade girl collecting lunch orders. Normally her students were well
behaved, but today the moment her back turned whispers and stifled giggles
started. She’d hoped the children would get bored of teasing Tuti, at least
until recess when Katie could fix the girl’s hair.
    Tuti’s pigtails did look funny, she had to admit. Done
correctly, they adorably jutted out either side of her dimpled smile. She didn’t
know what John had done today but it wasn’t pretty. Not even cute. Tufts of hair
erupted from the top of the girl’s head at an angle, leaving clumps hanging down
that weren’t long enough to be held by the elastic. As if that wasn’t bad
enough, the right pigtail sat an inch forward of the left pigtail. Plus, the
left pigtail had a ribbon and the right didn’t, adding to the comic effect.
    Except that Tuti wasn’t laughing. At first she’d smiled in
response to the other children’s grins and reached out the only way she knew
how, by offering them cookies from her lunch, and the use of her precious
colored pencils. Gradually she’d realized they were laughing at her, not with her. Her sweet smile had faded,
replaced by an anxious frown.
    Katie glanced over her shoulder. Her heart sank.
    Tuti’s head was bowed low, her forehead almost touching the top
of the table she shared with Belinda. As Katie watched, a tear dropped. Belinda,
bless her, rubbed Tuti’s shoulder and glared at the class but even she couldn’t
stop them from teasing. Katie bit her lip. She didn’t want to make things worse
for Tuti by chastising the class in front of her.
    She turned back to the grade-sixer. Miranda was one of the
popular girls. Her long shiny blond hair was beautifully but simply styled with
a blue hair band that matched her dress.
    “Miranda, could you do me a favor?” she said in a low voice.
“Leave the order with me for now and take Tuti to the girl’s room and fix her
hair.”
    “Yes, Miss.” Miranda handed over the plastic container in which
she carried the paper bags and money.
    Katie called Tuti over and gave her a little hug. “Go with
Miranda.”
    “Come on, Tuti.” Miranda smiled and held out her hand. “I’ll
make you so pretty.”
    Sniffing, Tuti trustingly placed her hand in Miranda’s.
    Katie closed the door and turned back to the class. From the
shamefaced expressions on most of the children they knew they’d done wrong.
Reminding herself that the word discipline meant to
teach not to punish, she told them a story with a message on treating others as
we would like to be treated.
    She thought of that lesson and how to approach John about the
incident as she drove Tuti home from her English tutoring that afternoon.
Naturally she couldn’t and wouldn’t punish John for making Tuti the
laughingstock of the class. But she could teach him how not to.
    He opened the door of his town house to her knock, still in his
uniform, a beer in his hand. He looked tired, the lines around his eyes more
deeply etched than usual. His broad shoulders filled out his blue uniform shirt
as nicely as ever but today they didn’t seem quite as straight.
    “Hey, Tuti,” he said. “How did you get braids in your
hair?”
    Tuti beamed at him then slipped past, kicking off her shoes and
tugging at her socks even before she dropped her school bag. She ran down the
hall, presumably to her bedroom.
    “I got a girl from grade six to help,” Katie explained. Miranda
had done a fabulous job on Tuti. Two thin braids were caught up in perfect
pigtails tied with a rich blue satin that contrasted beautifully with Tuti’s
glossy black hair. After lunch, several other grade-one girls had returned from
the playground with the same hairstyle, although not executed with the same
panache.
    Katie handed John the