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Richard Spier had left the house and driven in the direction of the Ramseys' home with uncharacteristic speed and haste. While he knew that there was a chance that Dawn and Claudia had been kidding about Janice and John having taken complete leave of their senses and leaving Jessi - who, again, was only eleven - in charge of herself and an eight and one year old for the weekend, he was quite frankly dubious. His stepdaughter was rather naive, but not known for not being forthright and honest, while Claudia had known Richard her entire life and surely knew better than to attempt to tell him such an outlandish falsehood.
Richard had no idea how his peaceful evening had been so thoroughly ruined so quickly, but he was distinctly unamused. For a moment, he thought wistfully of his abandoned newspaper, waiting patiently at home for him alongside his now cooling coffee. Not only had his hopes of a restful Saturday been trampled over for the sake of sanity, his Friday had gone along with them.
Cursing under his breath at the lack of any sign of the Ramsey parents, for example, a car in the driveway, Richard coasted into the driveway himself, seething inwardly at the utter mess he'd felt the need to involve himself in. There was no way that he was going to be capable of ignoring this utterly reckless parenting decision of the Ramseys, even if Jessi could identify all the parts of the digestive tract.
Richard wondered why on earth that had even come up in conversation. Sometimes Dawn and Mary Anne's friends were so strange.
He parked the car, steeled himself, exited the vehicle, and made his way to the front door.
"Utterly negligent," he muttered under his breath. "Could have been arrested for such foolishness."
Richard knew that he had perhaps been a tad too overprotective when it came to how he'd raised Mary Anne, but he drew the line at allowing a sixth grader to remain unsupervised or a weekend, regardless of whether or not she was being used as an inappropriate babysitter.
He rang the doorbell. Only once, of course. As agitated as he was, Richard prided himself on following society's norms.
Jessi's younger sister flung open the door. "Mr. Spier? What are you doing here?"
"Are your parents home?" Richard asked, hoping that they were, indeed, in the house .
She shook her head. "No, Jessi's babysitting us for the weekend. Tomorrow I'm going on a boat!"
"May I speak with her for a moment?" He swallowed the immediate rebuttal about the boating excursion. It was the least of his issues with this situation. "Please?"
"One second." She took a step back from the door. "Jessi!" She bellowed. "Mary Anne's dad is here! I don't know what he wants!"