The Whole Golden World

by Kristina Riggle

  “Whatever,” Morgan spat, stomping past her.

  Dinah followed behind, making sure Morgan was actually heading to the car, wondering what in the hell she would do if Morgan flagged down some other vehicle, a truck or something, and hopped in, disappearing forever. Nothing seemed impossible anymore.

  Joe’s face in that moment would be something Dinah would never be able to erase from her mind.

  He’d gone pale, yet ruddy splotches stood out on his cheeks so starkly Dinah thought he’d broken into hives. Then his face gradually morphed from pained horror into murderous anger. Dinah was glad TJ Hill was nowhere in reach or there would be literal blood on Joe’s hands.

  Morgan had bolted out of the car before Dinah had even brought the car to a full stop, run upstairs, and slammed her way into her room.

  Dinah had come in and ordered the boys to make a frozen pizza, then dragged Joe downstairs to his den. She made him sit in his swivel chair and then leaned on the edge of his desk and gave him the news that would devastate him beyond measure, and in that moment she felt her first burst of bitter anger at Morgan for putting them through this.

  She scolded herself: Be mad at the teacher. He’s the aggressor here, no matter what Morgan believes.

  “If he were here, I’d punch him until he was dead.”

  “I know” was all Dinah could think to say.

  “How could she do this? I mean, literally, how was it possible . . . ?” Joe put his head in his hands.

  Dinah looked up at the drop ceiling, running through the last several weeks in her mind. She had no timeline of events yet. She realized with a chill that it could have been going on for months now.

  “We trusted her,” Dinah answered. “We didn’t check up on her comings and goings. If she said, ‘I’m going to Britney’s house,’ we said, ‘Okay, hon, have a good time.’ Kids lie for each other all the time.”

  Joe murmured, “But she posted on Facebook about being with her friends . . .”

  “So,” Dinah answered drily. “So they made it up.”

  “Not Morgan. I don’t understand how Morgan . . .”

  “Me either. She denied it, but I think she’s getting back at us for Boston.”

  “But . . . this? Of all the ways to rebel . . . You said he’s being charged?”

  “Right. Age of consent is sixteen, but there’s an exception for teacher-student affairs. I guess Morgan told them all about it before she realized that part.”

  Joe groaned, now tipping back in his chair. “Oh, Christ. It’s gonna be on the news.”

  “The cops said the news won’t name her, she’s the victim of a sexual crime, and they don’t do that.”

  Joe snorted. “So what? This is Arbor Valley, and she’s the assistant principal’s daughter. Like everyone won’t know in about five minutes. I’m ruined, you know.”

  “Joe . . .”

  “I’m not gonna get the principal job. I’ll be lucky if I don’t get fired. A teacher-student affair under my nose, and it’s my own damn daughter. This is it. The end.” He threw up his hands. “All that money for grad school tuition. I might as well have set fire to it.”

  “That’s what you’re thinking about now? Your career? Money?”

  “It’s not all I’m thinking about, but yeah, it has crossed my mind that my career is over and since that means health insurance and our mortgage payment, you should be concerned, too.”

  “I’m concerned about Morgan, what drove her to this! How screwed up she is now, how screwed up she must have been all along. . . . We should take her to Dr. Kelly.”

  “Oh, yeah, because that shrink was so perfectly brilliant for the boys. Speaking of burning money.”

  “How dare you throw that in my face at a time like this! What do you propose we do then? You know she believes herself madly in love with him. She wants to run away with him. What if he doesn’t get convicted? Because God knows she’s not going to be a very cooperative witness. She could choose to run away right now and disappear forever. So what do you propose we do, chain her in her room?”

  Joe stood up from his chair so fast, it spun in his absence. Dinah was seized with an irrational fear he was going to try something just like that.

  Joe marched into the garage and grabbed something. Dinah tried to follow, but he was already inside the garage and back out before she could see what he’d done in there. He ignored her demands to know what he was up to, rushing past her for the stairs.

  Joe strode right up to Morgan’s room, past the boys who were gaping behind their pizza slices, no doubt wondering—with no small amount of glee—what Morgan had done to make their dad so angry.

  He tried to open her door, and it was locked. “Morgan Jane, open the door.”

  Silence.

  Joe sighed. Then he took that high school fullback’s shoulder and rammed right through the door, the lock mechanism splintering the frame.

  Morgan shrieked. She’d been on her bed, earbuds in. She clutched a notebook to her chest and her eyes were wide.

  “You’re scaring her!” Dinah shouted.

  Joe took what he’d been holding—the electric screwdriver, Dinah could now see—and went to work on the hinges of her door without saying a word. He worked with the cool deliberation of a surgeon. One by one the screws of her door hinges fell to the carpet as Morgan and Dinah watched, dumbstruck. Joe then yanked the door loose and propped it in the hall.

  He pointed the screwdriver at Morgan. His voice was cold and calm. “You can’t be trusted with a closed door. No computer either, no phone, and no leaving the house. Period.”

  “What about school?” Dinah asked, panicky suddenly on behalf of Morgan, with part of her acknowledging the logic behind what he was doing.

  Joe turned to her. “You think she’s gonna want to go to school as soon as everyone gets wind of this? I’ll talk to Principal Jackson.” He turned back to Morgan. “You’ll finish out the year at home. Like that Mayfair girl last year with the chemo.”

  With that, he walked back down the stairs.

  Morgan’s fury had not dimmed. But she was also silently weeping, her defiance now crumpled into sadness.

  “Mom?” asked one of the twins behind her, sounding so tentative he might have been eight years old again. “What’s going on?”

  Dinah couldn’t find the words to answer him.

  31

  Rain almost didn’t answer the phone.

  She was at home, soaking in the quiet within her own little yoga space. She had melted into trikonasana, and it was a good, satisfying stretch. Her breath was helping her sink deeper, her hips were letting go, and she felt like she could even put her head on the floor at this rate.

  She’d been planning her next class with her beginning students, making notes between postures. She could do all these easily, of course, being among the first postures she learned way back in her college days. But she liked to walk herself through a class, anyway, to remind herself of the beginner’s body.

  Plus, she wanted to test how her pregnancy would affect her, if at all. Dr. Gould had merely cautioned her against complicated inversions and headstands that might cause her to fall, but otherwise said she could continue as she normally would, for the time being.

  The shrilling of the house phone continued long enough before the voice mail was set to pick up that she resigned herself to answer, which she did with a curt, “Yes?”

  She had to ask him to repeat himself; she wasn’t even sure who was on the line.

  She figured out it was TJ, but she could hardly divine his words. She assumed one or both parents were dead, or maybe his brother or Alessia.

  She shouted, “TJ, I can’t understand you! What’s happened!”

  “I’ve been arrested,” he choked out at last. “They think I assaulted one of my students. This is my one phone call, you have to find a lawyer.”

  “What? Oh my God, where are you?”

  “In jail! They’re going to take me to court; I need a lawyer right n
ow.”

  Rain gripped the phone hard so she wouldn’t drop it. She wanted to say, How do I know how to find a lawyer? And ask, How could they think you would do that? But instead she said, “I’ll take care of it. I will. Are you okay?”

  His voice was abraded, hoarse, as if he’d been screaming. “I’m in jail; how do you think I am? They took my belt so I don’t hang myself.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Baby, I’m so sorry.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said, at the end of that sentence her voice rising up, becoming nearly a question.

  “I didn’t, I swear, it’s all a misunderstanding; get me a lawyer and get me out of here.”

  “I will. I love you. It will be okay.”

  “I love you, babe. Hurry.”

  The phone clicked off. Rain ran to the kitchen sink and retched.

  On the ride home in the car from the courthouse—the first time she’d ever been there, no doubt she’d be back again, who knows how many times—Rain realized that TJ’s arraignment had supplanted her gran’s funeral as her life’s nadir, and as soon as she thought this, she realized with grim certainty that new lows would be reached. Soon, and often.

  Rain leaned her head against the car’s cool glass in the backseat, directly behind TJ, in the passenger seat. Greg was driving.

  She’d known that to turn to his successful older brother might be viewed as a betrayal, but Rain had no idea how one goes about finding a crackerjack criminal defense lawyer immediately, much less how to pay that person, and then there was the question of bail money. She’d stood dumbfounded in her living room, the stinging of acid still burning her throat from being sick, and realized every moment she stood there motionless, TJ was sitting in a jail cell, depending on her to get him out.

  So she called Greg, who swung admirably into action as if operating on a crashing patient. Somehow he knew just the lawyer they needed, and Alexandra Girard was called to the courthouse.

  Rain cried, and Greg put his arm around her, when she realized she would not be allowed to see TJ before he was formally charged.

  The courthouse audience had been sparse—the news hadn’t gotten out yet, though as soon as it did, that would be the end of near-empty courtrooms for them—and he’d entered a plea of not guilty in a cracking, quiet voice. Greg took care of the bond without flinching, without waiting for Rain to have to ask.

  Then TJ was allowed to leave, and in the parking lot there was a brief and awkward dance around the car as TJ said he couldn’t possibly drive, and Greg and Rain moved at once to the driver’s seat, then Rain and TJ both made for the passenger seat, and finally she just got into the back.

  The silence rang loud in the car.

  They pulled up their Toyota next to Greg’s Saab in their driveway. Rain could see TJ sit up straighter in his seat and could nearly read his mind: my hotshot doctor brother with his fancy-ass car comes to the rescue.

  Inside, they listened to an urgent voice-mail message from Principal Jackson, including his home number. TJ and Rain traded a look. He wouldn’t be going to work the next day. Maybe never again.

  Greg said, “Let’s call the union rep tomorrow. They can’t railroad you out of a job based on a girl’s accusation.”

  The lawyer already had an appointment to come to their house to talk strategy.

  Alexandra, or Alex as she preferred to be called, had warned them just before they left the courthouse about pretrial publicity. She said a reporter had been in the courtroom, scribbling away during arraignment. No TV cameras yet, but that would come soon enough.

  The story could be online even now, Rain realized, as TJ went to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer, drinking half of it in a series of desperate gulps, right there in front of the open fridge.

  “Do not speak to the press,” Alex had warned. “No matter how tempting, no matter how they goad you, no matter how friendly they act, because that’s a tactic, too. ‘I just want to tell your side’ ”—this she said in a mocking singsongy voice—“but do not believe them. They want to hang you out to dry, I guarantee it. Ignore all calls and knocks on your door. If you get ambushed, say ‘no comment’ and tell them to call me. Got it?”

  Here in their bungalow, his beer in hand, TJ dropped down to the couch and stared forward, his gaze somewhere on the carpet in front of the television.

  The phone rang, and Rain ignored it. She could no longer imagine a ringing phone bringing anything but more disaster upon their heads.

  Greg strode into the room and sat next to his brother on the couch, squaring his body to face TJ. Rain sat on the adjacent stuffed chair, an ugly floral thing she loved because she’d inherited it from Gran. From this vantage point, she could see the rarely glimpsed fraternal resemblance. They both had that same firm, movie-star jawline and defined cheekbones, though Greg’s hair was fuzzier, lighter, favoring his mother in that respect. Greg was also a little heavier.

  Greg broke the silence: “Why do they think you did this? What evidence do they have?”

  TJ ignored his brother and looked Rain in the eye.

  “Swear you’ll believe me.”

  “Of course,” she answered automatically.

  “She’s troubled. She’s very troubled and has a crush on me. I was trying to talk some sense into her, and . . .” He took a gulp of beer. “She started taking off her clothes.”

  “What?” Rain asked, grabbing the arms of the chair.

  “Jesus,” muttered Greg. “Where were you that this was happening? Not in the classroom.”

  TJ answered, still looking at Rain. “No.” There was a long beat of time, during which she saw TJ’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “In my car.”

  “Oh, you goddamn idiot,” blurted Greg.

  TJ finally looked at his brother. “Thanks for the support, jackass.”

  “I just . . . How stupid could you be? You let a troubled girl with a crush on you get into your car? You could have saved yourself the trouble and tattooed ‘pervert’ on your chest.”

  “I was trying to avoid something like this! I wanted to talk her out of it gently! I thought, if I go to the administration with this, she could claim anything she wanted to get back at me. And no one would believe my word over hers.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Greg asked.

  “Now who’s the idiot? Do you know what happens to male teachers who have even the slightest hint of anything inappropriate? I’m sure Dr. Greg has read The Crucible. Accusation is enough.”

  Greg persisted. “Still, this isn’t seventeenth-century Salem. You said she’s a troubled girl, if you’d just explain . . .”

  “It’s Morgan Monetti. Yes, my boss’s honor student daughter. All she’d have to do is claim I touched her and make her eyes tear up and it’s game over. We’re not talking some pothead Goth girl, or some freak chick cutting herself.”

  Rain found her voice. “Why would she do something like that?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know? Now you know why I’ve been under so much stress. I’ve been trying to handle it without worrying you. How was I supposed to know she’d start getting naked in my car? And that the police would swoop in just then? I still don’t understand how that happened.”

  Greg said, “Maybe she did it herself. Maybe she called in an anonymous tip or something.”

  “Why would she do that? It’s not like this is going to be a picnic for her, either.”

  Greg shrugged. “You’re the one who said she was troubled. Maybe she snapped. A good attorney can make that work, TJ, and Alex is the best. We’ll get you out of this mess, don’t worry. I better leave you guys alone now.”

  He stood up and crossed the room to Rain, bending to kiss her cheek. “Take good care of yourself,” he murmured quietly. Loudly, he announced, “Call me if you need anything at all before the meeting with Alex.”

  With that, he swept out of the house. Rain moved to TJ’s side and took his free hand. It lay limp in her grasp. He continued to gaz
e at the floor.

  “I wish you’d told me,” Rain said quietly.

  He snorted. “What could you have done? You’d have told me to go to the principal and tell him about her crush. Think I hadn’t considered that? Like I said before, all she’d have had to say is that I put my hand on her thigh or something and I would have been ruined. And now I am ruined, just like I feared, and worse. The maximum sentence is fifteen years! I might as well jump off a bridge and get it over with.”

  “TJ!” Rain jumped to her feet. “Don’t you dare, don’t even joke about something like that.”

  “Gallows humor,” he intoned, slugging the rest of his beer down and smacking the bottle onto the coffee table.

  “I don’t care. I won’t hear that kind of talk. You have a baby coming!”

  “Some great dad I’m going to be.”

  “TJ, you’ve got to listen to me.” She crouched down next to him again, trying to get into his line of sight. “Alex is a great attorney. She’s going to get the truth out. It will be hard for a while, but we’ll get through it and then we’ll have this wonderful baby together. I can’t have you feeling hopeless.”

  “Don’t you see? It’s only going to get worse.” He started peeling the beer label.

  “I know it’ll be rough . . .”

  “No, I mean the lies that will come out. Brace yourself to hear some crazy stories.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that she has invented a whole fantasy relationship that never existed. She started talking crazy in the car as if we were really in love, like, mutually, as if I’d made her all kinds of promises. You realize she holds my fate in her hands. She can tell the truth and get me off the hook, or she can continue to spin this web she’s started and take me down. One guess which she’ll pick.”

  “Maybe she won’t. Maybe . . .”

  “Maybe my ass. Hell, I think she’s convinced herself. If she takes the stand against me, I’m doomed.”

  TJ finally looked her in the eyes and took hold of her hand, running his thumb over her knuckles like he’d done so many times before. “If I go to jail and lose you, I don’t know how I’ll go on living. I really don’t.”