The Fixer

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “You’re not very good at this, Asher.” Thalia was blissfully unaware of her brother’s arrival. Asher shot Henry a lazy grin as he skipped another imaginary stone.

  “Five skips,” he declared archly.

  I leaned back on my palms. “Two,” I countered. Thalia giggled.

  “Surrounded by vipers on all sides,” Asher sighed. He turned to Henry. “Back a fellow up here, my good man.”

  Asher’s “good man” looked as if he was considering having the lot of us committed.

  “Henry, watch!” Thalia ordered, unaware of—or possibly used to—the dour expression on her brother’s face. She flicked her wrist.

  “Excellent form,” Asher commented. “It’s too bad the stone got eaten by an alligator after the second bounce.”

  Thalia slugged him. “It did not!”

  “Sadly, it did.”

  “Henry! Tell him it didn’t.”

  There was a beat of silence. “I see no alligators,” Henry allowed.

  “Et tu, Henry?” Asher held a hand to his chest. Henry didn’t bat an eye. He was clearly used to the dramatics.

  “You’re not wearing shoes,” he told his sister. His gaze went to Asher’s bare feet and then, briefly, to mine. “Why aren’t you wearing shoes?”

  “We took them off,” Thalia clarified helpfully. Asher’s lips twitched slightly.

  “Why did you take them off?” Henry went with a more specific question this time.

  “Does a person really need a reason to take off their shoes?” I asked.

  Henry’s head swiveled toward me. Yes, his disapproving eyebrows seemed to say. Yes, a person does.

  “Tess,” Asher said with a flourish, “meet Henry. Henry, meet Tess.”

  “We’ve met.” Henry clipped the words. I thought met was a pretty generous description of our encounter outside the church.

  “I appreciate your sister’s assistance,” Henry told me stiffly, “but I think it’s time for the two of you to go.” Henry Marquette clearly didn’t want Ivy here—and just as clearly, he didn’t want me near his sister. He inclined his head slightly, staring down at me. “Don’t you agree?” The words were issued more like an order than a question.

  I stood, brushing the grass off my legs. “You know, I think I do.”

  I’d expected the crowd inside to have thinned, but if anything, it had gotten bigger. I found Ivy in the kitchen.

  “Everything okay?” she asked me.

  “Fine.”

  “Bodie can drive you home,” Ivy offered. “I’ll stay through cleanup, but there’s no reason you have to.”

  I nodded. Ivy might have needed me this morning, but now that she had a mission, she was fine. Within seconds, she had her cell in her hand, calling Bodie to pick me up. I made my way to the front door. When I opened it, I caught sight of a man on the front porch, clothed in formal military dress.

  “Don’t. Embarrass. Me.” The man’s words weren’t meant for my ears. They were meant for the teenage girl standing next to him.

  Vivvie.

  She looked smaller, somehow, than she had the last time I’d seen her. Her eyes were bloodshot, her shoulders hunched, like her body was trying its best to collapse in on itself.

  “Vivvie?” I said.

  Her eyes—and the man’s—snapped up to mine. His face changed utterly, morphing into a solemn mix of sympathy and kindness.

  Bedside manner, I thought, recognizing him from the news and remembering that he was a doctor—the White House physician. The man who’d treated Justice Marquette.

  “Tess.” Vivvie struggled to smile. On anyone else, the expression might have looked natural, but Vivvie’s features weren’t made for small smiles. “Dad,” Vivvie continued, “this is Tess Kendrick. I told you about her. Tess, this is my father.”

  Major Bharani gave me a quick once-over. “Of course,” he said smoothly. “It’s nice to meet you, Tess, though, of course, I wish the circumstances were better.”

  Major Bharani told me good-bye and slipped inside. Vivvie started to follow him, but I stopped her.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her quietly.

  “That’s my line.” She managed another weak smile.

  “Where were you this week?” I asked.

  Vivvie looked down, then away. “I’ve been a little under the weather.”

  Too sick to come to school, but not too sick to attend a wake? And not too sick for her father to order her not to embarrass him, like Vivvie was some kind of liability. Like she was something to be embarrassed about.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked Vivvie.

  “I should go.” She couldn’t meet my eyes. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

  All I could think as she disappeared into the house was that Vivvie was a miserable liar.

  CHAPTER 20

  That night, I did an internet search on Vivvie’s father. He was a decorated soldier, a former trauma surgeon in Afghanistan and Iraq. From what I could tell, he’d been the head of the White House medical clinic—and the president’s personal physician—for just over two years. Unable to get the image of Vivvie’s haunted expression out of my mind, I clicked on the video of Major Bharani’s statement to the press.

  “It is with great sadness that I inform you that Chief Justice Theodore Marquette died on the table a little over an hour ago.” Now that I knew to look for it, I could see a resemblance—a faint one—between Vivvie and her father. “This was our second attempt to fix a blockage in the justice’s heart, and there were unforeseen complications with surgery. This country has lost a great man today. We ask that you respect his family’s privacy in this time of grief.”

  Nothing in the twenty-second clip told me what was wrong with Vivvie. I thought back to World Issues, when I’d seen the clip for the first time—the stares directed at Vivvie, the way she’d gone stiff in her seat.

  Her father had operated on one of our classmates’ relatives, and now Henry Marquette’s grandfather was dead. Did she think people would blame her?

  Don’t. Embarrass. Me. The words Major Bharani had hissed at Vivvie echoed in my mind.

  “Everything okay in here?” Ivy poked her head into my room.

  “You’re home,” I said.

  “I am.” She paused. “I wanted to say thank you. For coming today.”

  I looked down at my keyboard. “No big deal.”

  I could feel her wanting to make it a big deal, wanting to take the fact that I’d gone with her as an indication that the two of us were going to be okay.

  “I sent you an e-mail,” she said, instead of pressing the topic further. “With treatment options.”

  For Gramps. I weathered the impact of that blow.

  “There’s a chance we could get home care, hire nurses either here or in Montana.” Ivy presented the option calmly and neutrally. “Or there’s a clinical trial. He’d stay in Boston, but they have an assisted living facility, so it wouldn’t be inpatient exactly.”

  She was waiting for me to say something. I’d asked to be involved, but now that the information was in my inbox, my mouth was dry. It wasn’t a good day today. I willed my eyes to stop stinging.

  “Thanks,” I said, staring holes in my keyboard.

  “Take a look. Then we’ll talk.”

  I managed to force my eyes up as far as my computer screen. The image of Vivvie’s father stared back at me.

  “Do you know the White House doctor?” I asked Ivy, as much to change the subject as because I couldn’t rid my mind of the look in Vivvie’s eyes.

  “Major Bharani?” Ivy replied. “I know he’s got the patience of a saint. According to Georgia, the president makes a horrible patient.” She leaned against the doorjamb. “Why do you ask?”

  Why was I asking?

  “His daughter was assigned to show me around at Hardwicke.” That wasn’t an answer, not really.

  “Vivvie, right?” Ivy said. If I was surprised she knew Vivvie’s name, I shouldn’t have been. Ivy offe
red me a small smile. “Washington is a small world. And Hardwicke is Washington.”

  I was beginning to get that sense. Vivvie’s father was the White House physician. Henry Marquette’s grandfather had sat on the Supreme Court. I’d just been to a funeral where the eulogy was given by the president of the United States.

  “How did you know him?” I asked Ivy. “Theo Marquette?”

  There was an almost imperceptible shift in Ivy. She stood a little straighter, the set of her features completely neutral. “I worked a job for him. We stayed in touch.”

  Ivy was the master of answering questions without really telling me a thing.

  “Justice Marquette had a problem,” I said, studying her expression, looking for some clue as to what that job had been. “You fixed it.”

  Ivy met my gaze, poker face firmly in place. “Something like that.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Vivvie still wasn’t at school on Monday. Henry Marquette, however, was. At lunch, he sat at Emilia’s table. His posture was straighter than the others’, his default expression more intense. Every once in a while, his gaze flickered over to mine.

  He stared straight through me, every time.

  “What are we doing?” Asher helped himself to a seat at my table.

  “We aren’t doing anything,” I told him bluntly.

  “My mistake. I thought we were brooding in Henry’s general direction. Like so.” He adopted a stormy countenance, then gestured to me. “Yours is better.”

  “Go away, Asher.”

  “You say ‘go away’, I hear ‘be my bosom buddy.’ ” He gave an elaborate shrug. “Seriously, though: friendship bracelets—yea or nay?”

  I wasn’t sure what game he was playing. I’d been at Hardwicke for a week, and even that was enough time to ascertain that Asher Rhodes was well liked. Popular, even.

  “What do you want with me?”

  Asher didn’t bat an eye at the question. “Maybe I’m tragically bored and horribly lonely and looking for love in all the wrong places.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Or maybe,” he said, leaning forward and placing his elbows on the table, “I’m tired of everyone liking me all the time and it’s liberating to be around someone with no expectations. Or maybe you just looked like you could use a friend.” He didn’t give me a chance to respond. “Diet Coke?” Asher had two cans. He politely offered me one.

  “No.”

  “Mentos?” He held out a roll.

  “Don’t Diet Coke and Mentos—”

  “—explode?” Asher supplied. He opened one of the sodas. “I have a passing fondness for explosions.”

  That was concerning on so many levels.

  “I’m starting to see why your sister thinks you need a keeper.”

  Asher rolled one of the Mentos contemplatively around the edge of the Diet Coke can. I reached over and flicked the candy at him. It pelted him in the forehead.

  “I’m going to take that as a yes on the friendship bracelets,” he informed me.

  Emilia had said that when Asher got bored, things got broken. Laws, standards of decency, occasionally bones. He was probably sitting here, at my table, for the same reason he’d gone up on the chapel roof.

  I was interesting.

  “Have you spoken to Vivvie at all?” Asher attempted to sound casual, but there was a stray note of seriousness in his tone.

  “No.” I studied him for a few seconds. “Should I have?”

  Asher’s eyes drifted to the table where Henry was sitting. “She kind of had a breakdown. At Theo’s wake.”

  Vivvie. My gut had told me then that something was wrong—but wrong enough for her to break down? My stomach twisted sharply. What are the chances that her father found that breakdown embarrassing? I knew very little about Vivvie’s dad. He was a war hero. A doctor. But I couldn’t keep from thinking about the way his face had morphed when he went from talking to Vivvie to talking to me.

  I stood and picked up my tray. She hasn’t been at school for four days. Back in Montana, my guidance counselor had been concerned when I’d missed five. Total.

  “You look like someone who’s about to do something highly inadvisable.” Asher caught up to me as I dumped my trash. “And God knows, if there’s something inadvisable going on, I want in.”

  “Go away.”

  “You say ‘go away’, I hear ‘wreak havoc by my side.’ ”

  I didn’t reply. In all likelihood, Vivvie was fine. She probably had some kind of flu.

  In all likelihood, the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach meant nothing.

  “Tess?” Asher raised an eyebrow at me. “Anything I can do?”

  I glanced at the building. Fifth period was starting soon. After a moment, I turned back to Asher. “Do you have a car?”

  We found Vivvie’s address in the Hardwicke directory. Asher drove.

  “Nice car,” I told him, trying to distract myself from the fact that I was skipping school to follow up a hunch I couldn’t even articulate.

  “Why, thank you,” Asher replied. “It’s Emilia’s. Mine met with an unfortunate accident involving a toaster and a squirrel.”

  I didn’t really know where to start. “You stole your sister’s car?”

  “Is it still stealing if she loaned it to me once and I made a copy of her keys?” The question was clearly meant to be rhetorical.

  “Yes,” I told him. “Definitely still stealing.”

  “And so begins a life of crime,” Asher said with a morose shake of his head.

  “Your sister is going to kill you,” I told him. Skipping school. Stealing her car.

  Asher waved away my words, unconcerned. “If Emilia was predisposed to fratricide, I wouldn’t have made it past kindergarten,” he said. “I am, however, somewhat concerned that she might kill you.”

  When we arrived at Vivvie’s house half an hour later, I got out of the car, then hesitated. I hadn’t thought this far ahead. What was I doing here? I had no plan. I wasn’t even entirely certain why I’d come.

  It’s probably nothing. Vivvie’s probably fine.

  I didn’t believe that, and I didn’t know why. I made my way to the front porch. Asher followed. No one answered the first time I rang the bell. Or the second. But the third time, the door opened a crack.

  “Tess?” Vivvie’s voice was hoarse. Like she’d been yelling, or crying—or, I told myself, trying to be rational, like she has strep throat and that is why she hasn’t been at school.

  “Can I come in?” I asked.

  Vivvie looked past me and registered Asher’s presence.

  “I was worried about you,” I told her. She didn’t reply. “Tell me I shouldn’t be.”

  Vivvie summoned her voice. “You shouldn’t be.”

  Liar. The door was open wider now. She looked like she hadn’t slept since the last time I’d seen her.

  “I’m going to stretch my legs a bit and let you two ladies talk.” Asher set off on a stroll around the neighborhood, leaving Vivvie and me alone.

  “Can I come in?” I asked.

  Vivvie shook her head, but she also stepped back, allowing me entry. I crossed the threshold into the foyer. For a few seconds, Vivvie looked at everything but me: the floor, the ceiling, the walls. Eventually, her gaze found its way to mine. The oversized sweatshirt she was wearing slipped off one shoulder. The skin underneath was darker near her collarbone. Bruised.

  She tracked my gaze to the bruise and froze.

  “Did your father do that?” I asked softly.

  Vivvie jerked her sweatshirt back up. She shook her head—more than once. “He’s not like that.” She still had a hold on her sweatshirt, like she couldn’t coax her hand into letting go. “It was an accident.” Now she was nodding, as if she could will that into being true.

  “Okay,” I said. But we both knew that it wasn’t okay. She wasn’t okay.

  “My dad and I had a fight. After the wake.” Vivvie’s grip on her sweatshirt tightened. Her fre
e arm wrapped itself around her torso in a fierce self-hug. “The kind of fight where you yell,” she clarified. “Not the kind where you . . .”

  Not the kind where the bigger person hits the small one, I filled in, unable to keep from thinking about that bruise.

  “We were just yelling,” Vivvie reiterated fiercely. “That’s how we fight. He yells. I cry. He gets flustered because I’m crying.”

  This was Vivvie talking about what a fight with her father was like. Not the fight she’d had with him after the wake.

  “This time was different,” I said. I kept my voice low and stayed away from questions. Questions required answers. I was stating facts.

  Vivvie slowly unwound her hand from her shirt. “This time was different,” she echoed, her voice barely more than a whisper. “He grabbed me. He didn’t mean to.” She paused. “I know what that sounds like, Tess. I do. But it’s been just the two of us for years, and he’s never . . .”

  We were still standing in the foyer. The house was immaculate: everything in its place.

  “You weren’t in school today.” I stuck to statements—nonthreatening ones—as best I could. “You weren’t in school most of last week, either.”

  “I’m not hiding any more bruises,” Vivvie said quickly. She could see how this looked. “Last week, my dad and I weren’t even—we weren’t fighting. I just told him I was sick, and he let me stay home.”

  She’d told him she was sick. But she wasn’t.

  “You have to come back to school eventually,” I said gently. What I didn’t say was: Who or what are you avoiding?

  What I didn’t say was: What were you and your father fighting about?

  “I’ll come back to school tomorrow,” Vivvie told me. “I swear.” I could feel the nervous energy rolling off her. She was starting to panic about what she’d told me—even though she hadn’t said much at all.

  “I need some air,” I told her. We both knew that I wasn’t the one who needed it. “You want to go for a walk?”

  After a long moment, her head bobbed in something I took as a nod. She slipped on a pair of shoes, and we started walking: out the front door, down the sidewalk, around her neighborhood. Neither of us said a word. I could feel Vivvie trying to reel it in. Trying to be strong. This was a girl who didn’t want to bother classmates she’d known her entire life by asking to sit at their tables for lunch. No matter how badly she needed my help, she wouldn’t ask for it.