The Precious One

by Marisa de los Santos

  “Oh, God!” I cried. “I don’t know!”

  “That’s all right. Listen to me. Are you listening?”

  I nodded before I realized she couldn’t see me. “Yes.”

  “Are you in a safe place?”

  For the first time, I realized I wasn’t. A ditch next to a dark street, cars whizzing by every couple of minutes. But I turned and looked into the slice of woods farther back from the road. The looming trees could have been scary, but maybe because I’d recently been terrified out of my wits, they weren’t. They looked ordinary and calm. I stood up and walked into them and leaned against the biggest trunk.

  “Willow?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “I’m safe here.”

  “Good. Now, just stay right where you are, and be sure to leave your phone on; I can use it to find you.”

  I had no idea what this meant, but I said, “Okay,” and then, “But, Taisy?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Do you have to hang up? I know you’ll be driving, but could you just stay on the line and maybe say something to me now and then?”

  There was a pause. “I need to hang up for just a second to figure out where you are, but I’ll call you back soon and then I’ll stay on the line.”

  Which is just what she did. While she drove, she put the phone on speaker, a thing I hadn’t even known was possible, and told me a funny story about her friend Trillium. I didn’t really follow it, just held on to her voice until she reached me, which didn’t take very long.

  After she pulled over, got out, and hugged me, she held my face in her hands and gave me an anxious, searching look that made my eyes well up yet again, and then we got in the car, and before she started the engine, she said, “Just tell me whether you’re hurt or not. You don’t have to tell me anything else.”

  But I did. I started at the beginning and told her everything.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Taisy

  BECAUSE I FIGURED THAT escaping an inferno and a complete creep in the same night would make anyone hungry, on the way home, I stopped at Café Verdi, the pizza place that had been a family (minus Wilson) favorite when I was growing up. At the sight of Willow’s face as she surveyed the array of pies on the marble counter, I asked, “Have you had pizza before?”

  “Yes,” she said, quickly, never taking her eyes off that counter. “Three times. At both cross-country end-of-season dinners and once in Italy, but that one had potatoes on it and no sauce. The first two times, I only ate the plain cheese pieces, but I’m wondering, if maybe, tonight, well . . .” She swallowed hard.

  “We’ll take a large half sausage, half pepperoni,” I told the man behind the counter. I turned to Willow. “Do you want some fries? They have really good fries.”

  She pressed her palms together. “Well, I’m not really allowed to eat them. With good reason of course.”

  Of course. It had driven me crazy as a kid, how Wilson would dig into a plate of bangers and mash or pork pie without a second thought but called “pure poison” all foods he considered middle-class American. The only thing he reviled more than french fries was tuna casserole. I watched inner conflict play across Willow’s face.

  “But I think I would like to try some,” she said, at last.

  Then, we took our food and had a slumber party in the pool house. When she wasn’t inhaling fries, Willow talked, and even though I was roiling with disgust at the pretentious, manipulative, low-life bastard that was Mr. Insley, I tried to save the name-calling for later and simply listen. I knew that sooner or later we would have to face the tough question of whether she needed to tell the story to Caro and the even tougher one of whether she needed to tell the school about the creep teacher—and apparent statutory rapist wannabe—in its employ, but not that night. She told me about how the anonymous messages had served to drive her closer to Mr. Insley and about her theory that he had planted them himself, which did seem like something a guy like that would do.

  “But do you really think he would set his own yard on fire?” I asked her.

  “Well, I know that sounds outlandish, but he must have,” she said. “If he did all the rest, and I think he did, he must have done that, too.”

  “I read a book once,” I said, “where a guy set a fire so that he could save his girlfriend from it and be a hero. Except—”

  “Yes, I know,” she intoned, rolling her eyes. “Except that Mr. Insley ran out of there like a scared bunny rabbit. But I suppose it was just another piece of the plot to make me fear the big bad world and run to him for refuge. You know, I had just told him I wanted to end our relationship. Maybe he decided it was time to take extreme measures.”

  “Maybe so,” I said, but I wasn’t so sure, partly because I believed he was too much of a scared bunny rabbit to risk being caught at his house with an underaged girl, no matter how old a soul she seemed to be, and partly because I knew something Willow didn’t know, something that made her theory that Mr. Insley had done it all a bit shaky. She found so much relief in believing that no one else was involved that I almost didn’t show her the note that had come for me in the mail, but I just couldn’t keep it from her. She read it, then slowly raised her eyes and stared into space, thinking.

  “I’m having trouble seeing how this fits,” she admitted, finally.

  “I am, too,” I told her. “When I got it, I wondered a couple of things: why it had been sent to me and not your parents, and why the person didn’t come right out and tell me what the trouble was.”

  Willow read aloud, “‘It’s not my place to tell you what’s going on . . .’ That’s rather nice, isn’t it? As though someone wants to help but doesn’t want to get me in trouble. She or he wants to leave me the choice of telling or not.”

  “Which could be why the person sent it to me and not to your parents. I might seem like someone less likely to force you to tell or to go straight to the school.”

  She caught my eye and smiled, shyly. “Neither of which you did, to my everlasting gratitude.”

  I smiled back. “The note is why I bought you the cell phone, though. So it really did help.”

  Willow looked thoughtfully down at the note. “Whoever wrote it wanted there to be someone watching over me, maybe. You know, Mr. Insley tried to blame Ms. Shay, the school guidance counselor, for putting the note in his sandwich. I still think he did that himself—or just wrote a note and smeared it with yellow mustard—because I really can’t imagine Ms. Shay doing such a thing. She’s got these silly reading glasses, but she’s really quite dignified. This letter seems more like a thing she would do. Perhaps she suspected something untoward was happening with Mr. Insley and me, but since she wasn’t sure, she just sent the letter to you? If she had asked me directly, I would not have admitted it, and maybe she knew that. I haven’t told her about you, though.”

  “You didn’t have to tell anyone,” I said, drily. “People just know. This is a pretty small pond, and Wilson is a pretty big fish. Nearly every time I go out, I run into people who say they heard I was back in town. Sometimes, I’m not even sure who they are.”

  Willow knit her brows. “It just seems much more likely that one person did everything. But this letter . . .”

  “Look, let’s not worry about it now,” I said.

  “Maybe now that it’s over, it doesn’t even matter,” said Willow, hopefully.

  I couldn’t imagine that the world would let us leave it at that, but I didn’t say so. I said, “These fries are delicious.”

  “These fries are heaven and nirvana and the Holy Grail rolled into one,” said Willow, with what sounded exactly like a giggle.

  Later, after we’d watched an episode of Foyle’s War, Willow remarked, “Now, there’s a television show that my father might actually like,” and then she blushed and dipped her head, and added, “Sorry.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “I feel strange talking to you about my father,” she said, quietly. “Our father.”

  “Y
es,” I agreed. “He’s in danger of becoming the elephant in the room, isn’t he?”

  She smiled. “He might like that actually. The elephant is an animal he admires.”

  I sat for a moment, thinking of—marveling at—how the story of my trip here had, at some point, stopped being just, or even mostly, the story of me and Wilson and started being a lot of other stories: of me and Caro, me and Ben, me and Willow.

  “Look,” I said, “Wilson is a different father to you than he was to me and Marcus, and frankly, I think it’s high time I stopped resenting it and high time I set aside the question of why. So how about this: we, you and I, accept that fact and then forget about it. When he comes up in conversation, which he will, or when we are both with him, which will happen, I won’t attack him and you won’t defend him.”

  After a while, she nodded, and then said, “Okay, and what about also this: we forgive him.”

  My smart sister, with her big, earnest eyes.

  “I think maybe that’s what I was trying to say,” I told her. “But what do you have to forgive him for?” I shook my head. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”

  “No, it’s all right,” she said, thoughtfully. “I’m beginning to see that he made some mistakes while raising me. Inside my head, until recently, I never let him be a person who could make mistakes, which just isn’t fair, when you think about it. Anyway, I know he wanted to protect me, but he shouldn’t have kept me away from people so much.”

  Her eyes were suddenly sad. “Especially you,” she said. “He led me to believe that you weren’t a good person, and he shouldn’t have because you are.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” I said.

  She sighed and leaned back against the sofa cushions. “I love my parents, but I see that in their different ways, they don’t really quite live in the world, not the world-world. And I want to.”

  “Good,” I said. “I was worried that you might not, after all that’s happened.”

  “With Mr. Insley, you mean.” She turned to me, and said, “Do you want to know something? I really never want to see Mr. Insley again, but even tonight, I couldn’t hate him because he just kept being a round character instead of a flat one. You know, like in literature? When people are round characters, your heart just keeps aching for them even when you don’t want it to. Which can be confusing.” She laughed. “But good, too, I think.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “Taisy?” said Willow, suddenly. “I hope you’ll stay in—”

  She broke off, with an odd look.

  “In touch?” I asked.

  She hesitated, and then said, her cheeks glowing pink, “I was going to say that, but while I was saying it, I realized that what I really meant was to leave the ‘in touch’ off. I know that’s silly because you’ll have to go home sometime.”

  This moment, I thought, imprint it, keep it, keep it, keep it. How had this girl turned out, after all, to be so easy to love?

  “We’ll see about that,” I said. “But along those lines, I have an idea I want to run by you.”

  And for the rest of the night, we plotted.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, AFTER requesting, through Caro, and receiving permission to speak with Wilson, I started off alone. He sat in his armchair, looking for all the world like a king holding court, red robe and all, and even though he did not invite me to sit down, I pulled his desk chair closer to him and sat.

  “I can’t write your book, Wilson,” I said.

  “I am afraid I do not understand,” he said, frostily.

  “It’s simple enough,” I said. “I can’t write it, and moreover, I don’t want to write it. I’d be happy to give you the names of some other very reputable ghostwriters, if you like.”

  “You do not want to?” he asked, with a touch of acid in his voice. “But I requested that you write it. You cannot simply quit.”

  “I can, and I am.”

  Wilson threw his head back and laughed a scorching and—for a sick man—hearty laugh.

  “I’m glad you’re amused,” I said.

  “Ah, but the joke, as they say, is on you, Eustacia.”

  Just days ago, a remark like this would have sent my hackles up. Now, I merely looked at him.

  “You see, I had no intention of publishing such a book anyway,” he said. He tapped his fingers on the arms of his chair, slowly, like an evil mastermind in a movie, although he probably had never seen a movie like that.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I was quite sure no one else had any intention of publishing it, either, since Wilson wasn’t exactly Winston Churchill or Justin Bieber or even James Watson, not even close, but I held off. For one thing, Wilson was so arrogant as to be basically insult-proof, and for another, Willow was down the hall in her room, waiting for me to call her in for the most important part of the conversation. More than anything else, though, I was tired of reacting to Wilson Cleary. At long, long last. So I just sat, silent and impassive as a cat.

  “Which brings us to the question of why I really asked you to come here,” said Wilson, with a gleam in his eye.

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” I said.

  “Of course, you were,” said Wilson.

  “I won’t say I’m not a little curious, but the truth is that your reasons don’t matter.”

  Wilson glared at me. “Oh, but they do.”

  “No, they really don’t.”

  “Stop being childish.”

  “Look, it’s true that I came because you called and asked me to, but now, what I’m doing here, my reasons for having this experience, none of that has anything to do with why you asked me to come.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “And that doesn’t matter, either.” It was a statement of fact without a drop of anger.

  “Eustacia,” said Wilson, in his kingliest manner, “this is no time for you to take some tiresome stand. I have certain things to say to you, things that, whether you are adult enough to admit it or not, will interest you very much.”

  Talking to Wilson was like standing at the end of a football field trying to have a conversation with an entire marching band. I hummed a little of “And the Saints Go Marching In.”

  “Excuse me?” said Wilson.

  I sighed. “Never mind.”

  He cleared his throat and began. “After my heart attack and subsequent surgery, I came to understand, for the first time, that I will not always be here. I do not plan to make my exit for some time, but I do see that it is inevitable. Once I understood this, other revelations followed.”

  He paused. I waited. I scratched my elbow because it really did itch.

  “I realized,” he went on, “that I have made some regrettable mistakes in my life. One in particular.”

  Another grand pause. Oh my, I recognized this moment. It was the one I’d spent years waiting for, dreaming about. My heart should have been pounding; my breath should have been bated. My father was about to admit that he was wrong to cut me out of his life. But look at me: I felt like I was watching a movie—and not one that would change my life. Get on with it, I thought, just spit it out. But because it was clear that he would not continue until I said something, I said, “I see.”

  He announced his transgression thusly: “I have raised Willow as though I would be here forever.”

  Willow. Willow. Of course, Willow. This was all about Willow.

  I had not come so far that this didn’t hurt. It wouldn’t kill me or maim me. It might not even leave scars, but it hurt.

  “In many ways, of course, I have done right by her. She has a superior education,” said Wilson. “She is not silly or gossipy or anorexic.”

  I had to suppress a smile. Leave it to Wilson to put silliness on par with anorexia.

  “She is not obsessed with video games or social networks, makeup or television. She gives not a whit for boy bands or for boys at all.”

  I kept silent.

  “And she is altogether lovely.” The affecti
on in his voice was unmistakable.

  “She is,” I agreed.

  He went on as though he hadn’t heard. Probably, he hadn’t.

  “But when I considered how she would be without me one day, forced to negotiate the outside world alone, I realized that she might be at a disadvantage, that she might lack the tools to deal with surroundings and people decidedly less rarefied than those to which she is accustomed.”

  Pause. “Oh,” I said.

  “Of course, I know that she has a mother.”

  Another suppressed smile. Oh, Wilson.

  “A loving and, in ways, brilliant mother, but Caro has some of the vagaries of the artistic personality and is not, herself, particularly schooled in the ways of the culture at large. So in order to aid my daughter in surviving the world outside this house, first, I sent her to school, and then . . .” Enormous pause, drum roll pause. “I called you.”

  “School I get,” I said. “But why me?”

  I saw a flash of irritation in Wilson’s eyes, probably at my low-key response after all his buildup, but there was nothing to be done about that.

  “Despite your unpromising youth,” he said, “you have turned out rather well. You do not know it, but I have been keeping tabs on you. Your performance in college was excellent; you have no criminal record, not so much as a driving violation; and you are not an addict of any kind. You are physically active and well groomed.”

  There was no earthly way to contain my smile, at this; it was all I could do not to hoot with semihysterical laughter, but Wilson didn’t seem to notice.

  “While I believe you made a critical error in not attending graduate school—in not getting so much as a master’s degree—you have managed to craft a lucrative and largely respectable career for yourself, and, very wisely, you have remained unmarried, so there is no man in your life to complicate matters.”

  “Okay, but surely you have other people in your life, former colleagues, friends who fit the bill, have advanced degrees, and no troubled history with you. So why me?”