She flinched and jerked away from him, then he moved past her and squeezed by Marcus, who said, “Anthony, hold on—”
“Tell Eric and his family that I wish them the best here. I’ll see you.”
He left then, hurrying down the still-bare plywood stairs and out into the chilly morning, hardly feeling the cold.
Kim, dressed in her paint-stained sweats with a cornflower-blue bandanna holding her hair back, sat in her living room doing her best to stay focused on what the man from the SBI was saying. Why they couldn’t have set up an appointment for her to come to them was beyond her, as was the reasoning for why the agent had to park his clearly marked SBI sedan right in front of her house so that all her neighbors would know she was sequestered in here with him.
It was good that Anthony had gone to work on the Habitat house this morning. He needed some outlet for, or at least distraction from, his frustration. With him out of the house, she could stop peppering him with suggestions that he and Amelia might be better off using this situation, their separation, as an opportunity to be independent, get some space—reconsider their couple-ness, she’d said once, and he’d looked at her like she’d sprouted horns.
The SBI didn’t care whether Anthony and Amelia’s romance would or should persist. She wanted to be cooperative, to allay their suspicions in order to, she hoped, avoid arrest, while at the same time give them nothing to go on that wasn’t common knowledge or knowledge easily gained by talking to people who knew her. William, for example (who had yet to return her call or answer her emailed question about the possibility of appealing her suspension—he was avoiding her). To satisfy the SBI while also protecting herself and her son was a challenge not so different, she thought, from walking a tightrope while wearing a blindfold.
“Ms. Winter, just a few more questions. Did you know your son was in possession of devices which could be used for the production of pornography?”
Kim pointed at his phone where he had it holstered on his belt. “Does that take pictures and video?”
“Ma’am.”
“Next question,” she said.
He pressed his tongue against his upper lip, then said, “Did Amelia Wilkes ever come to you with information about her relationship with your son?”
“I told you, I knew they were seeing each other because my son told me. That’s the whole story.”
“But students do often talk to you.”
“I see a hundred of them in my classrooms every day.”
He smiled in the way people do when they aren’t really amused. “Did you share this information about the relationship with Miss Wilkes’s parents?”
“My son is eighteen. I no longer get in touch with his friends’ moms.”
“Even when that friend is potentially a threat, someone who’d cause trouble for him?”
Kim kept her face a mask of cooperative concern, but she knew what he was doing, where he was trying to lead her. “I have always regarded Amelia Wilkes as a thoughtful, responsible person whose welfare I care about very much.”
“All the more interesting, then, that you didn’t share those thoughts with her parents.”
“I did, each time they came for conference.”
“When you could easily have tossed in a ‘Hey, how about our kids as a couple,’ right? But you didn’t. You encouraged this girl, who you say you care about, to lie to her parents continually. Nice.”
Kim wanted to ask if he’d learned this hot-and-cold act by watching Perry Mason, but not only was sarcasm unlikely to produce any positive effect, he was probably too young to know who she meant. She said instead, “My. Will you look at the time? Unfortunately, I have an appointment at ten-thirty and I’m obviously not dressed for it, so we’re going to have to wrap this up.”
He nodded, and his expression shifted from accusatory to sympathetic. “Ms. Winter, you know I’m just trying to get a clear picture, here, of how well these kids were able to fool you—we want to make sure that you missed all the signs, even when it was happening right under your nose, maybe in your own house, so that we all understand that you aren’t culpable.”
“I did miss them,” she said easily, noting with satisfaction the way his eyebrow flared. He’d expected her to be defensive, to want to deny being so easy to fool. “I had no idea they were doing anything illegal. None.”
He stacked his note cards together and tucked them into his binder. “All right, then, it looks like we’re done, for now.”
“For now?”
“There may be further questions.”
“Well, okay,” she said, walking behind him toward the door, “but there won’t be further answers—not because I don’t want to give them, but because there aren’t any to give.”
“Thank you for your time.”
“My pleasure.”
She shut the door, then pressed her hands and forehead against it and closed her eyes. Deep cleansing breath, in, out … Then she went to the kitchen, put the kettle on for tea, and dialed Rose Ellen, who surely would help her to make sense of a world in which teenagers could face felony charges for being in love and a parent could be charged for permitting it. She would like to have said this to the detective and asked him, “What the hell is wrong with you all? Who was being harmed before the police got involved?”
She said this to Rose Ellen. “Who? Tell me.”
“William hasn’t called you back, has he?”
“No, damn it.” And although she sensed that the SBI wasn’t through with her, the rest of their conversation was about Kim’s ambivalence about the kids’ relationship, her anxiety, and her bruised ego—no, really her bruised heart. William had no choice but to suspend her, she understood that, but did that mean he truly had to let her go?
23
N HER DREAM, AMELIA IS ONSTAGE, FIXED IN THE BEAMS OF TWO spotlights, naked. The audience, barely visible to her because of the lights shining in her eyes, mutters ominously and points at her. She wants to move, to run. She gives herself the directive. Move! Run! She hears Ms. Winter’s voice calling out, “Quittez-vous!” Her body, however, seems disconnected from her brain. “You’re thinking too much,” her father says from the wings. “Less thinking, more doing, that’s how things get done.” She turns her head to look for Anthony—isn’t he supposed to be here to support her on this, her opening night? Then, without warning, the lights shut off, and she feels a pain low in her abdomen, and the lights flash on again. She blinks, and sees sunlight cutting through the slit in her bed’s curtains. Morning.
Amelia rose and padded to the bathroom, the pain she’d felt in her dream hanging on as a shadow of itself, a cramp, probably premenstrual. Well, that gave her something different to think about, at least. Without her usual schedule to track the passage of time, every day felt the same as the one before it, and the same as she expected the next to feel. It was purgatory passed in a luxurious holding cell, a holding pattern, like circling an airport while in a 747’s upstairs lounge the way they’d done once on a trip to Honolulu.
Her period wasn’t due yet, but maybe the anxiety was skewing her cycle, so she tended to that possibility while thinking how her parents would have behaved if, instead of discovering the photos, she’d turned up accidentally pregnant. There would be no police in that scenario, no arrest, no immediate and forced disconnection from everything that mattered in her life. Her parents might be angry. They’d surely be upset. They might even try to keep her from seeing Anthony—but because the baby would be his, too, they’d have trouble justifying that. In that scenario, which was in every way a bigger problem than her having “indecent” photos, there would be no sex-offender business, no possibility of prison time. Amelia gazed out her window as she bound up her hair. She had never wished she would get pregnant, and she didn’t wish it now, not really; she wished there were something, though, to end the waking nightmare she and Anthony were snagged in. This limbo, this void, all the wasted time, the too-infrequent and always unsatisfying updates Cameron gave
about Anthony (and gave Anthony about her, and thank God for Cameron), it was all so pointless and tiring and wrong.
A broad, orb-shaped spider’s web stretched between a pair of autumn cherry trees thick with brilliant, pink-tinged white blooms. Amelia propped each foot on the windowsill to lace up each shoe, desperate for the freedom to go running outside. She longed for the scents of the fall morning and the puddles of sunlight that marked her usual route with peace, assurance, and optimism as if gifts given from Mother Nature herself. The treadmill, tucked away in the basement’s windowless room, had none of that. The treadmill was exactly perfect, though, for her current place in life.
When she’d finished her run and gone upstairs to the kitchen, her mother was waiting, a strange look on her face. “Ms. McGuiness just called; she and Cameron are bringing breakfast.”
“Today? What about school?” Amelia said, before recalling that this was a staff training day, a day she’d have missed anyway because of the Drama Guild’s trip to New York. The group had left yesterday, without her and without Anthony, and would right now be milling about in the lobby of a Manhattan Holiday Inn Express, eating cinnamon rolls and plotting the day’s activities. If not for her father (if not for her mistake, if not for bad luck, if not for the fickle gods who loved to toy with mortals), she would be there, too, dressed in her black leotard, her gypsy skirt and purple ruffled ballet flats, her flowers-and-stars-embroidered black flannel coat, with a tatted, multicolored scarf tied around her neck and her hair hanging loose for the moment. Anthony would be waiting at the hotel’s door in his charcoal wool peacoat with his blue scarf brightening his hazel eyes, instead of sitting on a bench in the Wake County courthouse and awaiting his turn to face a judge on the misdemeanor charge, as he must be doing right now.
She would be taking Anthony’s gloved hand in her own and going out into the frosty morning, their breath rising from their noses as they kissed on the sidewalk, then they’d set off for the subway and Tisch. She would be happy and confident, and those traits would come through when she stood before the evaluation team and showed them why she deserved a spot in next fall’s freshman class. And then she would wait for Anthony to do the same, as anxious for him as she’d be for herself, but believing firmly in their chances for success. Believing firmly in what should have been, but might not, now, ever be.
“Never mind, I forgot it was a staff day,” she told her mother, forcing herself to put aside the resentment that wanted to replace her blood in her veins. The counselor she’d seen last week said she should remain focused on the positives, and the woman had been right about that, if about little else. The negative feelings would come—of course they would—but she could choose not to let them define her. No, she couldn’t reschedule her evaluation, but there would be another chance to get into Tisch next year, assuming Acton Hubbard did his job, assuming common sense prevailed. Her father might try to crush her dream, but she could not allow him to kill it.
She said, “What about the tutor? Isn’t she coming?”
“Yes, she’ll be here. Ms. McGuiness said they can’t stay long, but she’s got some pumpkin-zucchini bread and pumpkin-raisin bread for us, and homemade butter. Doesn’t that sound delicious?”
If Amelia could muster an appetite, then yes, she supposed she would find it delicious. Why, though, was Cameron’s mother coming over at all? If it was just to deliver bread, Cameron could do that on her own. Liz McGuiness was not part of her mother’s circle; the two women knew each other only through their daughters, in a kind of casual pick-up, drop-off way that had ended when the girls got cars. For her to call and then come by to visit was surprising.
Amelia said, “Sure,” and kept those questions to herself. “When will they be here?” she asked instead, checking the time on the microwave. Five minutes before ten. Anthony might be in front of the judge right now. According to Hubbard, the outcome of Anthony’s appearance today would help them know what to expect when her turn came. Granted, he was only facing the misdemeanor charge at this appearance, but if the prosecutor agreed to dismiss the case, or the judge agreed with the lawyer’s argument for dismissal, they could hope for similar results for her charges. Maybe the DA would be satisfied with having scared them and gotten a lot of publicity doing it. Maybe he’d intended only that all along.
Her mother looked her over and, frowning, said, “What a state you’re in. I wish you had time to shower.”
“They won’t care.”
“No one wants to see you—or smell you—in your sweaty, clingy clothes.”
“Fine,” Amelia said, though her tone said the opposite. “Everything has to be your way; I should know better than to even think I can decide anything for myself.”
Her mother’s tone was similarly sharp when she said, “And don’t dawdle, they’re due any minute.”
Amelia pounded up the stairs. Thank God Cameron was coming over and something real was happening for a change. That she’d imagined her life was slow before all the trouble began was laughable now. Her life had run itself into a muddy ditch like the one that ran along the road her father grew up on, and had stalled, no jumper cables available, no mechanic in sight.
Cameron and her mother arrived at the house at ten past ten. Liz McGuiness, as enthusiastically blond as Cameron was redheaded, was dressed in black jeans and a green cashmere cardigan Amelia knew was Cameron’s. Her heart-shaped face was youthful in spite of the deepening lines at the corners of her eyes, which Amelia saw as proof that she smiled a lot—a real contrast from her own smooth-faced mother. Liz McGuiness carried a picnic basket, which she set on the kitchen counter before reaching for Amelia and pulling her into a hug. “Oh my, look at you—I’m not a minute too soon with the bread. If you get any skinnier …”
“She insists on running every morning,” Amelia’s mother said. “And she only picks at her food.”
Cameron, her back to Amelia’s mother, rolled her eyes and said, “Who can blame her?”
Liz gave Amelia one more squeeze, then let go and opened the basket. She took out two towel-wrapped loaves, unleashing the scents of nutmeg and cinnamon and making Amelia’s mouth water. Amelia wanted to cry with the pleasure of it all—the sight of Cameron, the feel of Liz McGuiness’s arms around her, the scent of thoughtfulness, of concern, of support that wafted from the stillwarm bread. In all the days that she’d spent here with her own mother, both of them trying to fill the long hours between wake and sleep that were not taken up by the tutor or by her father, not once had they baked something—together or separately. It was as though even the idea of baking, with its promise of comfort and pleasure, had become too hazardous for either of them to approach.
Cameron hooked her arm through Amelia’s and squeezed. This made Amelia want to cry, too. Really, there was little that didn’t—which she hated, because until three weeks ago she had not been the crying type.
“We should eat on the patio, don’t you think?” Cameron said. “We’ll go outside and clean the leaves off the table.”
Amelia, hearing the cue in Cameron’s voice, said, “Good idea. It’s so nice out.”
As the girls went out the back door, Amelia heard Liz McGuiness saying, “Sheri, if you’ll get some butter knives, and let me just pop this tub in your microwave …”
Outside, Cameron began pushing the fallen leaves from the wide teak table’s surface. Amelia stood with her face upturned to the sunshine and breathed in the earthiness of the morning. The slight chill in the air was offset by the sun, encouraging them all to pretend that the seasons weren’t changing. Amelia tried to hold on to the moment, to the feeling of safety, the sense of benevolence, false though she knew it was.
She turned her attention to the chairs, pulling one out and brushing it off as Cameron said, “So here’s what’s really going on. Mom wanted to see you in person and see how things are going. She thinks you’re getting a raw deal, and she wants to help you out.” Cameron stopped her work and took her iPhone from the pocket of her je
ans, checked it, texted a reply to someone while Amelia looked on enviously, then put it away. “Did you know that adding a line to a phone plan is only ten dollars a month?”
“No, I didn’t,” Amelia said, puzzled at the change of subject. “In fact, I’ve just about forgotten what it’s like to have a phone. Why?”
Cameron started wiping down the table’s surface. “My mom, she gives like two hundred dollars to charity every month. Food bank. Women’s shelter. Red Cross.”
“How much bread does she give?” Amelia joked, setting out the plates and waiting for Cameron to reveal whatever it was she was hinting at. Buttercup followed her as she circled the table, as if in a game of follow the leader.
Cameron reached down to pet the dog. “My dad says if Mom takes on one more cause or takes in one more stray he’s going to have to get a second job.” She took her phone from her pocket again.
“Anything from Anthony?” Amelia asked, watching Cameron read a message and then type one out.
Cameron finished and said, “Not since last night. So anyway, Mom thinks spending another twenty dollars a month for a really worthy cause would make her feel a lot better, and my dad doesn’t need to know about it.”
“Okay …” Amelia said. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“I had to buy the phones, of course, but …”
“Buy what phones?” She looked at Cameron, whose eyes were twinkling with the fun of keeping her guessing. Then the door opened, and Cameron’s face became a mask of innocence.
Amelia thought back: ten dollars to add a new phone to a cell account, Cameron had said. Twenty-dollar expense for a good deed. Cameron bought phones. “Oh!” Amelia said, getting it.
Her mother looked alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I … I just thought of something.” She glanced at Cameron knowingly. Phones, for her and Anthony, so that they could stop using Cameron as their go-between. So that they could talk to each other again, directly. Such a common thing, and yet now it felt like a miracle, like God acting through Cameron and her mother. Cameron wasn’t a fairy, she was an angel.
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