“Damn it.” Right there in black and white, it warned him exactly when during the trip the GPS would go awry, and where he’d lose cell coverage. He could’ve kicked himself when yards beyond where he’d turned around the last time, certain he could find the place on his own, he saw the sign. Twenty minutes after he started following the directions, Mount Hope came into view.
Toby scanned the parking lot. He didn’t really expect to see Ava standing on the grounds waving to him. Still, he was disappointed when she wasn’t leaning over the railing of the grand porch, or waiting for him by the lake on one of the benches made from twigs. Ava wouldn’t be running to him, throwing her arms around his neck, hugging him tight. But he replayed that scenario in his mind anyway. Soon, he told himself. It had been a little over a month since she’d left home, and in no time he would see his girl.
The parking lot contained other bedraggled travelers. Parents summoned on a Saturday morning to learn where they’d gone wrong. Only a handful of men made their way toward the lobby, alone, like him, not part of a couple. Mostly women rolled designer suitcases or carried leather satchels to the entrance. No matter how large or small the bag, every person’s shoulders were hunched, an air of resignation accompanying their steps.
As Toby was about to open his door, another car ripped into the spot next to him. Why, with all the empty spaces in the lot, did someone always follow the pack, parking right by someone else? Toby took in the view of the lake. Unlike him, it was serene; not one ripple disturbed its demeanor. Don’t get annoyed this early on, he told himself. Otherwise it’ll be one hell of a long weekend.
The woman in the car next to him mouthed the word sorry when she saw Toby. When her car was parked and quiet, he got out of his, heaving his bag onto his shoulder.
“I didn’t realize someone was still in there,” she said, over the top of her car. “I’m Nan. Nan McEttrick.”
Nan and Toby closed their car doors—slam, slam. Hit remote locks on their key rings—cheep, cheep. And met at their respective trunks.
“I’m kind of frazzled,” she said. “My cell isn’t working, and I got lost. I just want to get this show on the road.”
As the woman rambled, Toby couldn’t help but notice the silver threads woven through her black hair, at odds with her youthful face. She must’ve been a teenager herself when she had her child. Nan was pretty, but that wasn’t what captivated Toby. She had eyes like Lorraine’s, bright, round, and blue. He couldn’t stop himself from staring.
“Toby Sedgwick.” He reached out to shake her hand. “Trust me, you’re not the only one who’s nervous. All I want to do is see Ava. Daughter or son?”
“Neither,” Nan said. “Arthur’s my nephew. I’m in the process of getting custody. It’s been a yearlong battle so far, with three admissions to Mount Hope against my wishes. This is the first parent session they’ve let me attend. Long story. By the end of the weekend I’m sure we’ll know more about each other than we care to.”
Maybe this woman was prepared to air her family’s private business, but Toby had no intention of spilling his guts about his, talking about Ava with a group of strangers.
Nan pointed her finger at the main building. “I’ll tell you this. I will get him out of this place. Arthur won’t ever have to come back here again.”
Toby’s plan had been to show up and listen, and already this woman was reeling him in.
“Mind me asking why he was admitted to the program three times?”
“Arthur’s mother took off. His evil stepmother wants him out of her house, but my brother keeps changing his mind about signing the final papers to let Arthur come to me. Guilt is a powerful thing.”
As they entered the lobby, teenagers in green shirts with pasted-on smiles pointed the way to a table filled with dwindling rows of pocket folders and pre-filled name tags.
Toby ignored a boy offering to take his bag, moving toward the table that boasted the coffee urn and a tray filled with pastries. One small paper cup of coffee wasn’t going to be nearly enough. Though he supposed that no matter how much of it he drank he’d never be in the mood for the awkwardness of icebreakers, the confusion of breakout sessions, and oh, God, team-building exercises. He was out of there if things deteriorated into the lifeboat activity or the dreaded group hug.
Over the years, Toby had hosted plenty of leadership seminars at the Sedgwick Foundation, but when organizers touted the benefits of him getting in touch with his feelings, he would always feign competing priorities, like a meeting he simply couldn’t miss.
In an effort to wall himself off from some of the more suspicious nomads, Toby hung by the coffee table until Nan collected her things, after she too had disregarded the boy scouting for luggage.
“Tell me to take a hike if you’d rather go this alone,” he said.
Nan stole a glance at his plate loaded with Danish. Toby tossed a napkin over his pitiful breakfast.
“Right back at you,” she said, as they walked into the conference room. “It’s likely to play out the other way around, though. I’m going to try to keep my mouth shut, but I can’t make any promises.”
Together without discussing it, Toby and Nan gravitated to two seats toward the back of the hall, near the door. The room was warm and the seats too close together. He apologized to Nan when they sat and his hip brushed against hers.
“Mind me asking why you’re so down on the place?” Toby asked, shoving his bag and folder under his seat. “Looks pretty nice to me.”
Right out of a travel brochure, the lodge was rustic with log walls, thick carpeting, and Native American tapestries hanging from the ceiling. Except for the lone moose head mounted on one wall and the frightened-looking deer on the other, if Ava had digs like these, and her days were filled with hikes through the breathtaking backcountry, things couldn’t be that bad.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to cut kids off from family. I haven’t been able to talk to Arthur since he got here.”
Three weeks ago Toby would’ve agreed with Nan about the lack of contact rules. That first letter from Ava nearly did him in. Lately though, her notes home were insightful; they had a calmness about them. The phone call would’ve been great too if he hadn’t been the one to screw it up.
“May I have your attention?” A gaunt man at the front of the room spoke into a microphone. “If you’re still carrying luggage, even a simple overnight bag, please hand things off to our students. Let’s show your children how to follow directions,” he said, tacking on a false laugh.
“That’s Paxton Worth,” Nan whispered. “The director. Something about him rubs me the wrong way. Don’t you think the counselors’ names are odd? Who are these people?”
Toby hadn’t given much thought to the contrived names of the staff, but now that Nan mentioned it, he wondered, were they real?
A teenager appeared at the end of their row. Toby stood up, planning to carry their bags to the cart that was parked outside the door. It took a few seconds to dislodge himself, to work out the ache in his back.
“Your names?” The girl held a Sharpie and a few blank name tags like the ones from the table in the hall. Her hair was uneven, and not in a stylish way. It looked as if she’d whacked it off on a whim.
“I’m Nan McEttrick. I’ll take the name tag, but I’ll keep my bag.”
When Toby told the girl his name, she looked from one to the other but didn’t write anything down.
“We don’t have all day, Mallory,” Pax said, giving the girl a wholly parental glare as he stepped in front of her. He put has hand out for Nan’s bag. “As the program progresses, we’re going to need space to move around.” The director explained louder than was necessary, clearly for everyone’s benefit.
Nan pulled her bag close to her chest.
Toby recognized the director’s voice from their handful of phone calls. His tone had the quality of a television news anchor. He didn’t look anything like what Toby had expected. Yellow-gray complexion, no
chin, ears flying off both sides of his head. His face was made for radio.
“I’ll keep it out of the way,” Nan said. “It stays with me.”
Toby disarmed the uncomfortable moment by moving out of the row, toward the girl the director called Mallory. Pax said perfect under his breath as he moved on to assert his authority over two women a few rows back. Toby didn’t miss the hint of a smile Pax put on the minute he turned away from Nan.
Together Toby and Mallory carried the disobedient parents’ belongings to the cart in the hallway.
“Do you know my daughter Ava?” he asked, as he pushed some of the lighter totes off to the side to make room for the larger duffels, all the while keeping his eyes on the girl.
At first Mallory didn’t say anything. She was intent on rearranging bags. Her head was down, so Toby couldn’t see any recognition on her face. The back of her scalp was red raw like she’d gone at with her fingernails. When she reached up to hang the garment bags on the gold pole running across the top of the luggage cart, her T-shirt came free from her khakis, revealing a jagged cord that snaked its way up her abdomen out of sight. Toby looked away, instantly uncomfortable. Poor kid, he thought, what happened to her?
Mallory looked up and down the hall, and when it was clear they were alone, she made eye contact.
“Yeah, I know her,” she said, pulling the Sharpie out of her pocket along with the sticky-backed name tags. “How do you spell Sedgwick?”
Toby spelled his name as he watched the girl write.
Mallory added a number to the upper right hand corner of the tag, peeled off the back, and slapped it on his bag.
“Do you know when I get to see her?” he asked.
She was silent, doing her job, moving around to the other side of the luggage cart. Mallory leaned on a suitcase and began writing again. This time she folded the tag in half. Looking both ways, she handed the slip to Toby. “You’ll need this,” she said, tapping his bag.
Toby shoved the claim ticket inside the pocket of his jacket, keeping his eyes on the girl, waiting for an answer. She looked like she was about to say something when Pax’s booming voice interrupted her.
“Mr. Sedgwick, we’d like to begin. I’d hate for you to miss anything.” His tone was cheerful and the expression on his face polite, welcoming even. “Mallory, finish with the bags, then head back up the mountain. You’ll be with Justice for the rest of the day.”
Toby felt transported back to high school when for the rest of the morning, four hours straight, Pax drew interconnected circles with arrows in all directions on a freestanding whiteboard at the front of the hall. A few eager beavers in the front row answered all of his questions. Toby was glad he and Nan had chosen seats toward the back, so he didn’t have to pay much attention. And so the director couldn’t hear Nan.
He didn’t know if he could sit one more minute wedged into the hard plastic chair hip to hip with Nan. His neck was stiff and his back screamed for some Advil. When the guy next to him apologized for his stomach growling and the woman ahead of him started passing around Tic Tacs, Toby wondered what time they’d planned to break for lunch. His own blood sugar had taken a nosedive twenty minutes after he ate his Danish, and a headache had seized his forehead soon thereafter.
He was cataloging his complaints when he saw Nan’s hand go up. Then she was out of her seat.
“Excuse me, I have a question. When are we going to see the children?”
Pax stopped talking, his hand poised before the whiteboard. Parents in the rows in front of Toby first turned to see who was speaking, then quickly looked back to take in the director’s reaction.
“I think I speak for a lot of parents when I say our time could be better spent connecting with our kids,” Nan said.
“Ms. McEttrick, our program has served many families for many years. Would you concede that perhaps I know what I’m doing?”
“Mr. Worth, if that’s your real name, why don’t you ask the rest of the parents if they feel the same as me? Who else here wants to see their kids?”
Several hands shot up—all the men in the room and a handful of women. Then tentatively, one hand after another, until there were only a few holdouts. Clearly most in the room were on Nan’s side. Even Toby raised his high.
“I appreciate your feedback,” Pax said, moving down the center aisle, getting closer to his allies in the crowd, the smile back on his face. “There’s a certain progression to the day’s activities. I was about to break for lunch, but I’d be willing to forgo that in order to complete the exercises we need to do, getting you ready to reengage with your teenagers. Does that suit the group?”
Toby was dying to eat something, but he was willing to starve if it meant getting closer to seeing Ava. He checked his watch; it was approaching one. Toby was wondering how the director would squeeze everything in so they could see their children before they went on their overnight when a man bellowed from the back of the room.
“How long’s that going to take? Why can’t we eat while we do the damn exercises?”
“Yeah,” said a woman behind Toby. “Let’s get this over with. I’m about to pass out.”
“I want to see my son,” another woman shouted.
As soon as a few parents began to rebel, murmurs and questions rippled through the group. With one nod from Pax, several men came forward from the back of the room. Not a single one of them spoke. Within seconds it became clear they were intent on moving the chairs into a circle. People were up. Some stood, confused by the commotion. While others reoriented themselves and started to help reconfigure the furniture. Following the men’s lead, this new upheaval was communicated with actions, not words. The director didn’t entertain a single question.
When a perfect circle had been formed and everyone sat, the room went quiet again. Toby couldn’t get a handle on what had just happened.
Then Pax pointed a finger at Nan. “May I start with you? Please stand.”
The director stood in the center of the circle. Parents were sitting chair to chair, in a looser arrangement than before. Still Toby felt trapped. This is ridiculous, he thought. He was done, about to leave, when he realized he didn’t know where to go. He had no idea how to find Ava. Then Nan stood, her shoulders square, not an ounce of panic on that pretty face. Toby couldn’t tear himself away from the strength she radiated.
Pax stared her down but spoke to the rest of the group. “Don’t you find it interesting that with only a few sentences, Ms. McEttrick was able to influence the group to achieve her own interests? Some teenagers mirror adult behavior exactly like hers. Others reject it at a heavy price to their self-esteem. It should come as no surprise to each of you that either way, your self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-destructive behavior is affecting your child.”
“This is ridiculous,” Nan said, reaching back to grab her bag. “I want to see my nephew. Now!”
“Does anyone else experience Ms. McEttrick as controlling?” Pax asked. “It’s no wonder poor Arthur sees himself as incompetent. He’s incapable of completing even the simplest of tasks. At sixteen, he cries and carries on like a much younger child.”
Nan was all brass—until she heard her nephew’s name. Her eyes went glassy, and in that moment, Toby saw fear. Nan’s vulnerability was tied to loving the boy. So he stood, placing a firm hand on Nan’s back in an effort to support her. “I don’t see how this is helpful,” Toby said. “You’re upsetting her.”
“I imagine you don’t, Mr. Sedgwick. Yet unpleasant emotions, though difficult to confront, simply must be acknowledged. To be honest, I experience you as passive, someone not terribly self-aware. I’d guess you avoid conflict at any cost. Am I right?”
Toby found himself nodding.
“Perhaps that’s why Ava’s behavior is escalating—stealing, lying, drinking, taking drugs. Being promiscuous. She’s done one risky thing after another in order to get your attention. Your daughter tells us she is desperate for a parent—not a friend.”
&nb
sp; Nan and Toby stood in the center of the circle while all the other parents looked on. Some didn’t move an inch. Others leaned back, sinking deeper into their chairs. No one wanted to be the next parent in the hot seat. It was true Toby had been worried about Ava’s safety and he knew she needed help, but he never thought she was as out of control as Pax was making her sound. And even if she were, what purpose did it serve to call Toby out in front of a bunch of complete strangers?
“At Mount Hope, we effectively replace learned negative behaviors with healthy ones.” Pax placed one hand on Nan’s shoulder, the other on Toby’s, pushing them down into their seats. “For your sake and the sake of your children, we can show you how to open yourselves up to new ways of being in relationship with your teenagers. Your sons and daughters want to reclaim their lives. Let me help you help them. How does that sound?”
The punch-drunk group collectively agreed, nodding their heads. Pax waved his hands as if he were conducting a symphony. On cue, the double doors opened. Cold drinks, fresh baked goods, and sandwiches on trays materialized, wheeled in on silver carts from the hallway.
For a second Toby wondered if he wasn’t being paranoid. Had the whole thing been planned to work out exactly this way, first embarrassing and upsetting Nan, then humiliating him, all with the goal of keeping the group in line?
Toby couldn’t deny that the director had made accurate points about his less than perfect parenting. And who would refuse to sit through something if it meant helping their kid? So Toby did what he often did when feelings overwhelmed. He reached for a plate and piled it high.
TWELVE
Fringe wasn’t Fringe when he came back on Saturday.
At first, Ava didn’t see him when she walked into the mess hall. After she got her tray and turned toward their lunch table, there he was. It was as if he’d appeared out of nowhere. Even from a distance Ava could see his eyes were dry, the teary film gone. His shoulders were pushed back. Fringe looked taller, broader, and he was wearing a red shirt.
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