CHAPTER 19
Thursday was Senior Skip Day, which meant, as the only senior at Cardale Preparatory School going for perfect attendance from kindergarten to graduation, I was the only student in all my classes with my teachers.
And it was the day before the last day of school, so there wasn’t any homework or tests to keep me busy. I’d taken my last exam on Wednesday. Just the teachers, me, and seven hours of them trying to make small talk.
Which meant it was an acute form of torture.
By the time the final bell rang, I was grateful. I gathered my things quickly, the senior wing practically silent. I didn’t have my phone to text Jamie, but surely he’d come and pick me up, despite playing hooky. Surely he didn’t abandon me entirely.
Except when I got outside and squinted into the sun, I found that it wasn’t Jamie waiting for me in the pickup lane. It was Mom.
She was in her silver car and had the windows rolled down.
I clutched my backpack straps tightly as I walked up, trying to gauge her mood.
We hadn’t really had the chance to talk since she grounded me; she’d been busy preparing a case for trial.
“You don’t have work?” I asked when I opened the door.
“Jamie is still driving back from Jefferson with Daisy, so I said I could pick you up.”
Jamie and Daisy went to Jefferson on Skip Day? Without me? “He’s betraying me left and right,” I muttered, buckling my seatbelt before folding my arms over my chest. “It’s bad enough they didn’t come to school, but they went on a road trip without me? Traitors.”
Mom gave me a pointed look. “Even if it hadn’t been Skip Day, you wouldn’t have been able to go. Spell grounded.”
My frown deepened. “G-R-O-U-N-D-E-D.”
She pulled away from the curb.
And she didn’t even wait a full minute before launching into her serious tone. “Eleanor.” The full name. It was never good. “I want to talk to you about what happened with your father.”
I hadn’t necessarily thought I’d gotten lucky, avoiding the accountability conversation, but I hadn’t expected her to launch into it now. Then again, I was trapped in the passenger seat—what better place to lay out her disappointment in me, when I had no place to go?
“Explain to me your side,” she said. “I want to hear it.”
“You sound like a lawyer, not a mom.”
“Trust me, you want me to be a lawyer right now. If I put on the Mom hat, you’re going to be in more trouble for being disrespectful to your father.”
With a sigh, I faced her. “I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful. Dad just… You should’ve heard him. And in front of Carter the other day. He called me wanting to be a lawyer misguided.”
Mom didn’t seem too shocked by the comment, much to my surprise. She just pressed her lips together, pulling on her attorney face. “Okay.”
“He wanted Destelle to be just like you guys. Going to law school and being a great lawyer. Except she didn’t want to. And now, when I do want to, he thinks I’m stupid for it?”
Mom’s voice was gentle. “No one called you stupid, Nellie.”
I slouched lower in my seat. “It was implied. And he said that I put myself on a pedestal. That my ego is big.”
Mom pursed her lips a little. “You know, a common complaint about lawyers is that they have big egos. Your dad has heard those words a few times himself, I’m sure.”
“So why did he throw it back on me?”
Mom nodded thoughtfully, flipping on her blinker as we waited at a red light. “I can’t tell you why he does things, but I can tell you that this field isn’t glamorous. And I know you know that, but think of all the cases your father has presided over these past few years. All the things he’s seen.”
A part of me resisted. “You want me to cut him some slack.”
Mom looked over at me. “He regrets it, Nell.”
“Regrets what? Being a judge?”
She nodded. “The last case he had. It… broke something inside him. I’ve never seen him so shaken.”
“What happened?” Neither of them had ever gone into any detail.
“He was put on the criminal court for a case that involved a teen from a case he’d presided over years ago.
” Mom’s lips pressed into a line. “The young man now was on the stand for driving while intoxicated, and he ended up killing the driver of the other car. He’d been a teenager your father thought he’d helped, only to see his life run into the ground a few years later. ”
I frowned. “But that wasn’t Dad’s fault. He did everything he could.”
“Juvenile court, especially, is hard. It’s easy to wonder if you’re doing the right thing, wonder if you’ve somehow messed up… And it’s a slippery slope.” Mom pulled up to the gate to our community, looking over at me. “Your father fell down it.”
But now, I couldn’t stop thinking about the weight of it. The kind of guilt he must’ve been carrying these past few weeks, if he believed he’d failed someone. I wondered if it felt anything like what I’d carried over Beck. Worse, probably.
And that guilt would’ve pushed him to try to change my mind. “Why didn’t he say that earlier?” I muttered.
Mom gave me a knowing look. “He’s stubborn. Just like you.”
“I’m not stubborn—”
“But if you think there’s anything you need to apologize to him for, you need to. Just because you disagree with your father on something doesn’t mean you get to be disrespectful.”
I deflated even further, glaring out the window like a child. “He treats Destelle differently from me.” He likes Destelle more than me.
“I’m sorry it feels that way.” Mom pulled into our driveway and put the car into park, immediately turning toward me. She reached over and laid her hand on my knee. “I’ll have a talk with him. But I meant it about the apology, Eleanor. Right your wrong, and let me help do the rest.”
I stared at her for a moment without responding, and not because I didn’t trust her, but because I wasn’t sure I wanted to promise to apologize.
The thought of going up to Dad and uttering the words I’m sorry made my stomach turn, mostly because I was afraid of what his expression would be.
I was afraid he’d turn away before I had a chance to get the first word out, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle it if he wouldn’t look me in the eye.
Maybe I hadn’t really gotten past the fear of his disappointment. “Okay.”
Despite the fact that we were here, though, Mom didn’t reach for her seatbelt. “About the Alderton-Du Ponte serenity garden.” She paused, gauging. “That’s another big wrong you need to right.”
So Dad had told her about that, too. “I know,” I said immediately, my stomach cramping, but there was no disappointment in her gaze. She still had on her lawyer expression, full of a calm seriousness. “I’m… working on it.”
She gave my knee another squeeze, and then let go.
Mom wasn’t staying, though, because she had to finish up a few things at her office, so after dropping me off, she left. The house was quiet, with only the hum of the AC lulling in the background. Right your wrong, Mom had said. And let me help do the rest.
So, begrudgingly, I headed for the stairs.
The door to Dad’s study was closed, and I stared it down with the same sort of trepidation one might have as they stared down the ledge of a cliff.
In reality, it was nothing extreme. Dad would be in there, doing…
whatever it was Dad did when he locked himself inside.
He’d open the door, I’d throw out an apology, and I’d be on my merry way. All I had to do was knock.
But deep down, I didn’t want to throw out an apology and run.
I wanted to sit with him, to talk to him, to watch him work like I used to.
I wanted to go back to a time when we’d been on the same page.
If I jumped—knocked—now, I knew what I would be faced with.
Dad would not smile, he would not laugh, and he would not ask me to stay with him.
I knew what waited for me on the other side of the door. D-I-S-A-P-P-O-I-N-T-M-E-N-T.
Knowing that, accepting that, I knocked.
Silence greeted me. I couldn’t hear anything on the other side, like Dad shuffling across the floor. I knocked again, and there was still nothing. Holding my breath, I tried the doorknob, fully expecting it to be locked, fully surprised when it turned.
Dad’s study was empty with the light flipped off. Dad’s study at his old house had been larger, with lots of dark oak and heavy pieces. The bookshelves had spanned up to the ceiling, and I remembered standing on Jamie’s back to reach books from the higher ledges.
This study, though, was small, with space for a few bookshelves, a chair near the window, and a desk in the corner. The surface was clutter-free, with papers and pens neatly stacked and put into place. A cluttered desk equals a cluttered mind, he’d once told me.
For how he’d been lately, I expected to see clutter everywhere. The room, though, was perfectly clean, as if this was what he’d spent his days doing. Not sulking, but tidying.
I inched further into the space. There were three photos on Dad’s desk, two at each corner and one in the middle.
The one in the middle was a photo of him and Mom from one of their vacations years ago, his arm around her waist. The one at the far left corner was a photo of him and Destelle, giving peace-signs at the camera at an Alderton-Du Ponte gala.
And in the corner at the right, angled, was a photo of Dad, Jamie, and me.
It was probably seven years ago, from a day we’d spent at the bay. Dad was crouched down, and Jamie was on his back, shaggy brown hair, arms strangling Dad’s neck. Dad was tucking me to his chest, and the three of us smiled widely at the camera.
I didn’t remember the photo, but I could remember the day.
It’d been a few weeks after Destelle had left on her summer road trip, after Destelle had called to say, for the second time, that she’d been pushing back when she would come home.
Jamie and I had been so disappointed, so Dad had proposed a beach day.
It felt like forever ago.
“Feels like forever ago, doesn’t it?”