Chapter 4 #2
Throughout the exchange, his father’s gaze never wavered.
Hard and tight and fastened in unblinking coldness.
On his son. For the first time ever, Colin was able to look beyond the gaze.
There was the sense of being placed at a mental distance, safe behind the wall of these adults lined up beside him.
That was the one element his search for abductive solutions made clear.
He was not alone in this. They were here because they sought to protect him.
As if in reward for having arrived at this deduction, Celeste reached over and placed a hand on his.
The attorney seated across from them said, “Sheriff Eames’s wife died exactly three years ago yesterday. I could think of no more tragic a reason for my client having consumed more than might be considered either sound or reasonable.”
Colin withdrew his hand. The moment seemed frozen in time. His father’s attorney noticed Colin’s reaction. “I suppose that element was not included in whatever the boy said.”
“I’m sorry. Were you suggesting the child has reason to accuse the father of something?”
The attorney chose to ignore her question.
“My client recognizes his consumption of alcohol reaches unhealthy levels at times. As a result, he is voluntarily entering supervised counseling, which will permit him to maintain his vital position on the force.” He opened a file and passed documents across the table.
“I don’t have enough copies, so you’ll have to share.
I mention this to emphasize how vital, how absolutely crucial Sheriff Eames considers the care and support he lends to Colin’s upbringing. …”
The attorney droned on. But there was a muffled vagueness to the words now. As if Colin was trying to understand them through a filter of running water.
He was back in that time again, a period he carefully kept locked away.
Only now among all these people, the memories stabbed him.
The hospital, the endless days, the fear, the loneliness.
Her death. All of it. Colin felt like his entire world was being shaken apart, then reknit into a different form.
Everything that had come before, it needed to be reexamined in the light of being utterly alone.
What his father’s lawyer said was a lie.
Nothing about the past three years suggested his father had ever cared. Or supported. Or loved.
He opened his mouth. He wanted to ask if there was something in him that made his father sad. If he reminded his father of what they both had lost. If that was the reason why the only emotion Colin had ever witnessed from his father was the unbridled rage during his drunkenness.
Celeste gripped his hand more tightly, silencing him as firmly as if she had clamped his mouth shut.
The silver-haired gentleman broke into Colin’s thoughts with, “I think perhaps it’s time we moved to the primary reason for this meeting.”
His father’s attorney scanned the faces seated across from him. “What is going on here?”
“This meeting has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of Sheriff Eames’s behavior on or off the force,” the young woman seated next to Colin declared. “Unless you wish to include it yourself.”
“In family court,” the gentleman added. He motioned down the table to where Celeste was seated. “Where Dr. Talbot serves as official adviser.”
“To all the family courts in eastern North Carolina,” the woman attorney added. “On matters related to child welfare.”
“Again, that is not why we asked you here today,” the gentleman said. He turned to Arnold. “Dr. Weinbrandt has spent the entire morning making a thorough evaluation of Colin Eames. Arnold?”
Arnold Weinbrandt said, “Colin Eames is, quite simply, a genius. I do not mean his IQ is above the threshold. I am speaking about something else entirely. Young Eames shows a potential that appears only a few times in every generation.”
For once, his father turned his attention away as the lawyer seated opposite them said, “Where are we going with this?”
The silver-haired clinician replied, “I am here representing the board of Outer Banks Academy for the Gifted. The lady next to me, Mrs. Fitzgerald, runs the academy’s department known as Sojourn House. We want to offer Colin Eames a place. Effective immediately.”
Colin’s father laughed out loud. “This is a joke.”
“I assure you, sir, it is anything but.”
“I know that place. The tuition is what …”
“Thirty-five thousand dollars per annum. Room and board for live-in students, which we would like Colin to become, are an additional—”
His father laughed a second time. “This is nuts. Do I look like a moneybags to you?”
“No, sir, you do not. Which is why we are happy to announce that so long as your son proves his abilities are genuine, and he is willing to put in the required work, his costs will be fully covered.”
The mayor spoke for the first time. “I know for a fact the Outer Banks Academy doesn’t offer scholarships.”
“Officially, Commissioner, that is correct. But the majority shareholder and chairwoman of a Fortune One Hundred company is a graduate of OBA. She established a very special, and highly confidential, annuity. This trust is the reason why I and Mrs. Fitzgerald are present. A limited number of students from financially depressed circumstances have all their fees and expenses covered. They are also housed at the special campus facility that Mrs. Fitzgerald runs.” The gentleman showed a remarkable ability to smile with cold rage.
“Isn’t that wonderful news, Sheriff Eames? ”
“We require specifics in order to assess this revised situation,” his father’s lawyer replied. His former ire was gone now. The man’s features looked washed out.
“Which we are happy to provide.” The gentleman looked down the table at Colin. “Perhaps now would be a good time for the young man to leave us to settle the details of his transfer.”
Celeste rose and guided him back down the line of seated adults.
He felt his father’s cold fury track him, and he knew why.
Colin’s father lived by dominating. It was a cop’s method of staying alive.
Colin had heard him use the words often enough.
They were part of the danger chant, spoken every time the Maker’s Mark landed on the kitchen table.
And here he was. Colin Eames. Stripping away his father’s control.
Only when the door clicked shut behind him did Colin allow his tremors to surface.
Celeste guided him across the hall, over to a hard wooden bench. She seated herself next to him and said, “Take as long as you need.”
Her comforting presence helped pull him back. “What does it all mean?”
“I’m going to speak with you like I would an adult.
The answer is, your father came into that meeting with one thought in that cop’s mind of his.
Attack first to protect himself.” Something in those words made Celeste so angry her entire body clenched.
“And that is just like a cop. Bringing out his weapon and taking aim before he even understands what is going down. Only this time the person who got shot was the man himself.”
“I don’t understand.”
Celeste looked at him, her gaze burning with the coals of old pain. “Your father thought you’d been telling tales about him and what it’s like inside your home. And I expect there’s a lot of things you could tell us, if you had a mind.”
Colin had no idea how to respond.
“We all suspected that might have been the situation, what with the way you’ve acted and what we found there yesterday.
But making a case is tough, especially against a decorated officer of the law.
And you’re not abused in any way we can see or show a judge.
” She turned to the closed conference room door.
“So there we were, all concerned over how we were going to get your father to grant us the right to house you in a place where you could grow. Discover what your gifts truly mean.”
Colin recalled the words she had made him read from the book in the principal’s office. He recited from memory, “‘All too often in childhood the fires of genius falter. There is a very great risk that unless proper care is given, the fire may become snuffed out.’”
“There you go.” She pointed to the closed conference room door. “So now we know there was abuse. There are problems your father wants to keep secret.”
“He’s going to be appointed a county commissioner.”
Celeste rounded on him. “Is that a fact.”
“He told us yesterday. At breakfast. And they want him to run for state legislature.”
“That explains why the mayor drove all this way down here.” She rose to her feet. “Don’t you move a muscle. This is news that can’t wait.”
But as she started across the hall, Colin asked, “Why doesn’t he love me?”
“What that man feels is anyone’s guess. You can’t allow—”
“Did I kill my mama?” The words burned his mouth, his throat, his heart. Three years of nightmare fears pushed out. “Did I do something? Is that why Daddy is that way?”
Celeste squatted down beside him. “Listen to me, Colin. The medical records claim your mother died from what is known as an embolism. We can talk about the specifics another time, if you want. We can also discuss what it means for a child to carry the sort of guilt that you’re feeling just now.
How important it is to release this, let it out, and heal.
” She rose back to full height, and stayed there long enough to add, “You are alive, Colin. You have gifts. Your job is to live and do the absolute most you can with what you’ve been given. ”
Colin remained seated on the bench and felt the thought resonate through him. Like the hall and the air and the light all shook with him, trembling from the power of the words that rose like a great, silent explosion.