Chapter 6
Biology Class
Day 4
“You can’t just threaten to throw up on me every time you don’t want to get your hands dirty, Books.”
“It’s Brooks,” I said.
“I know. But you look like the sort of person who makes friends with her books. It just fits.”
“You act like that’s an insult.”
He smiled at that, but I refused to be affected by the sight. I had bigger fish to fry, namely the small pig not staring back at me—because it was dead and without a clue that we were about to violate its pink, wrinkly little body. “I do all the writing and our reports. You hate doing that and now you don’t have to. It is more than fair.”
“I just think my conscience won’t be able to rest knowing that I’m doing all the dirty work, and you’re only writing stuff down.”
“You can’t just pull out words like ‘conscience’ whenever you want to win an argument. I stayed up until nine the other night, working on our report, okay? I’m doing loads more work than you.”
He dropped his mouth open in shock, one hand on his cheek. “Nine?!”
I brandished the scalpel in the air in front of him, speaking slowly to the growing gleam in his eye. “Shut. Up.”
T-minus 50 days to exit
Dax hours remaining: 200
I walked home from the courthouse in a bewildered daze. My phone, however, was very on top of things. After silencing three calls from the senator, I made two of my own. One to my neighbor back in Nashville to see about watering my plants, and one to my professor over my postdoc position later this summer. I hadn’t been looking forward to that phone call, with good reason.
“You have to stay for the summer?” came the voice I had been dreading speaking to since the verdict. Kathleen was one of the department heads for mathematics at Vanderbilt. She was firm, knew her stuff, drank eight cups of coffee a day, and frequently made decisions affecting her students' lives based on her caffeine consumption. I’d seen many students leave her class in tears. I could only pray her veins were buzzing this morning.
“It’s a big misunderstanding, and I’ve been court-ordered to stay here for seven weeks to do some community service. I’ll be back in plenty of time to teach my class, but I won’t be able to help with the research I had agreed to do over the summer.” At her demand, I told her the basics of my sad story.
“Huh,” she said again, the line going silent. I heard the sound of shuffling papers. “Part of your postdoc required research this summer. You won’t be able to do that?”
“It’s not likely,” I said. If I were only working at Dax’s, I might have been able to squeeze in some research, but working at the cafe as well put a major dent in my plans.
“Let me think about a few things, and I’ll get back to you.”
I stifled my groan and said thank you before hanging up. I wasn’t sure what I wanted her to do. Call Judge Baylor, guns blazing, and force him to reconsider his punishment? The thought immediately filled me with warring guilt. I wanted to make things right. I did feel horrible about what happened. Not to mention mortified. But couldn’t I feel horrible and write a check at the same time?
Instead of going home to where my dad could find me, my feet took me on a pathway to the beach instead. There was a public access point a few streets over that led to the side of a beach that wasn’t great for families and swimming. The water was too choppy, which meant that it was a great place to sit and watch the waves and seagulls while trying to make sense of my life.
The beach was nearly empty. Every once in a while, I’d see someone running or taking a walk, but otherwise, the wind and the muggy afternoon air seemed to be enough to give me what I was craving.
The quiet. No islander judgment. And no Dax Miller.
After ten minutes, my life was still as confusing as ever, which was why, when Cat’s name came up on my phone, I answered.
“You’re here for the whole summer?” Cat’s voice squealed into the phone after I relayed my afternoon in court.
“For seven weeks.”
I put her on speaker, lay down on the sand, and filled her in on all the details. Almost all the details. For whatever reason, I had no desire to talk about Dax any more than I had to. And it had nothing to do with the fact that I knew Cat had thought Dax was cute for many years, even with my strong objections. Lots of things could be cute but still annoying.
Like cats.
“I hate how easy it’s all been for you. I’ve been trying to get Dax to notice me for years. And then you come back into town for a weekend, and bam, one criminal charge later, you get to hang out with him nonstop for two months?”
Despite myself, I laughed. “You can have him. In fact, you can take over my service hours. I’ll run the inn with your uncle.” Suddenly, that thought sounded so appealing. “Please, can we switch?”
She scoffed into the phone. “Dax would never let you get away with that. I have to know, did you guys bring up the garage while in a garage?”
“Why do you have a freakishly good memory?”
“From the second I heard it was his garage you smashed into, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the irony.”
Despite myself, I laughed. “Shut up.”
“Was it weird seeing him after so long?”
“He was exactly like the Dax I remembered from biology.” Minus the muscles, the array of tattoos, and the overall manliness of his features, but she didn’t need to know that.
“So he’s flirtatious under the guise of not caring?”
I needed to shut this down quick.
“Why are you asking me? You should know him better than I do. You stayed on the island after high school.” I tucked my long skirt underneath my legs as another gust of wind threatened to expose me to the elements.
She made a noise like I was crazy. “I only admire from a distance, like a proper low-threat stalker, thank you very much. If he actually spoke to me, I’d probably faint.”
I huffed out a laugh before changing the subject. “Anyway, how’s the B&B? Got any rooms available for me for the summer?”
“I’m so sorry. I wish we did, but we’re booked solid for the next few weeks. There might be something available after that, though. Do you want to just stay with me?”
“Thanks, but I’ll be alright. Let me know if a room opens up.” Crashing at a friend’s house was tempting, but I couldn’t bear the thought of inconveniencing anybody because of my stupidity. I wanted my own space, but if that couldn’t happen, this would be great motivation to get me back to Nashville in seven weeks .
If not sooner.
The truth in the words of a t-shirt in one of the town square tourist shops hit me like a ton of bricks.
Life is a beach .
The silverware clanked on the dishes later that night as I moved the cauliflower rice and roasted chicken around on my plate. I sat at the kitchen table my parents had bought after my mom complained that our previous table wasn’t large enough to throw dinner parties. Now, in a twist of irony, my dad’s new wife was the one hosting events at the house.
Bless her heart, Angela had been attempting small talk all evening, chattering endlessly about things normal families would probably discuss at the dinner table. She brought up the abnormal heat and the wind the island had been getting. She talked about the new community pool hopefully going in over the summer and how nice that would be for all the kids on the island. She chatted about the farmers market and how she couldn’t wait to go back again this Saturday to get some of the goat milk lotion that had made such a difference for her skin.
But there was a storm brewing at our table. My dad had been given time to absorb what I had told him about my morning in court and hadn’t said a word to me since. But with each impatient bite of his food and every grunt given in reply to Angela’s chatter, a budding hurricane grew in the space between us—a tension I remembered well throughout my life.
I wanted to balk at the feeling. Push it away. I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I had spent my entire life attempting to prove myself worthy to someone who had never deemed me as such. I graduated at the top of every class and graduated with honors in every degree I attained afterward, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was still nothing but a disappointment to him.
It was almost a relief when he wiped his mouth with his napkin and spoke.
“Even with your blatant disregard for everything my attorney and I told you to say, I’m still going to try to keep this out of the press. But I do know there are people just itching to spread the news that Clayton Brooks’s daughter is here serving a community sentence.”
Deep breaths. Remain calm.
Swallowing, I said, “I don’t think there’ll be that much gossip. Everyone will know it was an accident.”
My dad stared at me incredulously—like I was missing something so completely obvious. “They’ll know that my daughter pleaded guilty to a DUI. And that’s all they’ll have to know.”
“Didn’t Larry Donalds get a DUI for driving the golf cart drunk on the beach last year?” Angela asked, her timid voice attempting to cheerfully dislodge us. A piece of my heart softened at her attempt.
“Well, Larry isn’t running the biggest campaign of his life at the moment. And it’s all going to be ruined because my daughter came home for the weekend.”
Obviously, Dr. Barb didn’t have an egotistic politician for a father. The way he could so casually destroy me in one sentence or less was a work of art. I forced myself to speak.
“Dad, it’s a local senator election. You’re not running for president. I’m not going to jail. I think you’ll be fine.” My body tensed after I spoke the words, as though I were bracing myself for something coming. There were two parts of my personality at war with each other: the part that cowered under my dad’s disappointment and the part that was trying to never let myself feel that way again.
He stared at me, betrayal written all over his face. His words were a careful mix of control and seething anger. “Now, I’m a senator. But what if I do run for president one day? Everything we do in this family is monitored. You think I’m causing all of this fuss for myself? It’s to keep all of us safe. If you don’t think everything you’ve done isn’t going to be found out by reporters, you’re grossly naive. Which makes this whole thing beyond maddening. You pleaded guilty to a DUI, instead of fighting something I know I could have fixed.”
“I was guilty, Dad.”
He banged his hand on the table, causing the dishes to jump along with me and Angela. For all his anger, he didn’t yell. He hissed and seethed like a snake, but never yelled.
“I golf with the judge, for Pete’s sake. You weren’t drinking. It was just a completely idiotic…” He looked like he wanted to say a lot of words just then but reined it all in and, through gritted teeth, ended on, “…mistake.”
Mistake.
My body tensed. There was that word again. It always seemed to find me. My dad had the tone down perfectly, with the hiss of the S and just the right inflection of speech to punch the gut. Suddenly, memories of being a child and crying under my covers came rushing back over me. It was amazing how one small word could set me back a decade or two of mental and emotional growth.
“The judge told me if I do my hours, then it will be removed from my record. So, it will be fixed.”
“Well, how nice of the judge,” Angela’s voice rang between us. She jumped up, bumping the table as she did so. “Who wants dessert? I bought an angel food cake, and I’ve got some sliced strawberries and sugar-free whipped cream, if anybody wants some.” She didn’t wait for our answer and scampered into the kitchen. I took a bite of dry chicken and swallowed.
“Ivy. One more thing.”
My eyes left my plate of half-eaten food to meet his. For a split second, hope pierced my heart. Maybe now he’d tell me how glad he was that I hadn’t gotten hurt. How, when he heard about the crash, his first concern had been for my safety. It was pathetic, really, how even after years of therapy, I still found myself aching for the one thing I never got from him.
But like always, love was nowhere to be found.
“Not counting your DUI that I now have fighting against me, you hanging around that boy was the worst thing the judge could have done to me. We both know your history.”
That boy.
I blinked back the hot splash of emotion in my eyes. “There is no history. That was nothing. I haven’t spoken to him in ten years.”
He shrugged. “Maybe not. But I remember what I saw. And just so you don’t forget, people don’t change that much. He’s trouble. Always has been. So you remember that.”
All the words I wanted to say swirled around in my head, taunting me, but I wasn’t fast enough to catch them.
And he wasn’t finished.
Leaning across his plate, he waited until I looked at him. “I live here. Not you. Your last name is mine. I gave it to you. You’d better start earning it.”
We both startled when Angela brought our plates of fat-free cake and set them in front of us, all while humming a tune I didn’t recognize.
My dad picked up his fork and took a bite of cake, relaying one last parting shot as he did so. “You do your hours, and then get out of that shop. You hear me?” He didn’t wait for me to respond. Instead, he turned to his new bride and gave her a smile, “The cake is good. Thank you, honey.”
Case closed. Conversation over.
Message received.