Chapter 42
ALMOST AN HOUR LATER than we originally planned, we scramble into Clint’s beat-up Tacoma.
I’ve kept my head down. I don’t want Erika to see the panic in my eyes.
We need to get to Reid. I yank on the seat belt, but it won’t budge.
I force myself to slow down and gently pull.
After three tries, I’m able to click in.
Erika grumbles but doesn’t complain as she climbs up into the cracked gray leather bench of the extended cab. Nothing luxurious about the smell of greasy metal and used basketball socks.
Clint slams the door behind him. “I’ve got the tarp slid back. Everybody good?”
“All set, honey,” I say with false breeziness.
Erika makes a noise from the back seat that somehow means she’s also ready to go.
Without discussing it, Clint and I decide to sit with our own thoughts. I’ve got lots of theories but none of them are good.
Ten minutes later as Stevie Nicks croons on the Tacoma’s surprisingly good stereo system, Erika speaks up as if we’ve been talking the whole time.
“I can’t believe I’ve been beating myself up for being such a bad judge of character when it wasn’t even him.”
Clint taps his thumb against the down volume button on his steering wheel.
“You really thought he spray-painted our garage and car?” I shift slightly in my seat as I can barely see her in my periphery.
“No. Never. But I thought he told.” Her halting voice belongs to her much younger self.
A weight settles on my chest. “Told what?”
“But they said he hasn’t had his phone since Sunday afternoon. So, he couldn’t have,” she mumbles. “We’ve been using tests we shouldn’t have.” Erika’s voice shakes. “For tutoring.”
“What do you mean? Tests you shouldn’t have?” I stare out the front windshield.
“Stolen tests.” Her voice is soft, but it’s as if each word burns a brand into my brain.
Having a daughter who started, with her friends, a tutoring business that helps other students is like a monument to my success as a mother.
When my self-recrimination gets too harsh, I buff this statue of mothering achievement.
If my teenager could be part of something so altruistic and, frankly, profitable, I was doing something right.
But they have been doing it with stolen tests?
Clint squeezes hard, but my hand goes limp.
“Did you hear me? Your perfect daughter is a cheat.” Erika’s voice is caught between ages—immature but resolute, feisty but fragile.
“Oh, Aery.” Her toddler name, which is more like a moan, slips from my lips.
“What tests?” Clint asks.
“I didn’t know. I promise. I thought it was from a previous year, and I used it for all my one-on-ones.” A sob makes her stutter. “I-I messed up.”
“It’s not your fault if you didn’t know.” We can fix this. She just needs to explain. We can help her get back on track.
“But then I did,” Erika says with a drop-the-mic tone that makes my stomach churn.
“Someone found out?” Clint’s tone matches his daughter’s. He’s put this together. Before me. Has someone been threatening her?
“I got a snap that MJ said we were stealing tests. Which is bull—anyway, they said he was laughing about it Sunday night at an off-campus party. But he couldn’t have.
” She takes a deep breath. “Then these randos said I had to come forward and admit to cheating, but I didn’t know.
I mean, none of us knew.” Her voice breaks and then she continues in a whisper, “At first.”
“What do you mean—at first?” Clint grips the steering wheel with both hands.
“If I don’t admit to it, they’re going to ruin all of us. They’re going to make it seem like . . . It was only a few tests . . . and when we really knew . . . But they’ll make it seem like . . .”
I wring my sweaty fingers in my lap. “Why would you not tell us any of this before?”
“I thought I could fix it. I mean, this is so much more than some paint. This is my future. And I . . . I thought MJ told someone after I sent him the picture.” Sounds of her crying fill the cab, and then she sniffs hard. “I need a tissue.”
“Should we stop?” Clint asks me but then glances toward the back seat.
“No. Please,” Erika utters between sobs. “I want Reid.” She wheezes and then snuffles. “And I really need a tissue.”
I pull my purse onto my lap and dig around inside, remembering I pulled the pack out while I was at my desk.
“Check the glove compartment,” Clint mumbles.
I pop open the surprisingly disciplined glove box.
“I organized it last weekend before our, uh . . . well, for Sunday.” Clint raises an eyebrow at me.
I nod as I pull out a small pack of tissues and hand it back to Erika.
“Do you want to tell us why you kept this from us? Even after what happened to our garage and car?” Clint’s words are so tight, as if he strangled them as they left his mouth. Feeling obliged to ask the questions and wanting to know the answers are two entirely different things.
Silence from the back seat.
“Just tell us—did you send the picture over Snapchat? And only the one?” I suck in my lips.
“Erika?” Clint prompts.
“Yes, Dad. And just the one. Can we drop it? You guys know everything.”
“Hardly.” Clint slaps at the blinker. “Where did these tests come from and who have you been talking to?”
My fingers itch to pull out my phone to contact the police.
And say what? That my daughter is being threatened online by someone who knows she profited from stolen tests and that they might have that picture she took?
My head pounds. I guess they’ll see the threats on her phone.
They’ve likely not stopped since we took the phones away.
“This is not how we communicate as a family, Erika.” Clint is frustrated, and I get it. Erika throws out shocking revelations and then clams up.
“Oh, really?” Erika blows her nose. “What happened on Sunday?”
I look out the window and wait for Clint to answer.
“I mean, no one communicated on that day. Not that I was overly disappointed not to have to go hiking, but then we were driving to see Grandma. Who definitely hates surprises.” Erika’s voice has rediscovered her teenage brawn.
I squirm in my seat. “She was happy to see us.” Eventually. My mother’s face when I showed up with the kids, unannounced, on her doorstep in Narragansett . . . She recovered well. She always does.
“Mom.” Erika’s eye rolling has a tone. “She stood in her doorway and wouldn’t let us pass for a full minute. She was like the Praetorian Guard.”
“What do you know about Roman bodyguards?” I scrunch up my eyebrows and swivel in my seat to look at her.
“Don’t deflect.” She sniffles. “Why did you bring Reid and me to Rhode Island when we were supposed to be hiking with Dad?”
The pot calling the kettle. My clever one is currently deflecting from talking about stolen tests.
We need to get back to who might be threatening her online, but I want to do that sitting face-to-face, not awkwardly in the car.
I sigh. “The weather wasn’t great, and I just wanted to see my mom. It’d been too long.”
Clint stays silent. Apparently, neither of us wants to step back through the minefield of insecurities and hidden truths that got us to our blowup on Sunday.
I glance up at my husband’s face as he stares out the front windshield.