Chapter 22
When it came to informing Arnold and Sandrine and the academy, Celeste again insisted on taking the lead.
Colin did not object. Despite the successful outcome with his father, the confrontation had brought back all the early vulnerabilities.
Like the shadows had merely lay dormant, lurking down where he could not find them, waiting for another opportunity to rise to the surface.
It was not until they were seated in Arnold’s outer office, listening to voices emanate through the thin side wall, that Colin understood.
The academy had become his haven. The place where he had first found a true sense of safety.
His new identity, the gifted student, the investor, all this was tied to his being protected there.
Seeing his father, learning he and his team had intended to invade and attack, had threatened the first real home he had ever known.
Left him looking for a small space to slip into.
From where he might observe the world in safety.
Celeste sat catty-cornered from him, able to observe. “You’re frightened. Why?”
“I’m afraid Arnold and Sandrine will be mad with me, you know, over how I haven’t told them what’s been happening.”
She shifted her bulk, moving about the seat, making the legs creak under her weight, like the thought made her uncomfortable inside her own skin. “They might be. Which is why I’m here. To tell them you did the right thing.”
A glimmer of light pushed through the shadows. “You really think that?”
“The only thing.” She kept shifting. Back and forth, like a cat scratching itself against the wall. “I got all hot and bothered when you told me. My first reaction was, you shouldn’t be the one handling this.”
“It had to be me. And now you know why.”
“I accept that, but I don’t have to like it. Plus, everything you said, all your predictions, they need to hear from me just how right you were.”
The voices chose that moment to go quiet. Arnold opened his door, smiled to them both, and said, “Why don’t you come in.”
It took almost forty-five minutes to lay it all out.
First the investments and his group of backers, and then why they had been so important.
And still were, for that matter, but from a very different perspective than before.
The threat was gone. His loathing for being poor remained.
Colin knew he probably should have started with the need to deflect his father’s intentions.
But it made more sense somehow, at a level below strategy and conscious thought, to show how he had readied himself. And then explain why.
He started with his father’s second marriage.
Of course, the warning signals had appeared earlier, back when his father had run for state office.
But this was when it all came to a head.
The new life. The structured existence defined by Roger Eames’s rising political ambitions.
Wanting to create the perfect poster family.
Of course he wanted the son from his first marriage back home.
It had nothing to do with Colin’s gifts, who his son was and what life he might want for himself, and everything to do with creating the proper image.
Colin stopped at the point when the three of them had arrived in his father’s campaign office. He merely paused, like the transition from preparation to confrontation required him to start a new chapter. But Celeste saw that as her cue, and took over.
She described the meeting in such vivid detail, Colin’s heart resumed its breakneck pace.
Her conclusion was presented with the same clear, unambiguous strength.
“When Colin first told me what he’d been doing, and what he had planned, I was angry and I started to chew him out.
But by the time we met with Roland, I began to see how he was setting these plans in motion, bringing everything together like … ”
Arnold offered quietly, “Like a chess game.”
“There you go. Like he was seeing ten moves ahead of me. Doing what had to be done.”
By this point, Sandrine’s elbows were resting on the table, her hands supporting her chin. She straightened and asked Arnold, “May I?”
“Be my guest.”
“First and foremost, the realization I’ve been making here is that you are a child no longer.
It’s not just your brilliance. Far from it.
You are making decisions with an adult’s capacity to see beyond your fears and your weaknesses.
We all have them. Part of maturing is gaining the confidence to respond to challenges in spite of our unfinished elements and deep-seated flaws.
Which you have most certainly done in this case. ”
“I’ll give that a big amen,” Celeste said.
“So I am going to speak with you as one adult to another.” She looked at Arnold, who nodded. “For the past eight weeks—”
“More like three and a half months,” Arnold said.
“We only confirmed what was going on eight weeks ago, when one of the academy’s largest donors came to see me.
What he wanted to discuss could not be said on the phone.
His company’s outside attorney informed him, in strictest confidentiality, that private investigators had been hired to check on rumors regarding ill treatment of certain students. ”
“He specifically mentioned Sojourn House,” Arnold said.
“Had to be Grey Robinson behind this,” Celeste said.
“None other,” Arnold replied.
“Dress that shark in a three thousand–dollar suit, he’s still a shark.”
“No argument there,” Sandrine said. “Since then, we’ve heard from two other major benefactors, people whose support we rely on to keep us financially afloat.”
“Tuition only covers about seventy percent of our total running costs,” Arnold said. “Not to mention renovations and building new facilities.”
“They were being pressed to withdraw support, at least until the disturbing reports—their words, not mine—could be fully investigated.”
The two of them stopped, and waited.
Celeste said it for them. “We need Roland to make sure their attack gets stopped.”
Sandrine told Colin, “I realize it is a very great deal to ask. …”
“No, it’s not.” He wanted to scream the words. Weep his rage.
“We need to contact Roland about this before he draws up the papers,” Celeste said.
“You’d better call him,” Colin said. The only way he could keep from shouting his fury with all his might was to sit on his hands, hunch down, tighten his entire body until it threatened to cramp. All he could think was, his days of hiding in some tight little space were over. “Do it now.”