Exposure (18 page)

She backed away from the mirror and draped herself across her bed, facedown, feeling empty and wronged. This, she thought, was not so different from the way young queen-to-be Victoria must have felt, severely overprotected in order to make sure she would live to take the throne when her uncle died. Lying there, Amelia let her imagination drift, thinking of silk taffeta and velvet gowns, of corsets and lace, and of playing Victoria one day onstage, or playing Elizabeth—or Medea, who wouldn’t hesitate to punish those who’d wronged her. Amelia let vengefulness fill her, but without a vengeful character’s role to hold it, the feeling poured out as quickly as it had come. She simply wasn’t the type.

The phone rang at eight o’clock, and a few seconds later her mother yelled up to her, “Amelia, Cameron is on the phone. Do you want to talk to her?”

Amelia opened her door and walked to the landing that overlooked the living room. “Am I allowed?” she asked with deliberate sarcasm. That, she could manage.

“Come to the kitchen,” her mother told her, and then told Cameron, “she’ll be just a second.”

When Amelia took the phone, she said, “Hey Cameron, sorry, I had to come all the way downstairs.”

“Are you okay? Anthony told me what’s going on. He’s really pissed, as you might guess.”

Amelia wanted to ask for details, but her mother was hovering. “I would’ve called you yesterday if I could.”

Her mother said, sotto voce, “Tell her you have mono. That’s what the school will be telling everyone.”

“I’m supposed to tell you I have mono,” she said, turning her back to her mother. “But really, I’m under house arrest.”

“Amelia!” Her mother took the phone and told Cameron, “She’s kidding, Cameron—and I’m so sorry, but right now she needs to get back into bed and get some rest. Call later, won’t you?”

“Come see me,” Amelia said into the phone over her mother’s shoulder.

“Have a good day, Cameron,” her mother said, then hung up the phone. She glared at Amelia.

“She already knows—and anyway, what do you expect?” Amelia said, answering the glare with her own. “You want me to just lie down and take it, but that’s not how you raised me, and that’s not how I am.”

“I expect you to cooperate with us,” her mother said, sounding hurt. “It’ll go so much easier if you do.”

“Easier for you, sure, but it’d be wrong. Momma, tell me, how is it you can think I’m smart and capable about every other thing in my life, and think that when it comes to Anthony, I’m suddenly an imbecile?”

“I don’t think that. What I know is, emotions can be poisonous to good judgment. Falling for the wrong person can ruin your life.”

“Having a certain kind of parents can ruin your life.”

“Being duplicitous can ruin your life,” her mother said pointedly.

“Sure, if what a person’s hiding is dangerous.” Amelia’s gaze challenged her mother to argue the point. When that didn’t happen, Amelia softened, saying, “Falling for the right guy can make life amazing and wonderful, right? How is it that you and Daddy imagine you can know which it is for me? You’ve never spent time with Anthony. You don’t know anything about him.”

Her mother shook her head. “We don’t know him, that’s so. But it’s plain enough that he’s the sort who’ll lead you where you ought not to go, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would say that you and Daddy are overreacting,” she said. “Please, Momma. I know you don’t agree with Daddy about all this. Call whoever it is you need to call so that they’ll let Anthony be.”

Her mother averted her eyes. “What?” Amelia asked. “What’s going on?”

“Even if I wanted to go against his wishes, there’s nothing I can do. Anthony was arrested yesterday.”

Amelia stared. “He was not. Cameron would have told me.”

“I imagine she would have if you’d talked longer. Look, I couldn’t do anything even at the time; it was too late. The best thing is to accept that it’s over and done. He’s not the one for you, I promise.”

What insubstantial things, dreams. Amelia watched the one she’d conjured and nurtured and kept before her for twelve brilliant months dissolve like a sand castle in the onrush of a rising tide.

10

ARLAN’S CAMPAIGN TO PUT HIS WORLD BACK IN ORDER
began with a list, which he wrote out in small, neatly printed letters on
Wilkes, Inc
. letterhead. He did this from his desk at Wilkes Honda, his flagship store, while outside his office windows the sales consultants, as they were called nowadays, stood with customers and talked up the superior features and benefits of Honda automobiles, the finest vehicles in their class. It didn’t bother Harlan a bit that he had employees two miles away doing the same thing but with Toyotas, and five miles away with Volkswagens. You told your buyer what he or she wanted to hear—that’s what sold cars.

He wished positive persuasion was as easy with teenage daughters. That Amelia imagined herself in love in the first place was ludicrous to Harlan. He’d been seventeen once—granted, forty years earlier—and knew very well that the feelings she was having for that slick piece of work, Winter, were no different than sweet little Tanya Hill’s had been for him at that age. Tanya had been quite willing to give him her heart, and whatever else he wanted, but that supposed love had turned out to be no more real than a three-dollar bill.

He wanted to give Amelia more credit than what he ascribed to Tanya. Amelia was in every way a superior young woman, thanks to the care he and Sheri had taken with her all along. He was reasonably certain that when it came to getting physical with Anthony Winter, she’d had far more sense than Tanya’d had. The trouble was that no girl of that age could be trusted to know her own mind or heart—especially heart. And if you didn’t stop them in time, the way he’d cut himself loose from Tanya back then, they might never get wise. They might, at seventeen, marry the sweet-talking devil whose souped-up 1940 Dodge D-17 Special had been won in a bar’s backroom poker game, making him appear to be a hot high-roller, rather than the reckless good-timer he really was. From there they might have a kid who, cute as he’d be, wouldn’t rate high enough on the list of after-work attractions (parties, bars, beer, joyrides, parties, beer, joyrides, bars) to get much notice. Such a woman might stay blind to good sense her entire life and die of a ruined liver with a no-good man’s name on her lips.

No. You had to stop the train before it even left the station.

Harlan’s train-stopping list began with William Braddock’s name. After Braddock were the four local television news stations, and then the
N&O
and
Wake Weekly
. With the same diligence that had ultimately won him business dominance and the respect of not only his peers but of the community at large, he looked up the names and phone numbers of every Raleigh, Wake Forest, Cary, and Garner public high-school principal. It was only right, he thought, to make educators aware of the Winter kid and the danger he posed. Harlan’s grandfather had liked to say, “It’s not until you shine a light on a snake can you really tell what kind you’re dealing with.” Harlan would be the light for the whole community. That way, not only would he stop Winter in mid-slither, but he’d likely force some of the other snakes out there back into their holes, for good, he hoped.

“William Braddock, please,” Harlan said, reaching over to close his office’s interior blinds. “It’s Harlan Wilkes.” When Braddock came on the line, he said, “Thanks for taking my call. I wanted to just touch base with you this morning.”

“It’s no trouble,” Braddock said. “I’m hoping that having a chance to sleep on things has changed your mind. As I said last night, given the nature of the trouble, keeping Amelia in her regular routine is really the best thing for her.”

“Mm. Well, I’m sure your intentions are good and you are, of course, an expert, of a kind, where kids are concerned. But—and this is no dig—you’re not a parent, and especially not Amelia’s parent. You’ll have to leave ‘what’s best’ up to my wife and me.”

“Ah,” Braddock said, and there was a short silence on the line. He coughed, then said, “So if you haven’t changed course, what can I do for you this morning?”

“Given that the DA saw fit to arrest Winter, I’d like to suggest that you expel the boy, as protection for the other girls. I know his mother’s a teacher there, but that shouldn’t matter—plus, it’s not as if you’ll lose any revenue with him gone. And while I’m on it: you need to find out how this happened under her watch. Winter is her kid, and Amelia was her student—which, to my thinking, means she’s doubly responsible.”

“Mr. Wilkes, your concern is admirable, and I appreciate it. I’ve already begun looking into the matter, and I assure you, appropriate action will be taken just as soon as the situation is fully known.”

“Why wait? Every minute he’s there, you’re endangering every girl in your charge.”

“Kim Winter is a good teacher and a valued asset here,” Braddock said, “but Ms. Winter notwithstanding, due process demands that I give the matter a full, fair hearing. I’ll be talking to both Ms. Winter and Anthony in detail, as well as consulting with the advisory board, and appropriate action will be taken.”

Harlan sighed. Men like William Braddock were too caught up in “consulting” and “process.” The man needed to have some balls and just make an executive decision and move on with things.

“Keep me posted,” Harlan said, then moved on to phoning the next principal without taking a break. These calls were announcements, warnings. Not everyone on his list was available to take his call. In the cases when the principal wasn’t, he requested one of the assistant principals. He spoke anonymously, a “concerned father” who, to protect his daughter’s identity, declined to reveal his own. “But I promise, this is no prank. The arrest is public record,” he said, and provided all the details that would let them find the Wake County arrest log themselves, assuming they, like Braddock, would have to weigh and measure and discuss before taking action to protect their students.

His approach with the news stations was similar. But here, all he needed to do was point the dogs in the direction of the arrest log and mention that the kid involved attended “one of the prominent private schools,” and he knew they’d go running for the story like Buttercup used to go after the neighbor’s cat when it came around taunting her.

He was about to contact the newspapers when his wife called. “Have you decided whether you’re golfing today?” she asked, sounding tired.

Neither of them had slept much last night, and they’d gotten up for good at four-fifteen. Sheri went to shower and Harlan, seeing her there, slim and firm as a lot of women half her forty-nine years, took off the clothes he’d just put on and stepped into the shower with her. It’d taken some persuasion to get her to go along with his interest, but he’d prevailed. Fifty-eight years old, and he was still more than able to make love standing up in the shower—not as easy as it looked in the movies. The very fact of this accomplishment gave him a little surge of manly pride, and why not? He knew men a decade younger who were popping Viagra and griping about needing knee or hip replacements.

Afterward, Sheri grabbed her robe and wrapped it around herself without toweling off.

“Cold?” Harlan asked, still standing in the wide, tiled expanse of shower that was—he’d measured it—bigger than the entire kitchen of the trailer he’d grown up in. There were two shower heads and a dozen spray nozzles placed along the walls so that, if you wanted it, you could have a shower that felt like you were standing outside during a September hurricane.

“Mm,” she said, noncommittal, and began pressing her hair with a hand towel.

“ ’Cause it’s a little late for modesty.” He laughed. She didn’t. He didn’t pursue it. Women were too damn complicated.

Now he said, “You know, I think I’m gonna stay here and finish up some business. I’m not really up for golf, anyway. Think I used up my sports energy this morning.”

“I found a tutor,” Sheri said. “She’ll work with Amelia’s teachers, and come in for three hours a day, Monday through Thursday until school’s out for winter break. I don’t know what we’ll do then.”

Harlan leaned back in his chair. “She won’t need a tutor during break.”

“I mean about her being home for near three weeks with nothing to do. Honestly, Harlan, that’s the least of it. I truly do not know what we’ll do with her being home all afternoon and evening
every day
, and all weekend.”

“What’d you do when she was little? Just do that.”

“Tea parties and playgroup and grocery shopping?” Sheri said. “I can’t think that’s going to work very well at her age.”

“I didn’t mean literally. You’re great at the mom thing, is what I mean. The togetherness will be good for you, don’t you think? And I’ll fill in what blanks I can,” he added, envisioning himself and Amelia taking the new GranCabrio out—he’d let Amelia get behind the wheel, give her a taste for what a truly fine car was like for the driver—and she could join him on the golf course, too. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d golfed with him. “And how about this?” he added as another idea came to him. “We’ll go away for the holidays—take your parents with us and head to Mexico for a week or so.”