Exposure (40 page)

The producer said, “Mr. Wilkes, thanks again for agreeing to do this. What we’re going to do is have you seated right here, and Bobby will sit here next to you. He’ll ask you a few questions, and since we aren’t doing this live, you feel free to answer at length. All right?”

“You bet,” Harlan said. His phone began ringing. He checked the display: Sheri. He pressed a button to ignore the call. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem. We’ll get you set up with a mic, a little powder so you’re not shiny on tape, we’ll do a sound check, and then we’ll shoot it.”

“Sure thing,” Harlan said, just as his phone went again. Sheri. “That’s my wife; I better take it. Pardon me, I’ll be right back.”

He walked off toward the showroom doors as he answered, “Hey hon, I
just
got in, I was going to call you in a few.”

“So she’s not with you,” Sheri said. “I thought maybe, if you’d gotten in early …”

Harlan stopped walking. “Tell me the dog is missing.”

“I let her sleep in while I went to church,” Sheri went on as if she hadn’t heard him, “so I didn’t go upstairs until a minute ago. She was so moody last night. I wanted to give her time to get over it.”

“Get over what?”

“I’ve checked the whole house and the cottage. Her car’s here.”

“Maybe … maybe she went running.”

“We should have gotten her a new phone,” Sheri said.

“She’s just gone running, I’ll put money on it. Took advantage of you not being in the house and went for a run.” If he kept saying it, he might make it true. “I’ll be home shortly, all right? Call me when she comes in.”

As sure as he was that he’d called it right, he spent the entire interview distracted by the possibility that he was wrong, a nagging doubt that he preferred not to acknowledge, but which wouldn’t leave his mind. When they wrapped things up a half hour later and he still hadn’t heard back from Sheri, the doubt pushed itself to a place where he couldn’t ignore it anymore. He thanked the reporter and the crew, told them to go someplace nice and have lunch on him, then got into his truck and drove home, hoping that the discomfort in his gut had everything to do with hunger and not what he would find when he got there.

27

IM READ THE NOTE AND SANK INTO A KITCHEN CHAIR
. S
HE
smoothed the paper on the tabletop, a nice sheet of paper from the box of linen stationery she’d gotten from a student last Christmas, then read it again. Mexico, he said.
Mexico
. Why would they—?
How
would they—? What in God’s name were they thinking?

She pushed her straggly hair back from her face and read the note yet again, hoping the words would somehow be different, would rearrange themselves into something that made sense.

Dear Mom
,

This is going to be a shock, and I’m sorry for that. You don’t deserve more trouble than I’ve already caused you. If there were any other way for Amelia and me to be together … There isn’t, though, so I’m taking her to Mexico. I’m broke but I made sure she has money, so don’t worry about that
.

You know as well as I do that I don’t have anything left to lose if I stay. Whatever I’ll owe you, I’ll find a way to pay back one way or another
.

I still don’t accept that I’ve done anything wrong, but until everyone else sees it that way, this is how it’s got to be
.

It might take a while for us to get to where I can be in touch with you. I promise, though, that I’ll be careful and make safe choices and I’ll contact you as soon as I can. You’re the greatest mom ever and I love you
.

—Anthony

“I can’t believe you did this,” she said, shaking her head. She stared at the paper. The words did not change.

“Pay me back?!” she said. “In what, pesos earned picking avocados?” She laughed, a delirious, disbelieving laugh, at the absurdity. She could lose every dime she had to her name, and he thought that his promise to somehow find a way to repay her was going to make it all right?

This could not be happening. This could
not
be her life.

He could not
do
this to her.

How would any lawyer, any judge, any thinking person now imagine he was anything but hell-bound guilty as charged? How could he just run off and leave her to deal with his mess?

He gets Amelia, he gets free, and she gets
nothing
, loses
everything
. No job, no money, no William.
Oh, wait
, she thought:
I get all the shame and embarrassment and blame
.

She never should have permitted him to date Amelia. If she’d gone to the Wilkeses right from the start, they’d have shut it all down and none of this would be happening. Or maybe they wouldn’t have shut the kids down, and so none of this would be happening.

None of this should be happening.

“Damn him!” she said, but the curse and the anger behind it, the black wish that she’d ignored that washstand all those years ago, felt dangerous, like a pit of hot bubbling tar she might step into at her own ruin. He was her child. How could she wish him away?

It took awhile, but when no answers came to her and the earth hadn’t cracked open and swallowed her up (though she’d wished it mightily), Kim calmed down to the point of not blaming Anthony for
every
thing, and blamed, too, the wine. Last night, she’d taken a bottle and a book to her room and, as the evening went on, had two glasses and then poured a third, knowing better, and drank it, too, and went to sleep a little after ten o’clock with Anthony brooding in his room, as had become his habit. She didn’t think anything of it. He was in a bad mood, and no wonder, after his too-short visit with Amelia at the flea market.
She
was in a bad mood, on his behalf and hers. She’d had the wine and gone to sleep and slept hard, oblivious to his note-writing, to his taking Amelia and
leaving
, for Christ’s sake, for Mexico.

She blamed herself.

Though Kim knew later that it hadn’t mattered a bit that she waited two hours before she picked up the phone and called Amelia’s parents, she felt terrible about it at the time. She’d showered and dressed and paced while trying to decide whether Amelia had also left a note, which, if so, would relieve her of the obligation to call—as if by obsessing over the question she’d come up with the answer. When she’d tried and failed to reach Anthony, and when the answer failed to present itself (no surprise), she’d swallowed her embarrassment (
her
son who’d sent the photos;
her
son who’d disobeyed his mother, Amelia’s parents, and the court in order to see Amelia the day before) so that she could do the right thing, and called.

“This is Kim Winter,” she said. “I wondered if you’ve heard from Amelia.”

“Ms. Winter, oh. I … I was hoping
you
knew something. My husband, he’s on his way home—he’s been out of town.… I’m supposing she got fed up with us and has gone someplace with Anthony.”

“Yes, that’s why I called. She did go with him, to Mexico.”

“I’m sorry? I thought you said
Mexico.
”

“Yes. Yes, I did, you heard it right. He left a note—last night I guess. I was asleep. I had no idea. They … they want to be together, and they think this was the only way.”

In the hours that followed, Kim would repeat this countless times, to various police officers and detectives, to the lawyer, to William (who returned
this
call, apologetic and supportive), to her mother, to Rose Ellen, to reporters. Disloyal as it felt, she hoped getting the news out would help bring the kids in before they actually did make it to Mexico, an act that would only heap misery on all of them.

She would discuss the note, read it, and ultimately surrender it to the authorities as evidence. She would, when the waves subsided later, battle waves of anger and fear directed at Anthony, would panic at the thought of him getting caught, then panic at the thought of him, of them, escaping successfully.

She wasn’t prepared for the return of the police officers that evening with a warrant for
her
arrest.

“On what charges?” she demanded, sounding like a hysterical movie-of-the-week actress.

“Ma’am, if you’ll just proceed peaceably, you’ll get all your answers downtown.”

As she was placed in the cruiser, taken to the jail, fingerprinted, searched, photographed, demeaned, left in a cell to protest, silently, her “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” and “failure to report abuse”—abuse!—charges until her mother came the next morning to bail her out—after she’d been fitted with an electronic “house arrest” ankle cuff, which the magistrate allowed in the hope that Anthony would contact her and she’d lead them to him—Kim understood better and better the forces that had pushed Anthony and Amelia to run. She focused on this so that the over-worn wish that he and Amelia
had just kept their clothes on
would not distract her from the matters at hand.

She was grateful to Mariana Davis, who’d argued (for no additional fee, just now) for the bail terms when the court had been inclined at first to leave her in jail. She might, after all, be tempted to join the teens if given the chance. Kim wouldn’t have said it aloud, but yes, after having gotten a taste of what they had gone through, it was true, she’d have been sorely tempted.

“I hope they buy sunscreen,” she told her mother later that evening, sounding pitiful. They were in Kim’s living room eating on TV trays, the way they’d done so often when she was a child. Back then it was her parents and herself with their Banquet dinners steaming before them, the black-and-white television displaying the national news broadcast’s accounts of the war in Vietnam. Tonight she was eating a homemade chicken and rice dish her mother had prepared for them, and the news was of a much smaller and more modern war, but Kim’s reactions—loss of appetite, helplessness, and dismay—were not so different from before.

The CNN anchorwoman reported, “The case involving two North Carolina teens charged in a sexting scandal, first reported here on Sunday night, continues to draw the interest of people all around the country. Sunday also saw the arrest of Kim Winter, Anthony Winter’s mother and a teacher at the elite school the teens attended, for allegedly permitting the sexting and failing to report it. The FBI has been brought in to assist in the search for the fugitive teens, who are thought to be headed to Mexico. Both are awaiting arraignment in superior court in early December. Gibson Liles, the district attorney in the case, had this to say:

“ ‘I am impressed and pleased with the amount of support that’s been shown me as I’ve pursued a course of appropriate penalty for the activities of this pair,” Liles said, standing in front of the courthouse suited and coiffed like a young John Edwards. “Their latest Bonnie-and-Clyde behavior reinforces my initial read, which was that these are not two ordinary teenagers who made a simple mistake. That said, some evidence suggests Miss Wilkes
may
be an unwilling accomplice this time. Further investigation is under way.’ ”