Things Unsaid: A Novel (26 page)

Jules was connected to Sergeant Savage, East Palo Alto Police Department. She had wanted to talk to the other police officer, Sergeant Hyde, who at least had some knowledge of her situation. Or so she assumed.

“We’ll look into it,” Savage said, and he gave her a case number before hanging up. Yet another case number. How many case numbers would it take before her daughter was safe?

Her phone vibrated next to her. She answered on the second ring. “Zoë?”

“Nope, sorry,” a male voice responded.

Jules couldn’t place the voice. “Hi,” she said warily.

“Don’t you recognize your own brother’s voice?” Andrew sounded hurt. Jules hadn’t seen him for almost ten years.

“Geez, Andrew. It’s midnight.”

And then he told her. He didn’t know exactly when it had happened.
That evening around eight o’clock perhaps. The ambulance had arrived almost immediately. It was gusty, windy out, but the storm had calmed down by that point. Their father had suddenly stopped talking and then slumped over, motionless, his face in his food—his favorite, sushi takeout, a rare treat. He was the last one still eating. His right arm had raised momentarily, his chopsticks no longer in his hand, then fallen.

“Paramedics carried him out on a stretcher, hooked him up to ventilators and other monitoring devices, and started to work on him with defibrillating paddles as they whisked him away. Mother said she went with him and Joanne. In one of those high-tech American Medical Response ambulances with all the latest equipment. But I don’t know if Dad can pull through.”

Jules slouched in her car. She was so tired.

“Dad called me on the telephone before dinner, yammering on and on, and seemed fine. Sometimes I walk away from the phone to rest from all the preaching, and when I pick up the receiver again he’s still delivering a sermon. Mostly gloom and doom about his stock portfolio. That he hopes things will get better. I feel so bad now,” Andrew confessed. “Maybe he won’t ever be able to talk to us again.” Jules could hear him trying to clear guilt from his throat.

Jules thought about how she did the same thing almost every time her parents had called—but she had never told anyone that, not even Mike. It seemed so depersonalizing and disrespectful.
But some simmering resentments and lurking grievances
, she thought,
are best left unspoken. And sometimes that means walking away from the phone
.

She could hear Andrew closing down as he said good-bye. Jules would have to fly to Seattle before her father died. But first she would tend to Zoë. She prayed her daughter was safe.

Jules was about to unlock her car door when she spotted a police cruiser pulling up in front of the building. She froze. No searching for a flight out to Seattle. Not now. She would fly to Seattle later.

She looked at her phone. Dead.

Another police car arrived, siren blaring. Jules jumped out of her car and, walking over, got the attention of the officer closest to her.

“I’m the one who called. Jules Foster.”

“Mrs. Foster,” the officer said. “I’m Sergeant Savage. We spoke on the
phone. I’m going to need you to wait in your car, ma’am. Or, better yet, at the police station.”

“But I have to be there when you arrest Zoë. She’ll be so scared and confused.”

“It could be dangerous here, ma’am. I know you want to help your daughter, but the best thing you can do right now is wait for her at the station, where the booking procedure starts. You have the right to hire counsel for your daughter, and you can talk to her after we question her. But she is now an adult, and she will be treated as such.”

Before Jules could find her voice, Sergeant Savage was gone. Along with six or seven other officers, he rushed the front door and broke it down.

Jules collapsed in her car and sobbed. Fighting paroxysms of tears, she started her car so she could recharge her cell phone and call Mike.

The second the phone came back on, she called him.

“Hi,” Mike said. He sounded cautious. And why shouldn’t he be? But that was good. She and Zoë were going to need his circumspect counsel.

“This is such bad news, Mike. But … Zoë is probably going to be arrested on a drug charge. I need you …” Jules couldn’t finish the sentence.

“I’ll meet you at the station,” was all Mike said.

Joe Santini, a rotund, tanned attorney, slapped Mike on the back.

“Good to see you, fella. You never call me … until you need me, apparently!”

Mike attempted a smile as he shook his friend’s hand.

“I know, I know … you don’t want to see my handsome face under such unhappy circumstances,” he said, jocular, “but don’t you worry. Me and Sergeant Savage go way back. Don’t we, Joe?” He winked at Savage.

Jules tried not to look annoyed and impatient. She was relieved, though, that Mike had some connection to the attorney.

“Now, Joe, these are good folks, you hear me? I can vouch for them. Can’t find better parents. And teenagers sometimes just feel like going
astray. So, what can we do for Miss Zoë Foster? This would be a first-time offender. Straight A student. Ready for Stanford. All those good things. Can’t get much better. Not like the repeat offenders you usually have to book. And you’ve been trying to get Nagy for years now, haven’t you?”

Jules relaxed, just a little, for the first time since she couldn’t quite remember. Santini was a good choice—friendly, easy to talk with, and he knew how to navigate the system for their daughter.

“Well, yeah,” the sergeant admitted. “The guy moves around so much he is more difficult to apprehend than a conger eel, I’ll tell you that much. And we are booking him on multiple charges.”

“Enough about that giant asshole,” Santini said. “For my client here”—he turned to Zoë, who had said nothing since she arrived at the police station—“I’m sure we can work something out, right?”

Zoë had been looking at her feet for so long that Jules thought she might be sleeping standing up. She reached out and rubbed Zoë’s back.
We’ll get through this
.

At the hearing, Judge Fielding, serious in a Hollywood-casting sort of way but with a kind face, looked down at Zoë and Santini from the bench.

“I can see that Miss Foster is not a career criminal, but there are booking procedures and standard charges for drug possession, even for a first-time offense,” the judge said as she twiddled her pen over the forms before her.

Jules chanted her mantra, trying to stop her quiet crying.

“I have a daughter, too, and I know that sometimes young people get confused when they are in pain. Mr. Santini, if you speak with your client and she agrees to rehabilitation for at least three weeks, I will suspend the charges until I receive certification from a licensed facility that Miss Foster has successfully completed therapy. If she does not undergo therapy and finish rehab to the standards required by the facility, Miss Foster will be charged with drug possession. That is the best I can do.”

Mike and Jules hugged, the first hug she’d had in almost a month. Zoë stared at them in wide-eyed disbelief. Then they group hugged. Mike let go before Jules wanted him to. But Zoë continued to hug her. Like a small child, not an eighteen-year-old young woman.

Sergeant Savage and Santini filed their signatures and gave Jules and Mike a list of the approved rehabilitation facilities for the drug program. And they walked out together.
Still a lot of healing ahead
, Jules thought, but she was smiling.

Palo Alto Addiction Recovery Services accepted Zoë immediately, thanks to Joe Santini, who had represented many of their patients. He confided to Jules that many Silicon Valley executives and Stanford faculty and students were alums. Palo Alto prided itself on its low crime rate—except for drugs, that is. The “recreational” crime of the privileged.

The grounds of the rehab facility reminded Jules of SafeHarbour—the facade of an up-market hotel, faux–Cape Cod and resortlike. There was even a doorman.

In the vestibule by the front door, Zoë was the first to speak. “Mom, I don’t want to be here. It’s scary.” There was no affect in her voice, as if she were still in an OxyContin haze. Was she? Jules didn’t know.

“I’m planning to stay nearby, sweetheart,” Jules said. “I’ve booked a weekly rental nearby until I can take you back home.”

“But how long do I have to stay here?” Zoë’s voice sounded plaintive.

Santini interrupted Jules’s response and smiled, choosing his words carefully. “I’m afraid, as I’ve already told Mike”—he glanced at her husband as if for his approval—“there can be no outside contact with Zoë for three weeks. Until she successfully completes the initial stage of therapy.”

Jules said nothing; she watched as Zoë crumpled, her eyes shiny and pooling.

“Does that mean I can’t visit? Even though I’m right next door?” Jules asked.

“Rules are rules, and I have to insist. Zoë will be thrown out of rehab
here and instantly booked on drug charges if she fails to complete the treatments. Now, no one wants that, do they?” Santini asked. It didn’t seem like a question.

Jules texted her brother and sister:
“I’ll check to see when the next available flight is. After I take care of Zoë. She is very sick and I’m not the only one in our family who can be there for Daddy. I’ll be there as soon as I possibly can.”

Zoë had to come first. Once she knew she was okay, then she’d go to Tahoma. She shut down her phone.

“I promise. I promise, Zoë. You may not be able to see me, but I’ll be here. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can tear me away from you. Not ever again,” she whispered, as much for her own sake as for her daughter’s. She would miss being at her father’s side if and when he passed. But she needed to be there for Zoë.

A
ida stared at the medical devices strapped to her husband—the latest generation of equipment, not the vintage machines she had trained on many years ago at Montefiore Hospital—with clinical eyes. Bob lay there in intensive care.

Their relationship had somehow been defanged: they had reached a truce. Twenty hours after his heart attack, her husband had asked her in shallow breaths, “Where are we? Who’s in our bedroom?”

Aida had answered softly, taking his hand: “That’s Joanne, darling. Jules will fly out later, when you’re all better. Zoë is sick.”

Bob was delirious. He wouldn’t know about his number one daughter’s disgraceful behavior, not being there. Aida’s lips were pinched, calm eyes dry. Her body seemed reduced somehow, desiccated, starved. After twenty years of talking about Bob’s death, it was finally happening. She was quiet. She could hear Joanne sobbing, choking. Bob had fallen asleep, so she quietly bent over and kissed his hair. It smelled sweet and clean.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Aida whispered, still holding her husband’s hand. She wondered why her heart was racing. A symphony of cymbals and percussions in her head, almost shattering her eardrums. Where was she? She didn’t belong there. Neither did this man.

“Where’s Andrew? Is he going to make me some chicken kebabs?” Bob had asked her earlier, delirious. How could she forget that story? About raising chickens. And eating them. His memory loss. Their world together had started to spin apart years ago, and rapidly. Bob seemed in a trance.