Chapter Forty-Seven

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

I drive for miles through the rolling hills of Potomac as my mind sifts through possibilities. I pass farmhouses and gas stations and cornfields and pumpkin patches. I barely take notice of the natural beauty surrounding me; I'm too focused on running the different scenarios, considering and swapping out elements, whittling down the variables.

Rose is already under intense stress. She no longer goes to school. Her parents are fighting. Her home environment is deeply strained.

But when I issue my report, Rose will face stress and chaos like none she has ever known. She'll be splitting her time between two completely new homes, and she won't get to see either of her parents or her grandmother nearly as much, not to mention her horses. Her whole life will be turned upside down.

If I craft a fake report in such a way to impose maximum stress on Rose and make sure she sees it, it should tip her over the edge.

Sam told me what I need to do. Now I know how to do it.

The reports I write can be anywhere from ten to forty pages, depending on the complexity of the case. I always begin by describing the current custody situation, then detail my observations of the child's health and schooling environment, and finally issue my recommendations.

I use some legal terms in my report, but most of it is written in plain, clear language. My role in the process is fully revealed when my report comes out. In it, I give my unfiltered opinions on how stable, loving, and capable each parent is—and I also detail incidents or conversations that concern me.

In other words, I pass judgment on parents. And I do it with a lot of muscle behind me.

I start to craft sentences in my mind as I drive: My strong opinion… best interest of the child… reintegration into traditional school setting immediately… increase therapy to four times per week… full custody should be awarded to…

I probably won't see the Barclays for another day or so, since the three adult Barclays are ill—from one kind of food poisoning or another.

I have time to prepare well.

I pass a little vegetable stand and impulsively pull over, my tires kicking up a cloud of brown dirt.

I look through the bins of fall fruits and vegetables, selecting bunches of broccoli and crisp apples and lush leaves of lettuce for a salad. I add a jar of amber honey, thinking Charles might enjoy it with his afternoon tea. When I go to pay the woman running the farm stand, I see buckets of flowers: petunias and roses, big-faced sunflowers rimmed with gold petals, and groupings of lilies in delicate pinks and oranges.

I reach into a bucket, selecting a bouquet of orange lilies.

"Good choice," the cashier says as she rings me up. "Lilies are my favorite."

"Someone once told me they thrive under difficult conditions."

She nods as she wraps the stems in a sheet of brown paper. "They can withstand heat, cold, they don't need a lot of water to grow… That's probably why I like them best."

I pay her and walk back to my car, carefully placing the lilies on the passenger's seat.

I'm going to give them to Charles tonight, along with the bag of farm-fresh food. I'm not sure I've ever told him how much it meant to me when he showed up at my high school graduation with a bouquet of lilies.

I'd only been working for him for a couple of weeks then, rushing to his office as soon as school let out so his receptionist could train me. I was determined to do a great job—the position not only paid well, but it offered health care, two weeks' paid vacation, and sick days. I knew no one else would give a high school senior those kinds of benefits or salary, and I wasn't going to lose this chance. Charles practically had to kick me out of the office at night; I kept finding little things to do that I hoped would make me indispensable, like scanning his files and uploading them to the computer so he could more easily look up his old cases. I even fixed the window by his desk that always stuck, after I asked the shop teacher at school for advice. I found a book that promised to teach me how to type, and I convinced my study hall teacher to let me practice on the library computers. That was my biggest learning curve, but by the time I put on my shiny blue graduation gown and cap, I was proficient at forty-two words per minute.

My uncle was traveling the day of my graduation, and I knew my aunt wouldn't come. I didn't want her to; I'd long ago given up any hope that she would someday soften toward me, or even come to love me. Our intense dislike was mutual by then.

We were called up on stage alphabetically, and even before the A s were finished, you could tell who had big families in the audience. Roars would fill the air along with frenzied clapping as beaming students shook the principal's hand and accepted their diplomas.

When it was my turn, I heard a smattering of polite applause. No one chanted my name. There weren't blinding flashes from a dozen cameras.

Then, just as I reached out for my diploma, someone did shout my name, his lone cheer filling the quiet air. I started, then turned toward the audience.

A man in the fourth row was giving me a one-man standing ovation. A huge smile split my face as I recognized Charles. When he caught my eye, he applauded even more loudly. I could see people turning to look at this tall, distinguished man in his dark suit and crisp white shirt.

He waited for me outside the auditorium, his arms filled with orange lilies.

In the card he gave me, he wrote about the tenacity of the flower, and what they endure to bloom.

They remind me of you, Stella.

"I remember that day like it was yesterday," Charles tells me as he fills my goblet, expertly twisting the bottle to avoid drips. He's in his usual wingback chair, and I'm on the living room couch, a tray of olives and hummus and pita bread on the coffee table in front of us. I'd cut up some of the broccoli I brought and added it to the spread, too.

Charles broke out one of his favorite bottles for us tonight, a Cabernet Sauvignon called Silver Ghost. I inhale through my nose before I sip, but I can't pick up the notes of blackberries and violets the wine holds. Still, it tastes delicious and warms my throat and chest.

"Why did you come to my graduation?" I can't believe it has taken me twenty years to pose this question. But when I was a teenager, my trust in people was so broken that Charles's kindness toward me felt as fragile as a bubble, something that could float away and disappear.

Charles sets down his glass and twists to face me directly, his elbows on his knees. His eyes grip mine, and I know he's about to tell me something important.

"When you filled out an application to work for me, you wrote down the phone number of your aunt's house in case I ever needed to get in touch with you."

I nod; this makes sense. I didn't have a cell phone back then, so it would have been the most efficient way to reach me.

"I called once," Charles continued. "I needed to go to court unexpectedly for a client, and I wanted to tell you to take the afternoon off. But you'd already left for school. Your aunt Susan answered the phone."

Even the mention of her name causes me to flinch.

"I asked her to pass along the message. She wasn't aware you had a new job."

I never told my aunt anything. It gave her less ammunition to use against me.

"She asked me why I hired you. It wasn't a kind question, Stella. Not with that tone."

It's the strangest thing, but tears sting my eyes. I thought I was long past caring about anything my aunt did or said, but maybe I'm raw because of what Charles and I are planning to do tonight. I printed out copies of the photographs of the police file on my mother, and my copy of the file is in my shoulder bag by my feet, the very top of the cream-colored manila sticking out. I'm intensely aware of it.

"I asked what she meant, in a tone of my own. But she didn't back off. I'm not going to get into it now, but I ended up hanging up on her in mid-sentence. She wasn't worth my time. Anyway, I knew the day you were graduating because you'd asked to have those hours off work. I figured you deserved to have someone there who cared about you."

Two tears break free and roll down my cheeks, morphing along the way from old pain into new gratitude. I brush them away with my fingertips and take a deep sip of wine while I gather myself.

Charles and I sit together in silence for a moment. Then he asks, "Are you ready to start?"

"Yes." My word comes out as a hoarse croak. I reach for my shoulder bag and pull out the slim manila file that holds fragments of the story of my mother's death. I set it down on the coffee table before us.

I open the cover and stare down at the first page.