I’m gasping with the force of my suspicions, my revelation. I’m so flabbergasted that for a moment, my mind goes blank. I realize I’ve started whimpering, “No, please no, not this . . .”
I try to force myself to be cold and analytical, to sort through my evidence.
Fact: There is something odd at the heart of the Whitney Court Scholarship. Even odder than scholarships that celebrate fire sprinklers or duct-tape prom clothes.
I remember Stuart complaining that the whole thing seemed like a setup. I remember not just Mrs. Congreves dodging questions, but the teachers and Whitney’s classmates, too. I remember something Ms. Stela said about the scholarship: “It’s totally weird, but, hey, if someone wants to donate money to DHS students, they can set it up practically any way they want.”
This is money being given away, not stolen. Of course no one’s going to look too closely at a few oddities.
When Ms. Stela called the scholarship weird, she was talking about the deadlines and announcement dates being earlier than for any other local scholarship. And those deadlines are terribly inconvenient for most high school seniors, since this is when we’re supposed to be visiting college campuses and writing essays for our college applications and keeping our grades up because they still count. Stuart has complained about the overlapping deadlines all along.
But the deadline and announcement dates are perfect for someone like me, who wants to know about scholarship money before she has to decide about filling out financial aid forms. I remember how I felt standing in Ms. Stela’s office when she told me about the Court scholarship—it seemed like a gift, almost as if it were designed especially for me.
Maybe it was, I think.
I dig my hands into the cracks between the couch cushions and squeeze. I’m not sure if I am just trying to hold on or if I am trying to destroy the couch. This could be one of those crazy folk sayings: You can’t get blood from a turnip; you can’t make a purse from a sow’s ear; you can’t squeeze truth from foam rubber and ancient upholstery.
Don’t jump to conclusions, I tell myself.
Still, I bring out more evidence: the thought I’d had only moments ago, before my deep Web search. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Whitney didn’t even exist!
My head spins trying to think of how much someone—Daddy?—would have had to invent and plant to make it seem as though a girl named Whitney Court graduated from Deskins High School fifteen years ago if there was no such person.
Two small-town newspaper articles that could be accessed only on the deep Web? That would be nothing for Daddy or someone like him to make up and hide online.
But yearbooks that purport to be from fifteen years ago? Teachers who would lie and talk about a student they never had? A former neighbor who would make up stories at length? An entire graduating class of kids/now grown-ups so united that, at the very least, none of them would step forward and proclaim, “The emperor has no clothes! There never was a Whitney!” This would require bribe upon bribe upon bribe.
Even with bribes, no graduating class could be that united, I think.
And, anyhow, even though of course Mom has told Daddy that we’re in Deskins and I’m going to graduate from Deskins High, no one knew to expect that fifteen years ago. A hoax like what I’m imagining would have required years of prep work.
So scratch that theory, I tell myself. Whitney really did exist. Whitney, the high school golden girl who evidently became the college druggie. . . .
I remember something the federal prosecutor told the jury about Daddy’s scams: The hoaxes Roger Jones carried off were full of misrepresentations, yes, but they were utterly believable to their victims. Because every single one of them was wrapped in a solid veneer of truth.
It would be entirely like Daddy to pick someone like Whitney for his veneer of truth. He often looked for someone who had a secret shame, an unknown vice. Whitney threw her life away on drugs and drinking; her parents apparently slunk out of town in shame a decade ago. They probably cut off ties with everyone in Deskins as thoroughly as Mom and I cut off ties with everyone outside it. They’d never know if someone else gave away money in Whitney’s name.
Whitney Court and her family were ripe for this kind of scam. Deskins was too—Deskins, where most of my classmates were new within the past three or four years; Deskins, where fifteen years ago might as well be ancient history.
And Daddy would have loved setting this whole thing up—tricking the prison officials somehow into giving him computer access, erasing all traces of his searches and communications afterward, fooling not just a single victim but an entire school. An entire community, really.
This isn’t that different from scams I know Daddy did, I think. It’s like his old scams flipped inside out—giving away money instead of stealing it, sure, but still tricking people to send money where it’s not supposed to go.
I am strangling the couch cushion beneath me. I let go. The cushion refuses to reinflate. I slide over onto the next one, a fresh victim.
Fact: Even after Daddy got caught, even after they confiscated his business records and his personal records and his computers, everyone was always convinced he’d gotten away with huge sums of money. The media was full of speculation about how he had to have set up an escape fund in the Cayman Islands or some other offshore haven where the American legal system couldn’t reach it.
I remember hearing Alice Gladstone, one of our neighbors back in Georgia, ask Mom about this supposed Cayman fund.
It was in the early days after Daddy was arrested, when we were still answering our door to people we knew. Mrs. Gladstone had come over with a fresh-baked peach pie. I could smell it from upstairs, and I’d tiptoed over to the top of the stairs where I could hear without being seen.
I’d already learned that the best way to find out anything was to stay out of sight.
“Oh, you poor thing,” Mrs. Gladstone declared loudly, as if she wanted everyone on our street to witness her charity and kindness to the new neighborhood outcasts. Or maybe it was for the sake of TV cameras.
There was a pause, probably while Mrs. Gladstone gathered Mom into one of her overly perfumed hugs. I heard the door being shut.
I noticed that Mom did not invite Mrs. Gladstone out of the entryway into the living room to sit down. Mom did not say anything.
Maybe she was crying.
“How much?” Mrs. Gladstone stage-whispered. Her voice was softer than usual, but still loud enough that I could hear her from upstairs. “I’m sure he put aside something for you and the girl—do you have to wait until after the trial or the plea agreement before you go to the Caymans to claim it? How many millions is it? You’ll still be perfectly comfortable, won’t you?”
“Get out,” Mom said, her voice as hard as steel.
The door opened. I heard Mrs. Gladstone gasp—evidently Mom was pushing her back outside. Mrs. Gladstone was starve-yourself-thin and prone to wearing teetery high heels; I’m sure Mom overpowered her easily. Next, I heard a shattering sound that might have been a pie-filled baking dish smashing against our brick porch. I wanted to know: Had Mrs. Gladstone dropped the pie, or had Mom thrown it after her?
I didn’t ask. I didn’t ask anyone about the Cayman Islands fund, either. But in the early days after Daddy was arrested—before I heard his victims testify, before I knew everything he’d done—I liked thinking about it. I’d tell myself, Just get through this. Get through this, and then you’ll be on the beach in the Cayman Islands, not a care in the world . . .
Instead, I ended up poor and friendless and studious in Deskins, Ohio. I stopped believing in the Cayman Islands fund.
But maybe, I think. Maybe, maybe, maybe . . .
I lean over onto the third couch cushion, too overcome to keep sitting up. I’m stretched across the whole couch now.
Fact: Daddy really did love me. He really does.
I sniff. I am a high school senior with good grades. I do well in subjects requiring logic. So I know I can’t classify that as a fact. It’s only an opinion, a theory, a belief. A belief that was sorely tested three and a half years ago.
It is a fact, I think stubbornly. It’s true.
I can assemble all my evidence now, build my case.
If Daddy has some huge sum of money stowed away somewhere . . . If Daddy really loves me . . . then of course. Wouldn’t he do anything he could to make sure I have money to go to college? And since he’s in prison and he stole all his money, he couldn’t just mail me a check. So, duh, of course he’d set up some sort of hoax to funnel the money to me.
Hadn’t Daddy pretty much told the whole world he stole his money just to be able to send me to college?
Wasn’t it his dream as much as mine that someday I’d go to Vanderbilt? That I could have that glorious, prestigious college education he only pretended to have?
A fake full-ride scholarship contest would be easy for Daddy to pull off. Though, maybe from prison he would have had to use an outside accomplice. Maybe he’d paid a big bribe to get help from someone he used to work with, someone he’d never cheated, someone who got as big an adrenaline rush as Daddy did from fooling people. Maybe that person told Deskins High School he was Whitney Court’s father and he wanted to set up a scholarship in her name. Then Daddy and/or his accomplice just had to conduct the whole contest online and—ta-da!—eventually announce that a certain Becca Jones would win this year’s award.
Just for insurance, to throw off any suspicions, they would have set up the scholarship a few years early, thrown out token amounts of money to other kids in earlier classes.
Wouldn’t Daddy think like that? Doesn’t that last part about setting up the scholarship early have Daddy’s fingerprints all over it?
I put my hands over my face and discover my cheeks are wet: Tears are streaming down, rolling across the bridge of my nose, soaking into the couch. I have started sobbing and I didn’t even know it.
And I don’t quite know why I’m sobbing. Is it because I have proof now (well, almost proof) that Daddy loves me after all, that he didn’t go off to prison and leave me and Mom with nothing? Is it because I’m sure now (almost sure) that I will be able to afford an expensive college education, even with my father in prison?
Or is it because I’m angrier than ever with my father? How dare he! How dare he try to make me his accomplice, knowingly taking his stolen money. That would taint my entire college education. That would ruin everything. That would make me a criminal too.
Didn’t he think I was smart enough to figure this out?
The door is locked and the blinds are drawn and there’s no one else in the apartment, but I still feel too exposed, sobbing so openly on the couch in the living room. I stumble to my feet and careen into the bathroom. The next thing I know, I’m crouched on the floor, vomiting into the toilet.
Am I trying to throw up the part of me that’s furious with Daddy—or the part that desperately wants all of this to be true?