I am an emotional wreck by the time we get to Atlanta. Or, I should say: I am still an emotional wreck; I am even more of an emotional wreck than before. I am keeping layers of secrets now. Oscar has to let go of my hand before anybody else notices and take his turn behind the steering wheel. And it’s like Oscar and I have silently agreed not to announce, “Hey! We’re going to homecoming!” That’s too delicate a secret, too fragile to hold up for everyone else’s examination. But he keeps shooting me meaningful glances that our friends would have to be blind not to see.
Or do they notice, and they think it’s no different from the way he looked at me yesterday or the day before? I think. Has he been looking at me like this for weeks or months or years, and I never noticed?
What does it matter if I’m going to change my name and vanish from Deskins and never see Oscar again?
Stuart is driving again as we hit the crazy traffic of Atlanta.
“Speed up and go around that car in front of you,” Oscar advises him from the passenger’s seat.
“I can’t,” Stuart snarls. “My parents can tell if I speed, because of the GPS.”
“I bet that just shows your average speed, not one burst of going seventy-five,” Oscar scoffs. “But here, if you’re so scared, I’ll disable that function. . . .”
He starts fiddling with the GPS, and suddenly the whole screen goes black.
“Now I don’t know where to go!” Stuart screams, instantly soaring into full-fledged panic as cars zoom around us.
“Take the exit for I-85 north,” I tell Stuart from the backseat.
Everyone turns and stares at me except Stuart, who seems more focused on returning his breathing rate from “hyperventilate” to “normal.”
“You know your way around Atlanta?” Oscar asks me curiously. “Have you been here before?”
The way he’s looking at me, I am so close to answering honestly. I am so close to telling everything.
“I heard the GPS voice say it a minute ago,” I tell him instead. “Weren’t you listening?”
How can I lie like that, even now? I am a terrible person. I deserve to lose my friends. I deserve to live the rest of my life in exile.
It’s a good thing I deserve that, I think. Because that’s the only future I can have.
Oscar restores the GPS, and we get to Emory. We park and lug our bags into a huge auditorium, then the beaming admissions officials direct us to dinner in a huge dining hall. I look around and try to decide if any of the students look like fifth-year seniors or grad students.
Were any of them here four or five years ago when my father stole laptops? I wonder. Did he scam any of their parents or grandparents into sending him money?
I can hardly stand to be on Emory’s campus, thinking that. But Rosa is looking around like she’s reached the promised land, and Oscar and Stuart are drooling over food choices in the serving lines: “Pizza and cheeseburgers and pasta and soft-serve ice cream and vegan choices and sushi and . . .” Stuart lists.
“They have dining halls like this at Ohio State, too,” Jala snaps, rolling her eyes. “For students who live on campus, anyway.”
I have no idea what I end up eating. I can’t pay attention at the info sessions afterward either.
Tomorrow, I think. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow . . .
We’re matched with current Emory students to spend the night in a typical dorm room. I forget my host student’s name five seconds after hearing it. I’m sure she thinks I’m a total idiot because I ask nothing about college. I put my sleeping bag on the floor of her room, and then I sit down, staring at the wall.
“Want me to show you where the best parties are?” she asks eagerly.
“I just want to sleep,” I say.
But of course I can’t. I lie on the floor and pretend to as unknown-name-girl and unknown-name-girl’s roommate head out to party without me; I’m still wide-awake hours later when they tiptoe back in. I hear them whispering a little too loudly about what a lousy student guest they got. Then I listen as their breathing slides into the soft steadiness of sleep.
I wish Mom could be here to do this with me tomorrow, I think. That would be okay, if we could do this together. I wish I could call her or text her right now to tell her how scared I am.
But it’s three a.m. by now, and of course Mom doesn’t have a cell phone. And I can’t call our home phone, because Mom is still staying away. Tonight she’s at another nurse’s house—it wouldn’t be right to call and wake up the woman who took Mom in even though Mom’s excuse was that Whispering Pines Apartments had to fumigate for bedbugs.
I guess we actually both found good friends in Deskins, I think.
This makes me want to cry again, but I don’t let myself. I just lie there, staring into darkness. And then, though this seems like the longest night in history, somehow it gets to be morning, and I’m padding down the hall to the strangeness of a communal bathroom.
I meet my Deskins friends for breakfast back at the dining hall, and they chatter about how nice their host students were and what they did and how excited they are about sitting in on classes this morning. They’ve all pored over the list of possible classes, and I wait until everyone else has revealed a choice before I tell mine.
“I’m going to Religion and Contemporary Experience,” I say, picking the class least likely to attract anyone else. “It gets out the latest, so I’ll just meet you all back here for lunch.”
I’m hoping that gives me enough time for what I actually plan to do.
But Oscar chimes in, “Oh, that sounds better than Computer Science Fundamentals! I’ll go with you!”
Panic floods over me.
“No, no, no offense but . . . if you’re there, I won’t be able to concentrate,” I say. “It’ll feel like it’s still high school and—”
“And back off, lover boy,” Stuart says, snickering.
I look back and forth between the two of them. I’m pretty sure Oscar must have told Stuart I said yes to homecoming, and now Stuart is making fun of him for it, and—
And why can’t I do this without hurting Oscar’s feelings? I wonder.
“Just for today,” I say quickly. “At Vanderbilt tomorrow, I’ll go to every session with you, I’ll, I’ll . . .”
“It does make sense to get an idea of what college is like by yourself,” Jala says, nodding sagely. “It can feel kind of lonely.”
And now I feel bad for Jala, too. But all I can do is back away from my friends and pretend I urgently need to find Smith Hall.
In reality, as soon as I’m out of sight, I rush toward the bus stop at Clifton Road and Gambrell Drive.
Atlanta does not have the best public transportation. If I took Stuart’s SUV, or if I could afford a cab, I could get to Mr. Trumbull’s office off Peachtree Road in fifteen minutes. But the combination of bus and metro and walking will take me more than an hour. Mom and I were paranoid enough to map it all out on a computer at Deskins Public Library, not on my laptop. The route looked daunting enough then, when I had Mom beside me.
It feels unbearable now that I’m alone. I look around, and it seems like any of my fellow bus passengers might be spies for Excellerand. That man in a suit, scratching his ear—is that a signal? That woman with the little girl beside her—is she trying to trick me into thinking a spy wouldn’t have a kid with her?
Now you’re totally losing it, I tell myself. Stop it. Nobody knew you’d be on this bus. Except Mom.
I edge Mrs. Collins’s iPhone out of my pocket and summon up the number Mom gave me to contact her at her friend’s house. I don’t call it, because what would I say, here on the bus where anyone could hear? But it makes me feel better just to have the number in front of me.
I finally get to Mr. Trumbull’s office building, and it’s as huge and overwhelming as I remember. It’s all metal and glass, probably some architect’s vision of the cruel heartlessness of justice.
This is a stupid plan, I think as I step into the elevator and it lurches up. Why couldn’t Mom and I have come up with something better?
I know why: Because there isn’t anything better, not for either of us. Daddy’s crimes and his bargain with the government and Excellerand’s evil ruthlessness shoved us into a tiny, tiny box, and this is the only way out.
I get off the elevator and walk down the hall to the receptionist’s desk. The elderly receptionist I remember from three years ago has evidently been replaced—this one doesn’t seem any older than me. She has long dark hair like I do, and she looks as uncomfortable in her stiff blue blazer as I would feel.
Is this the kind of job I’d have to take if I don’t get to go to college? I wonder.
I don’t know much about it, but being a receptionist in a law firm would probably require some training beyond high school, and that would mean financial aid, too.
I’m ranked fourth in my class, but being a receptionist is beyond me if I can’t change my identity, I think.
“Can I help you?” the receptionist asks. She may be young, but she’s already mastered the snooty law-office tone that seems to say beneath the words, My time is worth so much more than yours—how dare you bother me!
Maybe they teach that in receptionist-training classes.
I clear my throat.
“I’m here to see Mr. Trumbull,” I tell her. “I don’t have an appointment, but I know Mr. Trumbull will want to talk to me.”
This is the wording Mom and I agreed on. She thought that, given how difficult Mr. Trumbull has been lately, I should show up unannounced and take him by surprise. But we did call on Wednesday to make sure he’d be in the office today.
We called from a pay phone in Deskins, just to be safe. Do you know how hard it is to find a working pay phone nowadays?
The receptionist looks unimpressed. She looks like someone who has just discovered crumbs on an otherwise perfect white tablecloth—like she’s annoyed that she will have to exert the effort to brush me away.
“I’m . . . ,” I try again. It’s strange. I’ve said my name dozens of times over the past three years, always savoring the protective anonymity of “Jones.” But here in this office I have to throw all that away. Even though I now know everything I’m risking, I have to identify myself fully. “I’m Becca Jones. Roger Jones’s daughter.”
My heart pounds, but no alarms go off. No horde of camera-toting TV crews appear out of nowhere to scream at me, “How did you feel when your father was arrested? Did you know where all the money was coming from? Did your mom?” No Excellerand assassins swing in through the windows, guns blazing.
The only thing that happens is that the receptionist’s eyes widen, and she gasps, “Ohhh . . .” Then she stares at me, as though I’ve suddenly become fascinating. Or horrifying.
She may be new here, but of course she knows who Daddy is.
You’re back in Atlanta, I remind myself. Everybody remembers here. What did you expect?
At least the receptionist doesn’t start peppering me with questions. But she stares long enough to make me feel I have to stare back, with a little defiance: Yeah, that Roger Jones. Want to make something of it?
What if I’d acted like that three years ago, when everybody stared at me all the time?
I couldn’t, back then, I think. I’m barely managing to hold the stare now. At least the receptionist looks away first. She gives a little jump, as if remembering she’s supposed to act professional.
“I’ll see if Mr. Trumbull is available,” she says. She trots off to Mr. Trumbull’s office on heels that seem too high for her. She reminds me of a little girl playing dress up. I think she was probably supposed to stay at her desk and just buzz Mr. Trumbull, but what do I know? It’s hard enough figuring out what I’m supposed to do, let alone anyone else. I feel weak and dizzy just from three seconds of staring down the underage receptionist—how am I going to deal with Mr. Trumbull?
I step over to a display of framed magazine articles on the wall, because reading might calm me down. Big mistake: Most of the articles seem to be about how brilliantly Mr. Trumbull handled Daddy’s case—“the biggest case any defense attorney could hope for,” as Atlanta magazine put it. Apparently it was actually a miracle that Daddy didn’t get more than ten years in prison; apparently Daddy was pretty much the poster child for how defendants aren’t supposed to behave. The articles all have titles like, “What to Do When Your Client Becomes a Loose Cannon” and “Loose Lips: When a Client Sabotages His Own Case.”
Who has ever used the term “loose lips” since World War II? I think disgustedly, because it’s easier to hate the headline writer than to think about what Daddy really said and did.
Still, I can’t help myself: I keep reading. I’m surprised the articles focus more on Daddy’s impersonal crimes—the computer hacking, the money laundering, the Ponzi scheme—instead of the ones where he scared parents and grandparents into giving him money because they thought their children or grandchildren were in trouble. Those were the crimes I thought were the worst.
But it’s all about the money, I think. The bigger the money, the bigger the crime.
It’s coming back to me, everything Mr. Trumbull told us three years ago about the law. Money is easier to measure than pain and suffering, so that’s what the justice system looks at.
I hear the receptionist’s heels click-clacking toward me, and I quickly move away from the wall. I go back to standing by her desk.
“He will be able to see you,” she says. “Briefly. But it will be a few more minutes. Have a seat.”
She sounds like she’s had to practice saying things like that in front of a mirror. She points toward a leather couch that also seems new. I sit down and sink into it. I struggle back up into a standing position. I don’t want Mr. Trumbull’s first view of me to be as I flounder around just trying to escape his couch.
Receptionist girl watches me while pretending not to.
“Nervous energy,” I tell her. “Can’t sit still.”
I’m pretty sure this makes me sound like a drug addict or something, but I don’t know how to fix that. Not when my head is going all spinny on me again. Maybe this is what it feels like to be a drug addict. Or crazy.
I pull out Mrs. Collins’s iPhone. Isn’t that a normal thing to do, waiting? But I’ve lost my skill at goofing around on a cell phone. I could text my friends something like “Wow, Relig and Contemp Exp is great! How’s ur class?” But I can’t stomach yet another lie right now. Instead, I pretend to be absorbed in flipping through apps. I accidentally turn on the recording function, then scramble to turn it off.
This is going to be hard enough, without knowing every word I say is recorded, and then I have to make sure it’s erased completely from the phone, I think.
I glance up, and Mr. Trumbull is turning the corner. I stuff the phone back into my jeans pocket.
“Becca!” he says. “Good to see you! Well, haven’t you grown up!”
The way he’s looking at me makes me almost wish I hadn’t developed breasts and hips. It also makes me think there’s something kind of wrong about him having such a young receptionist. Like he didn’t hire her for her job qualifications.
“Nice to see you again,” I say automatically, shaking his outstretched hand.
“Tria, hold my calls,” Mr. Trumbull tells the receptionist.
“Oh, yes, sir!” the receptionist says immediately. The way she sounds, she might as well snap her arm into a salute.
Mr. Trumbull puts his hand on my back, steering me toward his office. This is something else I remember about Mr. Trumbull: how he always took control. I remember feeling relieved by that three years ago, when my daddy had turned into a criminal stranger, and my mother seemed thoroughly lost.
But today I kind of want to step away, to tell Mr. Trumbull, “I know where your office is.”
I let him guide me anyway.
We go into his office and he shuts the door. He indicates a chair for me to sit on. Then he settles in behind his massive mahogany desk. He looks the same as he did three years ago: a rich man in a rich man’s suit, his glossy brown hair improbably thick for a man in his fifties. He could play a defense attorney on TV—he kind of already did, as a star of my father’s trial.
But somehow his demeanor has changed. He no longer has that defense-attorney air of confidence that seems to say, Of course my client’s innocent. Of course I could convince any jury that any defendant’s innocent. It’s like a mask slipped, revealing the pool of anxiety below.
I correct my own impression: It’s not that Mr. Trumbull lost that confident aura over the past three years. He still had it out in the lobby, in front of the receptionist. The angst didn’t come out until he was alone with me.
He leans urgently toward me.
“Where’s your mother?” he asks. “Why are you here?”
I hesitate. Could his office be bugged? I try to guess from Mr. Trumbull’s expression, but it’s hard to tell. The lines around his eyes telegraph extreme worry, but is that because he’s concerned about Mom? Or because he thinks I’m in danger, just sitting in his office? Wouldn’t he give some signal if it wasn’t safe for me to speak?
I opt for caution, regardless.
“Mom’s still back home,” I say, and I am oh so careful not to say, “in Ohio” or “in Deskins.” “She’s fine. We just thought it would be . . . safer if I came without her.”
The worry lines around his eyes turn into disapproving trenches.
“It’s not safe for you either,” he says.
I feel a jolt of irritation: Is he trying to make me feel even more terrified?
He probably thinks it’s for my own good, I tell myself. So I don’t do anything stupid.
Too late for that.
“I had to come here,” I say. “Because . . . I made a mistake.”
Shouldn’t Mr. Trumbull be impressed that I’m admitting fault?
I remember suddenly that Mr. Trumbull never asked Daddy if he did his crimes or not. Defense attorneys aren’t that interested in actual guilt or innocence.
Mr. Trumbull just lifts an eyebrow and waits.
“I told someone,” I say quickly, getting it over with. “I told someone who I was.”
Mr. Trumbull grabs a yellow legal pad from his desk and begins taking notes.
“Any possibility that that person was connected to Excellerand?” he asks.
I stare at him and fight back the panic that threatens to overwhelm me.
“Um, no?” I say uncertainly. “I mean, I don’t think so, but . . .”
But I had wondered if the Court scholarship was a hoax. What if it wasn’t concocted as a misguided way for my father to help me, but as an evil snare for Excellerand to trap me?
That’s truly paranoid, I tell myself. And illogical.
I remember that the Court scholarship was set up two years before Mom and I moved to Deskins. I remember that Whitney Court has problems of her own, and that the Courts still want to help other kids. I remember that Mr. Court was worried about me.
“The person I told was innocent,” I say, and I sound sure of myself now. “But I know he told my guidance counselor, and—”
“And so the secret is out,” Mr. Trumbull says, frowning. “You’ve ruined the extreme efforts your mother and I went to, to protect you.”
Doesn’t he think I know that?
“That’s why I’m here,” I say. I swallow hard. “My mother and I need your help to move somewhere safer. We need completely new identities. And documentation that . . . that lets me go to college.”
Mr. Trumbull puts down his pen and stares at me for a moment.
“What you’re asking for is huge,” he finally says. “You’d need new names, new social security numbers, a fake high school transcript, fake SAT scores . . .”
“I could retake the SAT,” I say, though my reluctance comes through in my voice. I clench my teeth and ask the question that terrifies me most. “But it’s possible, isn’t it? To get new identities?”
Mr. Trumbull absentmindedly picks up his pen again. He taps it against his jaw.
“Anything’s possible for the right price,” he says.
“Price?” I squeak. Mom and I didn’t talk about this. She didn’t pay extra for his help when we moved to Deskins. Wasn’t that just part of Mr. Trumbull representing Daddy? Now that Mom has told me everything, I now know that what we paid Mr. Trumbull three years ago pretty much used up all the money she made from selling our furniture and her car. She had to max out credit cards to survive after that, before she got her job. And then she made so little selling the house that every penny went to settling debts.
I edge Mrs. Collins’s phone out of my pocket, below the level of the desk, so Mr. Trumbull can’t see. I can’t stop in the middle of talking to Mr. Trumbull in order to call and ask Mom for advice about what to do or say next. But holding on to the phone is the next best thing.
Mr. Trumbull shakes his head at me.
“What you’re asking for—that would cost thousands of dollars,” he says. “Maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“Mom and I don’t have that kind of money,” I say. “We’re barely holding on, as it is.”
Mr. Trumbull shrugs.
“You can’t expect me to work for free,” he says.
“Couldn’t the government help?” I ask tentatively. “I mean, this is their case, and they’re the ones who have taken so long getting their case together. Don’t they want to protect people like me? Innocent bystanders?”
Mr. Trumbull snorts.
“What kind of idealistic pablum are they teaching you at that school in Ohio?” he asks, and it seems as if he’s said “Ohio” deliberately. As if he’s trying to tell me, “You want to be difficult? Then I can be reckless with your safety too.”
I flinch. Mr. Trumbull leans across the desk toward me.
“You’re the daughter of a convicted felon,” he says. “The government doesn’t care about people like you.”
Three years ago the words “daughter of a convicted felon,” spoken in that brusque tone, would have reduced me to a weeping puddle on the floor. I would have been like a swatted fly: broken and fatally wounded and buzzing helplessly through my last moments of life.
But I’ve had three years to adjust to who I am, to being the person my father’s crimes turned me into. Those three years didn’t kill me. They just made me see things differently.
I see Mr. Trumbull differently now too.
The way he acted in court, cross-examining a witness whose testimony he wanted to destroy . . . that’s how he’s treating me, I think. Why?
I don’t know the answer to that question so I mentally set it aside, like a calculus problem I might be able to figure out later on. I decide it wouldn’t hurt to act a little more injured than I actually am. I look down as if I’m struggling to recompose myself. Mrs. Collins’s iPhone is lying there in my lap, its screen offering me a dozen choices, and links to dozens more.
A lot of good that does me, I think. When there’s no one I could call for help, no one I could text, nothing I could look up . . . all I can do is record things I don’t want to remember. . . .
But hasn’t remembering Daddy’s crimes helped in some ways? It’s the reason I convinced Stuart not to cheat; it’s the reason I was brave enough to help Jala stand up for herself.
Isn’t there something in those bad memories that can help me now?
Suddenly I have an idea. And I’m so proud of it—so convinced it will work—that I surreptitiously press the iPhone screen to start recording. I’m going to want Mom to hear how brilliantly I handle this. Retelling won’t do it justice.
I tuck the phone back into my pocket and then I look up at Mr. Trumbull. I pretend to blink back tears as I scoot forward in my seat, as if I’m ready to stand up.
“Well,” I say. “Maybe I’ll just have to make the government care about me. I’ll go talk to the prosecution team myself.”
A bland, bored look settles over Mr. Trumbull’s face. I don’t know if he’s refusing to take my bait, or if he just wants me to believe that he is.
“Surely your mother explained why that isn’t possible,” Mr. Trumbull says. Three years of watching the DHS mean-girls clique from afar makes me think I can tell: He’s working hard to get that careless tone into his voice.
I slide a little farther out, to the edge of my seat.
“Ah, but you’re thinking I’m as timid and easily frightened as my mother,” I say. Oops—maybe I won’t want Mom to hear the recording of this conversation. But there’s not time to glance down and turn it off. I keep my gaze drilled on Mr. Trumbull’s eyes. “Remember, half my DNA comes from my father. The ‘loose cannon’—isn’t that what you called him in Atlanta magazine?”
Maybe it was useful, after all, to read the articles on Mr. Trumbull’s reception-area wall.
Mr. Trumbull shifts slightly in his own chair.
“What exactly are you proposing to do?” he asks. “What could you do, that wouldn’t endanger you and your parents more than ever?”
I fight to keep from letting him see me wince.
“I could tell the government that if they won’t protect me, I’ll make the whole story public,” I say. “I could ruin their case completely. I’d give an exclusive interview to . . . I don’t know, Nancy Grace.”
I’ve picked the most obnoxious TV personality I can think of. Three years ago she devoted hours of her show to ranting about how despicable my father was.
Maybe some of my disgust shows, because Mr. Trumbull just waves this away.
“You wouldn’t do that,” he says quietly.
“I want to go to college,” I say. “I want to have a life. A real life, not one where I’m hiding and terrified all the time. I wouldn’t have to actually talk to the media. Just threaten to. The prosecutors wouldn’t know I was bluffing.”
Mr. Trumbull watches me, one eyebrow cocked.
“I suppose that is one route you could take to achieve your dreams,” he says, and the sarcasm in his voice surprises me.
“It is?” I say, momentarily thrown off.
“Well, possibly,” he amends himself. “With all the budget-cutting lately, I’m not sure how many prisons still offer college classes to their inmates.”
“Prisons?” I repeat numbly. “Inmates?”
Mr. Trumbull stands and strolls toward his office window. He looks out for a moment toward the Atlanta skyline, then turns to face me.
“Prison is where you’re headed if you start trying to blackmail the government,” he says. “You do understand that what you’re proposing would be considered blackmail, under the circumstances? Believe me, the government would have no inclination to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
Could what I’m talking about be called blackmail?
“American citizens have rights,” I say, and I’m proud I can stand up to him. I’m not proud of the waver in my voice. “We have the right to go to the news media when we’re not happy with the government. There . . . there’s a free press. First amendment rights.”
Now I’m rambling. Mr. Trumbull shoots me a look that makes me feel about three years old.
“Ordinary American citizens have rights,” Mr. Trumbull concedes. “An underage teenager whose father is a notorious criminal all the prosecutors hate . . . someone like that has to be careful. Especially if she and her mother have been breaking the law for the past three years.”
“My mother and I haven’t broken any laws!” I protest.
Mr. Trumbull leans back against the windowsill. The look he’s giving me now doesn’t just make me feel young and foolish. It makes me feel subhuman. Maybe I’m an amoeba. Maybe a paramecium. To him, I’m just some insignificant creature flailing about in a waterdrop.
“Falsifying documents,” Mr. Trumbull says, ticking off my mother’s supposed crimes on his fingers. “Faking a work history. Using fictional social security numbers. And those are just the infractions I know about. Who can say how many other frauds you’ve perpetrated?”
“Those were all things you helped Mom with!” I shout. “Things you told her to do!”
Mr. Trumbull strokes his chin.
“Surprisingly, there would be no paper trail leading back to me,” he says. “It would just be the word of a felon’s wife against mine. Who do you think the rest of the world’s going to believe?”
Something slams against my spine—the stiff wooden back of my chair. I wasn’t conscious of slumping or sliding backward. It feels more as though I was thrown backward by the force of Mr. Trumbull’s words.
“You . . . you’re blackmailing me,” I manage to say. “You’re just threatening me and Mom with prison to get me to do what you want. To stay silent.”
Mr. Trumbull lets a half smile play over his lips. I saw him look exactly this way in court, when he knew he’d beaten a witness down to a pulp. I never knew how terrible it’d feel to be on the receiving end of that smile.
“You are a perceptive child,” he says. “I can see why your grades are so high.”
“So shouldn’t I get to go to college?” I almost wail. “Why are you treating me like the enemy? Why do you want to ruin my life?”
Mr. Trumbull takes two steps. Now he’s standing over me.
“I’m not the one who ruined your life,” he says. “It’s your father’s fault. And your mother’s. They’re the reason you’re stuck in that rathole in the middle of nowhere—”
“I’m not in a rathole!” I protest, and it strikes me as funny that, after hating so much of my time in Deskins, I still feel obligated to defend it. Laughter starts burbling out of me.
Except, maybe it isn’t laughter. Maybe Mr. Trumbull has goaded me into crying for real.
“The next place you’ll have to go would be a rathole,” he says grimly. “You’ll have to hide in worse and worse places every time you or your mom slip up.”
He paces back toward the window.
“Your parents have caused me no end of aggravation,” he says. “Your father—forcing the speedy trial even when I told him we needed more time to prepare, refusing any plea agreement, not revealing the evidence he had against Excellerand until after the trial—”
“That’s not my fault,” I say. “Or my mom’s.”
Mr. Trumbull ignores me.
“And your mother . . . do you know how much money she could have made on book deals, movie deals, interview deals three years ago?” he asks. “My firm was ready and willing to negotiate all that. She could have set all of us up for life. I could have retired on that money.”
I stare at Mr. Trumbull.
“But . . . Excellerand,” I say. “Wouldn’t that have ruined the case the government’s trying to build? Wouldn’t it have meant that everyone saw us, that we could never hide . . .”
Mr. Trumbull shrugs.
“She could have done the interviews with her face hidden,” he said. “She wouldn’t have had to say anything about Excellerand. Just . . . what it was like all those years living with your father, the serial liar? Did she suspect him of marital infidelities, too? Was anything about him true?”
I wince at “marital infidelities” and am practically slaughtered by “Was anything about him true?” How did Mr. Trumbull know to ask the exact question that has plagued me for the past three years?
I channel my fury into my answer.
“So you and your firm wanted my mom to open a vein and bleed on national television?” I ask. “For money? You wanted her to sell her shame?”
I remember how I felt three years ago. Mom telling our story on TV—that would have destroyed me.
“It’s what everyone does nowadays,” Mr. Trumbull says, with another careless shrug. “She could have supported you that way. In the lifestyle you were accustomed to.”
“My mom has supported me just fine,” I snarl. I spring to my feet. I’m done. I can’t stand another second with this evil man.
I’m whirling around, headed for the door, when I feel Mr. Trumbull’s hand on my shoulder.
“You came here with a request,” he says softly. “I just had to see how serious you were. How badly you want it.”
I freeze.
“You already told me there’s nothing you can do,” I say.
“I never actually said that,” Mr. Trumbull tells me, and I can hear the change in his voice. He really should not use his lawyer techniques on someone who sat and watched him disembowel witness after witness during the longest three weeks of my life. I recognize this shift: This is his buddy-buddy voice, with the undercurrent of What? You thought I was being mean? How could you misunderstand so badly?
“Oh, so now you’re going to help, after all?” I ask. I don’t sit back down.
“I’m going to tell you your choices,” Mr. Trumbull says. “You can appeal to your mother—the asking price has gone down immensely, but she could still get a book deal or an interview deal. Maybe leading up to the five-year anniversary of the trial—something like that.”
“You want me to ask my mother to sell her soul?” I ask incredulously. “And mine?”
Mr. Trumbull holds up a cautionary finger.
“Or you can write a letter to your father,” he says. “Ask for his help.”
“Have you of all people forgotten he’s in prison?” I ask. I’m still poised to flee. “How can he help me from there? By dropping all his accusations against Excellerand? Signing something that guarantees he’ll never testify against them? Ensuring he’ll be in prison seven more years?”
I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.
Do you think my father loves me enough to spend even an extra second in prison? I want to ask. When he didn’t even love me enough to avoid doing the crimes that sent him to prison in the first place?
“No, no,” Mr. Trumbull says impatiently. “He’d give you money. Or access to it, anyway. I’m sure you heard the rumors about your father’s funds in the Cayman Islands? Surely, if you just ask . . .”
I stare at Mr. Trumbull in amazement.
“Is it even legal for you to tell me to use that money?” I begin. I have to stop and try again. “If that money really exists . . . if my father really loved me . . . don’t you think he would have found a way to give it to me already?”