Tenley could barely keep up with her mother as she strode down the corridor of City Hall. Her mom could walk really fast, even in those heels. Tenley knew the look on her face, even though she was three steps behind her. Mom was pissed. Why? Something about Brileen, she guessed. But what? How’d she even know her?
“Come with me, right now, Tenley,” her mother had ordered. She had steered her out of the surveillance room, all fakey-pleasant, Tenley could tell, fluttering a fakey-nice good-bye wave to those now returned to their desks. But once they’d gotten out into the corridor, the two of them alone, Mom had freaked.
Mom had yanked open the stairway door, almost slung Tenley through. “I’ve got to check the security desk. If there’s something going on across the street … But then we’re going to my office. Then you are going to tell me—how exactly did you meet Brileen Finnerty? And exactly what is your relationship with her?”
The door slammed behind them, their footsteps clattering down the metal stairway.
Tenley couldn’t keep up, not with her mother’s pace, not with her mother’s questions. She didn’t understand anything.
Mom opened the door to the lobby, strode toward the security guy, then stopped.
“Stay right there, Tenley.” Her mother pointed to a tan square on the checkerboard tiles of the hallway floor. “Away from the windows. Do not move. I have to make a call.”
Mom had picked up the security guy’s desk phone and was pounding the numbers on the keypad. How did Mom know about Brileen? She’d tried to ask on the way down, like about a million times, but her mother had never let her get a word in. Did Brileen have something to do with her father? Or the black car?
Wait a minute. Tenley stared at the tan square on the floor, thinking. The cop upstairs hadn’t said anything about her father being killed in Curley Park. He’d asked to see just the same place, exactly the same place, but without mentioning Dad.
She did not understand the world. Not at all. She fiddled with the hem of her T-shirt, stretching it out, letting it snap into place. Her mom was still on the phone, hunched over the desk. Ignoring her.
Tenley took one little step off her square. Then another. A long padded bench lined the wall across from her. It was vacant now, but Hall employees often sat there waiting for rides, or sipping the last of their take-out coffees before reporting for work. Someone had left the want ads from the morning paper, sections carelessly refolded, askew on one end. Another step. Another.
And there was the exit. Tenley touched her fingers to the metal handle of the glass door, testing, as if it might be alarmed. Outside was a little alleyway, the covered turn-around the mayor and other big shots used to get into City Hall without getting rained or snowed on. Past that was a strip of decorative cobblestones, then the sidewalk.
And then the street, she thought. Freedom.
Where she’d go, she wasn’t quite sure. But if she stayed, wasn’t she in big trouble? Somehow? Her mother was sure acting like it.
All she had to do was run.
* * *
“Get away from that door!” Catherine Siskel felt like yanking her daughter’s fingers from the curved silver handle. “I told you not to move, Tenner. For good reason. If there’s danger out there, we need to stay inside.”
Tenley looked at her, those dark eyes questioning, her T-shirt all pulled out of shape, just like their lives were. Four flights of stairs had allowed Catherine to mentally regroup. She tried to tamp down her resentment. She wasn’t any less angry, or any less hurt, or any less in mourning. But she didn’t have to take it out on poor Tenley.
She and Greg had tried to protect their younger daughter from sorrow and grief and loss. Ten long months of bereavement and disbelief. The three of them. Until Greg went off the reservation. Now he was gone. The sorrow welled up in her, so powerfully she almost couldn’t see. What if Tenley was in danger, too?
“I’m sorry, honey, I know I sounded angry.” Putting her arm across her daughter’s shoulders, Catherine felt the girl’s muscles freeze, rigid and unyielding. Well, she’d be mad, too, or sad, or confused, or all of the above. “But I’m not angry with you.”
Silence from Tenley.
“Let’s go to my office.” Catherine had been so angry when she’d heard the name Brileen, her brain had white-flashed into overdrive. Now they had to deal with it. “We need to talk. In private.”
But Tenley had scooted even farther away on the bench. Scowling, she drew her knees to her chest, yanked her skirt over her legs, and wrapped her arms around them. A brick wall.
“We can talk here. Who were you calling?” Tenley demanded. “Why were you so mad about Brileen?”
There it was.
The question Catherine tried to avoid, hoped to avoid, hoped never to face anywhere but in her own remorseful memories. Now she’d never be able to sort it out with Greg, either. He’d denied everything, but she hadn’t believed him. Why should she? She’d seen too much evidence of his lying. She had always thought, she realized now, she had always thought there would be more time for the truth. And then there wasn’t.
“Shhh, honey. I had to check with the guard, then call the mayor about the situation across the street, let him know where I am. And Ward Dahlstrom. I told him you were with me.” She stopped as she saw the look on her daughter’s face. “I know, he’s not the most—anyway. Then this happened.” She waved a hand, toward upstairs and outside, encompassing the entire morning. “The mayor says he’s been told it’s almost all clear, trouble’s over. Nothing to fear. But there’s a lot of other stuff going on. City Hall stuff.”
“Whatever,” Tenley said. “Ward Dahlstrom is an asshole.”
“Tenley! Language.” It was hard not to smile. She had to agree. It was Dahlstrom who’d kept her out of the surveillance video loop. Dahlstrom who had helped put her in the impossible position of having to lie to the police to protect the mayor. So, indeed yes. Dahlstrom was an asshole.
“Be that as it may,” Catherine said.
“What about Brileen?” Tenley said.
“Brileen.” Catherine looked at her daughter’s narrowed eyes, saw the yearning behind them, and the sorrow, and the disappointment. Saw a future ahead of them that no one could have predicted or planned. Lives that had once seemed so promising, so exciting, even important. Lives now devolved into sadness and lies and cover-ups and death. Here they were. Mother and daughter, face-to-face on a little bench in the lobby of Boston City Hall.
What they didn’t teach at the Kennedy School was how to spin this one:
Telling your teenage daughter about her father’s affair.