The Whole Golden World (32 page)

Her mom bit her lip, and said, “I try to be supportive . . .”

“I know, and it's better than, like, condemning it. But it's too much. It's suffocating.”

“Sorry.”

“No, don't be all sad and that. I'm not mad. I'm just trying to explain.”

“I know you are. Wish you'd said so before . . .”

“Would you have listened? I don't know if you've noticed, but you're a little stubborn.”

Dinah smirked down at her own lap. “Like a whale is a little big.”

Her mother was quiet then for a minute, and Morgan sighed into that quiet. She realized how seldom it was they were ever just together in a simple way. Like when they weren't having a fight, or talking about the boys, or her mom was trying to have a big old “mother-daughter moment.”

Finally her mom spoke, and Morgan tried not to roll her eyes; of course she couldn't just be quiet for five minutes. “Hon, can I ask you? No pressure, I'm just thinking. What do you want to do? When all this is done?”

“ ‘This'? The trial?”

“Yes.”

Morgan rested against the wall behind her and considered.

What popped up now in her memory was that look, in the courtroom parking lot. No, it wasn't a look, even. Their eyes had met, but he might as well have been looking at the garbage bin for all the emotion that was there. She could have chalked that up to the presence of his wife, not wanting to get caught looking, but she was inside the car. His wife could not have seen his face.

All these weeks she'd suffered alone, cut off from everyone, cut off from him, and he'd never tried to reach her. Even as she was called filthy names on the Internet, as someone carved a death threat into her locker, as her mother's business was trashed, as his lawyer stood up and described her like an unhinged, desperate slut . . . He was silent and let it all happen, all to save his own ass. But only now, as he realized she held the key, in his last desperate attempt to stay out of jail, he reached out and what did he do? Did he even ask how she was holding up?

“Mom, I have something to tell you. He e-mailed me just now. Him. Mr. Hill.”

Dinah jumped off the bed, and Morgan could read the signs of fury in her clenched fists, forward leaning posture . . . Then she shook herself like waking from a dream and sat back down. Her mom put the bowls on the floor and hugged her. “We'll call Henry in a minute. I'm so sorry this happened to you. So very sorry I let you down.”

Morgan pushed her back, firmly, but she hoped not roughly. “Mom. You have got to stop doing that. I'm a person and I make decisions. Stupid ones, I guess, but I make them. Me. And so do Jared and Connor. We're people, not puppets.”

“How did you get so wise?”

“Yeah. Really fricking wise.”

Dinah leaned in for another hug. Morgan could smell her mother's shampoo, and she breathed deeply, realizing that someday she'd miss this smell. At college, if she ever managed to go, or on her own somewhere, or . . . someday when her mom would be gone. She made a mental note to buy the same kind, wherever she went, whatever she was going to do, when “this” was at last all over.

48

A
nd just like that, it was over, and Dinah exhaled, as if she'd been holding her breath for months now. She tipped her head up as if she were in a grand cathedral to thank God for this, though her gaze rested on flecked ceiling tiles instead of stained glass.

And then she promised herself to start going to Mass again.

TJ Hill had stood up in court with his lawyer, changing his plea to guilty as charged.

Excited whispers had swelled through the courtroom, and the judge tapped his gavel twice. The judge had asked him if he was sure. Then the judge had asked—his long, severe face the very picture of indignant irritation—why the sudden change of heart.

TJ Hill had mumbled so quietly that the judge demanded that he speak up.

“I was in panic mode before.” He shifted from foot to foot. “That's all I can say.”

The judge tipped back in his large judge chair, tented his fingers under his chin, and observed, “Quite a long panic, I'd say. Bond remains in effect, and you will report for sentencing on June 26.” The sentencing was part of the plea deal, however, and thus a formality. Dinah had already been briefed: three years in prison, though with time off for good behavior he could be up for parole in a little over two years.

Another crack of the gavel and that was it.

Dinah squeezed the hands of Joe on one side, and Morgan on the other, and they stood up almost at the same instant. Henry turned around with a jubilant smile, reaching over the barrier to shake Joe's hand. Dinah leaned over for a hug, too. Morgan hung back shyly, her curtain of hair falling around her, and Dinah sensed the burst of a flashbulb and she knew what would be on the front page the next day.

They hung back while TJ filed out of the courtroom, trailed by his lawyer and a phalanx of press. After that crowd had surged past, Dinah locked eyes with Rain, across the aisle. She'd sat on his side of the room, but she had not followed him out. They traded a look, but that was all.

For all anyone knew, they were strangers, with every reason to hate and distrust each other.

Henry was speaking now to Morgan, so Dinah looked back to their tight circle. He said, “I'm proud of you that you turned over that e-mail to me and didn't give in to his manipulation. That was very brave.”

Morgan wouldn't answer at first, then she said something very quietly, in Henry's direction. He whispered back in her ear and gave a sad smile to Dinah.

“Let me walk out with you,” Henry said. “They'll want a comment from someone.”

“May I?” Dinah said. “It's all over now, and we can't hurt the case or anything, right?”

Henry frowned. “As you wish. But whatever you say could be in 48-point type tomorrow and repeated on the news in a constant loop. You do get a victim impact statement at sentencing.”

“I'll be fine.”

And so they walked out of the utilitarian courthouse onto the plaza, where benches no one ever used flanked a flagpole and a memorial to Arbor Valley's veterans.

The reporters moved like one organism from TJ and his lawyer over to the four of them and began shouting questions. Henry answered first in the practiced, dignified cadence of one who had given many, many interviews.

Joe made like a statue. He'd put on his stern assistant principal face and shielded Morgan under his arm. Morgan looked down at the ground, letting her hair form a barrier between herself and the rest of the world.

Dinah cleared her throat, not listening to any particular question, and their attention turned to her. They crowded around—about five of them plus a couple of cameramen, Arbor Valley wasn't that big—but there were enough that for the moment, they screened out everything else in her view.

“We're pleased at the outcome, but not how long it took for TJ Hill to tell the truth. I also want us as a community to stop and think about what it means to be a child. Teenagers today act very jaded and sophisticated, don't they? Without ever saying it out loud, we all know they have sex, and they drink, and smoke, and use credit cards and interact online, hold jobs, watch TV shows where the actors are having sex with everyone all the time, and all the other things we as adults do every day.” Dinah sensed their fidgeting, noted one snappily dressed anchor lady checking her watch. She rushed her speech a bit. “We have let them grow up so fast that I can see why it's tempting to say a seventeen-year-old is the same as an adult. It's only a few months, right? What difference does it make? But I dare you.” She pointed at them, addressing the press specifically, who would carry this story to the town, who would portray their family. “Think back on the things you did, when you were seventeen and thought you were immortal. Consider just one reckless thing, and now imagine that you didn't get lucky and come out unscathed. Imagine instead that the absolute worst happened, and not only that, everyone knew about it, and wrote about it, and commented on it in a public forum, and that the public forum where everyone commented will be preserved forever and ever in some kind of digital archive. The law knows, the court knew, where to assign blame for this exploitation of a child who has not yet matured into the person she's trying to be. I only wish the rest of you had been as wise.”

There was a beat of silence as scribbling went on, and jockeying of cameras, as the reporters with shining, ravenous eyes were plotting their follow-up questions.

Dinah took that opportunity to forge through the lot of them as if they were no more than long grasses in a field. They parted in front of her, and with her family in tow, Dinah marched unimpeded to their car.

“He's right there,” muttered Morgan from under Joe's arm. Joe stopped, and they all stopped.

Joe turned to face him. TJ was across the plaza with that slick lady lawyer. Joe bellowed in his best assistant principal voice, but with his accent in full glory, “Don't ever go near my daughter again, you fucking low-life pervert!”

Henry squeezed Joe's arm with a small, warning shake of the head. Joe stopped before any specific threats were spoken out loud.

TJ was already scuttling away, head bowed as if under fire. Dinah noted with a cocked eyebrow that Rain was walking to a different car.

Good for you,
Dinah thought.
You go, girl.

 

It was night, and the eleven o'clock news was coming on. The kids were all in their rooms, supposedly asleep, but probably not. Anyway, the next day everyone was going to the beach. Joe and Dinah had decided on the way home. They all deserved some stupid family fun with Popsicles and beach volleyball and Lake Huron, miles away where no one knew them.

The laptop was open with the newspaper story on it. It wouldn't be in newsprint until the next day, but the online version had come up merely a couple of hours later.
TEACHER PLEADS GUILTY TO SEX WITH STUDENT
read the headline. Dinah had been both happy and queasy.

Dinah and Joe were in sweatpants in the den, each with an open beer. They clinked bottles. “To justice, at last,” Dinah said.

Joe grunted.

The TV anchor intoned an introduction to the story with the guilty plea, then said, “And there was an interesting reaction from Joe Monetti, the girl's father, and just retired assistant principal at Arbor Valley High, where Hill had been teaching.”

The camera cut to Joe in all his raging glory, though his f-bomb was bleeped.

“Way to upstage me,” Dinah said, chuckling.

“Yeah. That had been pent up for a while.”

“You sounded like Tony Soprano.”

“I wish. He'd be in a suitcase in the woods.”

“Now, now.”

“Nah, I know. A guy can dream, eh?”

The clip of Dinah only showed her saying that she was happy with the result but not how long it took. “Sheesh. They cut out all that great material about kids growing up too fast.”

“ 'Course. It was too long for a sound bite. Now, if you'd cursed him out . . .”

The newspaper had buried her comments, too, only a few words and a clumsy paraphrase, way toward the end of the story.

Dinah stretched. “Now what? I feel like for months I've waited for this, and now it's over, and I just feel . . . hollow.”

“I'm out of a job, you're selling the Den. We've gotta figure out what Morgan's gonna do next year, poor kid.”

“She got accepted everywhere she applied.”

“She wanted to go to Boston,” Joe said, his voice dreamy with memory of a time when college tuition seemed to be their only Morgan problem.

“Yeah, poor kid. Wish we could have said yes. Coped with the distance. Loans, scholarships, maybe . . .” Dinah said.

“I don't think it would have solved everything . . .”

“Yeah, I know. Not that simple. Nothing ever is.”

Joe took a long pull of his beer and nodded solemnly.

“I have an idea, though,” Dinah said. “It's sort of crazy.”

“Hell, crazy is the new normal. I'm all ears.”

“Wait . . .” Dinah had glanced at the laptop and hit “refresh” on the story, idly, not really thinking, when the comments section lit up with reactions. She smirked and handed Joe the laptop. Together they huddled over it, reading.

 

Hooray! So glad to hear that he came clean and justice was done. About time. Now we don't have to worry about him getting his job back and preying on other students. —Avfan32

 

Just goes to show that a handsome face doesn't make him a nice guy. —Bert

 

I hope he goes away for a long, long time. Sick bastard. —Anonymous

 

I don't believe it. I think he just plead to make it go away so he can get his life back. All it takes is an accusation and you're life is over, people. Think about it. —JJ862

 

JJ862: What the hell is wrong with you? The cops busted them together and she wasn't wearing a top. That's not innocent behavior. Maybe you like to screw young girls, too? Does it hit close to home, pal? Plus, learn to use proper grammer. It's your, not you're.

 

Joe sputtered laughter into his fist. “I love it when people correct someone's grammar and then spell grammar wrong.”

Dinah skimmed the responses. Other than the mysterious JJ862, the comment thread was full of indignant outrage against the monstrous aggressor TJ Hill. “You know, just by sheer numbers, at least some of these people had to have been saying nasty things about Morgan before. Or they were at least silent while everyone else was.”

“Mob mentality,” Joe said through a sigh. “As old as the hills.”

“Now everyone will say they knew it all along. I'd bet the house on that.” Dinah snapped the laptop closed. “Whaddya say we get the hell out of Dodge?”

“What?” Joe rubbed his temples and yawned. “Dodge?”

“Not exactly. Arbor Valley. Let's get the hell out of here.”