by Kate Flora
"She's not been arrested, which is something," Gareth said. "They took her to hospital and now she's in our infirmary. But the investigation's on-going, and the police are considering charges."
"What's our girl's name?"
"Heidi," he said. "Heidi Basham."
That name, Heidi, conjured up images of blond pigtails and the Swiss Alps and Grandfather and some goats.
"What year is she?"
"Sophomore. But this is her first year at the school."
So yes, I thought, the girl is awfully young. "You've called her parents?"
"Of course. And they're on their way. Her mother and stepfather, at least. Flying in from the West Coast," he said. "It's a divorce situation. The mother said she'd let the father know."
I wasn't comfortable with his decision to let the mother control the news, but that could wait until I was showered, dressed, and on the road. I preferred to handle details when my eyes were open and my brain was fully operating.
As if he'd read my mind, he said, "We've tried to reach the father. This time and others. He's…uh… difficult to reach. I gather he travels a lot."
The traveling parent. Another reason kids got sent to private school. No one at home had time for them. I felt a spike of sympathy for this girl, wondering if this pregnancy might have been a grab for attention that went horribly wrong.
Anticipating my next question, he said, "And yes, I was on the phone to our lawyer as soon as ever it happened. Once he'd established that she hadn't been arrested, I got a quick paragraph of instructions and a 'call me back in the morning,' which I took to mean at a more civilized hour. We'll for sure get him in later this morning, but I'm expecting he'll be telling me that the poor girl will need her own lawyer. I'll get some suggestions from him so we'll be prepared when mother arrives. Obviously, Heidi being a minor, we'll need mother's consent for that."
The clock was ticking. I had calls to make to free up my day if I was going to drive to Simmons, so I said, "I'll be there as soon as I can, Gareth. I'll call you from the road and we can continue this."
"I'm beyond relieved to know you're coming," he said. "I'm afraid I'm a bit thrown by all this."
"All this" had happened in the night, but the facts would soon spread across the campus. Boarding schools were like small towns. Everyone—students and faculty alike—lived in each other's pockets and news and gossip traveled at the speed of light. Gareth was already reeling from the implications of the event for his school and anticipating the sorrow and confusion his students would feel over such shocking behavior by one of their own. Any headmaster would be struggling with this. Heidi's unusual situation, and assessing her denial of the facts and getting at the truth, was a significant complication.
The other complications were the kind that occurred whenever there was a crisis involving a student on a boarding school campus: managing the disclosure of information to the student body, their parents, the media, and the involved student's parents in a manner least damaging to the school. Divorced parents made things even more difficult, since often the divorces were so bitter they couldn't even be in the same room at the same time, despite the fact that the matter concerned their child. Far too often, when EDGE came into these situations, part of our job ended up being to babysit, or verbally control, a set of warring parents. Also complicating things, of course, would be dealing with the police.
EDGE Consulting works with independent, meaning private, schools. Often, we work with schools on their image, on "branding" their special niche in this small corner of the education world and helping them to promote and protect those brands. Simmons's brand was particularly vulnerable in this situation. Simmons Prep was a small, elite, non-denominational private school north of Boston, with a reputation for educational excellence. Their special niche was nurturing a responsible, caring, community-oriented student body with particular attention to environmental science, social justice, and global awareness. This was part of their core values, as was service to the community.
The Simmons campus was so green and vegan it was practically a sin to wear leather shoes there. Everybody worked in the greenhouses and campus gardens. The students helped run a day-care center for low-income children. They valued diversity of culture and opinion. It was a self-selected community of budding activists, humanistic citizens, and locovores. The last place on earth, in short, to have a pregnant student fly under the radar, never mind surreptitiously deliver a baby and abandon her newborn to almost certain death. The situation would have been bad anywhere, but the value the school placed on personal responsibility made it a particularly bad place for someone to deny responsibility for endangering a vulnerable life.
The independent school world was a small one, and schools vied each year for the cream of students whose parents could afford the stiff tuitions. Schools worked very hard to protect their images. Mostly, EDGE worked on promoting positive images. In cases like this, though, and why Gareth had called me at such an uncivilized hour, was the importance of protecting an image. The school needed immediate help with public relations and damage control. My job was shaping the message to the community, parents, and public in a way least damaging to the school. And callus though it might sound, the timing of this couldn't have been worse. Acceptance letters had recently gone out and prospective students were choosing their schools.
In most school populations, information control was difficult. Even five years ago, fewer students had cell phones and social media wasn't so omnipresent in students' lives. These days it was harder to control the message. They were so connected to the world that keeping the story under wraps was impossible. Still, Simmons was a better place for shaping the message than most. It was a community, with shared community values, and a sense of responsibility to that community and the wider world. Students chose to go there because of that.
In this case, the school's unusual character would be a double-edged sword. Gareth would have better control of his students, and what they communicated, because they believed in discussion and consensus within the community, and a more difficult job explaining to his students how one of their own had veered so far from the school's core values.
I urged Gareth to email his students, explain the dilemma they faced with respect to the wider world's understanding and judgment, and ask them to hold off discussing it with those outside the community until the administration could explore the details of what had happened. His message should be that the situation was complicated, called for open minds and compassion, and that when he had the facts, he would bring them together as a student body to explore the implications. That was how they worked at Simmons. Community. Open communication. Respect for a diversity of opinions.
It was a wonderful place. I'd worked with them before and loved it. Simmons students gave me hope for the future. These young people would understand citizenship. Know how to disagree, listen to opposing opinions, and reach decisions based on mutual respect.
As I stumbled across the cold floor to grab some clothes, I ached for the pain they would be feeling. For a student body who felt their values had been betrayed, and for the student whose situation—about which we knew so little—had caused her to betray them.
I knew how the world would judge them. I feared for how the parents would react, even though they'd chosen this special community for their children. But I hoped, a hope Gareth echoed, that within their community they could come to understand what had happened, offer forgiveness and support, and move on stronger.
We both knew he had other things to worry about. He had to consider the impact on applicants for next year's class, and on skittish parents who might consider pulling their children out. He would be worried about damage to the school's reputation as a close and caring community if something like this could happen under their noses. Schools acting in loco parentis were always vulnerable to the charge that they had failed.
I was about to disconnect, but as I pulled out underwear and tights, I had another thought. "Yo
u said the girl denies that she was pregnant?"
"She does."
"And her denial seems genuine?"
"She wasn't in the best of shape to answer questions, in the circumstances, but I'd say yes. She seemed credible."
These were critical issues—the age of the young mother, the events leading to the pregnancy, the mother's mental state, the reaction of her family. It was all part of building the story, of translating Heidi from a heartless monster to someone deserving of compassion. From someone indifferent to the welfare of an innocent baby to a desperate child herself, possibly even unaware of her pregnancy, with few options and impaired judgment. Quite possibly a victim herself. I was not being a weasel. The truth mattered. But there were often many versions of the truth, depending on whose point of view you told the story from. There is a Rashomon element to most stories that involve more than one person.
"So have you… or will you… get a good psychiatrist involved?"
"We will. I agree that it's essential. We're collecting names, but you know, it's not a good time of day to try and reach anyone." There was an embarrassed silence, as we both shared the thought that he hadn't hesitated to reach me. Then he went on. "We have some good prospects in hand and as soon as the hour's more civilized, we'll be making those calls." He hesitated again. "I'll ring off now, Thea, and let you get ready. But do, please, call me when you're under way."
He didn't say, "And hurry!" but that was what he meant.
I would. Of course. But first, despite the urgency of my client's situation, I needed a shower, and the world's best inducement awaited me.
I carried my clothes into the bathroom, pulled off my nightgown, and stepped into the shower.
~
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Kate Flora first developed her fascination with people's criminal tendencies as a lawyer in the Maine attorney general's office. Deadbeat dads, people who beat and neglected their kids, and employers' hateful acts of discrimination led to a deep curiosity about human psychology that's led to fourteen books including seven "strong woman" Thea Kozak mysteries and four gritty police procedurals in her star-reviewed Joe Burgess series. She thanks Nancy Drew, Sara Paretsky, and Dick Francis for her inspiration. She's been an Edgar, Derringer, Agatha and Anthony finalist and twice won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Her nonfiction won the Public Safety Writers Association Award in 2015.
When she's not writing, or teaching writing at Grub Street in Boston, she's usually found in her garden, where she wages a constant battle against critters, pests, and her husband's lawnmower. She's been married for 35 years to a man who can still make her laugh. She has two wonderful sons, a movie editor and a scientist, two lovely daughters-in-law, a perfect grandson, and four rescue "granddogs," Frances, Otis, Harvey, and Daisy.
