by Haley Pierce
I cover my face with my handcuffed hands when I start to cry.
Cain
After stopping at Addison’s house and finding it empty, I storm into the administration building, fifteen minutes late for the appointment. The secretary outside the Dean’s office asks me to have a seat, but I pace the floor, too angry to sit still.
She steps outside the door and nods at me. “She’s waiting for you. You may go in, Dr. Hill.”
I stride inside to see Mrs. McBride sitting across the desk from Dean Armstrong, balancing a cup of tea in a dainty china cup in her lap. I don’t know why I’d expected she might actually be so concerned about her daughter’s whereabouts that she might’ve cancelled this appointment. But no, she’s sitting there, smiling charmingly at the dean, looking like she has all the time in the world.
When she sees me, she stops in the middle of a sentence and her smile dissolves. Then she says, “Perhaps now we can get some answers.”
“Answers as to what? Why you had your daughter arrested?” I challenge.
The dean raises her eyebrows, but Mrs. McBride takes a slow sip of her tea, suggesting she doesn’t seem surprised at all by this information. Meanwhile, her own daughter is sitting in a jail cell, probably scared to death. The thought of it makes the rage erupt inside me.
“Are you going to get her out of there?”
She calmly says, “No. I may even press charges.”
I clench my teeth. “She’s scared to death.”
She looks at the dean, as if I’m not worthy of talking to, and explains, “She’s a danger to herself at this point. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She used to be so good, so well-behaved, but this semester, all that has changed. She’s been fed all these lies, indoctrinated by this man. ” She waves a hand at me.
Dean Armstrong volleys a look a surprised look at me. “So this goes deeper than the issue you had with his unfair grading system, Mrs. McBride.”
“Oh, much, much deeper.” She frowns. “I’ve had my suspicions, which were only just confirmed recently. This professor has been taking advantage of his position of authority.”
Armstrong blinks and looks at me. “Is that true, Dr. Hill?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I clench my fists at my sides since they’re dangerously close to grabbing the nearest thing and hurling it across the room. “No, it’s not true. I’ve been trying to help her.”
Mrs. McBride sets her teacup on the edge of the desk. “Help her? Dr. Hill,” she asks pointedly, drawing out the words for effect. “Are you fucking my daughter?”
I stare at her for a long time. They’re both looking at me expectantly, and a deafening silence prevails. The only sound is the ticking of the large grandfather clock behind me. It ticks for what could be a minute before I answer, “No.”
I’d said I wouldn’t lie, but right now, that feels like the truth. Fucking, from Mrs. McBride’s mouth, sounds like something cheap, and sick, and prurient. I never just fucked Addison.
She reaches into her bag and pulls out a large manila envelope. From it, she extracts several large black-and-white photographs, which she spreads across the blotter in front of Dean Armstrong. I see a picture of myself, taken from quite some distance, crossing a busy street. I recognize the building in the background, the revolving door and stately entrance, as the Four Seasons in Boston. Another, of me, standing in an open door at the Patio Court Motel, two slender feminine hands draped around my neck. Another, too blown up to recognize the location, but it clearly shows the side of my face, veiled by a swath of Addison’s blonde hair. It looks as though it was taken through a keyhole. Or between a stack of books in the library.
She’d fucking hired someone to spy on us. On her own daughter.
“Explain these,” she says.
“Yes, Dr. Hill,” Dean echoes, standing and lifting one of the photographs. “Explain.”
I could lie. I could say they aren’t her, to try to protect her for a little longer. But that wasn’t what Addison wanted me to do in this meeting. She wanted the truth to come out. And I intend to deliver it. “I don’t call it fucking,” I say. “I’m in love with her.”
More silence. When I look at Armstrong, she’s closing her eyes. She opens her mouth to speak, to reveal the consequences, but I hold up a hand.
“I know. I know that means I’ll be terminated, and I’m fine with that. She’s worth it to me.”
Dean Armstrong nods and murmurs and “All right,” but Mrs. McBride jumps to standing before she can say more. “No, it is not all right. This man is indoctrinating my daughter, making her think that up is down and wrong is right. Before, all she wanted in this world was to become a doctor. Now, she’s so confused, she’s a different person.”
“She’s being herself,” I spit out. “Before, she wanted what you wanted because all she wanted to do was please you. But now she knows that you’ll never be happy, no matter what she does.”
Addison’s mother recoils as if I’ve slapped her in the face. “How dare you try to tell me about my own daughter.” She looks at Armstrong and her tone changes. “You see, that’s why I’m not going to bail her out right now. I really think jail may be the safest place for her now.”
“The safest place?” I fire back, incredulous. Then I sigh. “Well, I guess she’s safer there than she is with you.”
Her eyes, two pits of black, focus on me, narrowing into slits. “What are you trying to say?”
“You know.” I look at the Dean, then back at her. For the first time, there’s fear in her eyes. She’s afraid I’m going to reveal what she’s been doing to her daughter. “But more importantly, I know. And it stops now, do you understand? Right. Now.”
Mrs. McBride’s eyes don’t leave mine.
“If you want to continue, you will have to go through me,” I tell her. “And I will not be so easily pushed aside.”
She continues to stare at me, for what seems like an eternity. Finally, she swallows. She nods.
“If it ever happens again, you’ll have to deal with me,” I warn. “And I promise you, I will find out.”
She nods again, struck silent.
Dean Armstrong doesn’t understand, but she doesn’t try to. She simply says, “Well, Dr. Hill, it’s a bit of a stretch for us to find a new professor to take over your class, so late into the term. I’ll have to—“
“Let him finish it out,” she says softly.
The dean and I swivel our heads toward Mrs. McBride at the same time. She is looking at the ground, looking very small, and for the first time, I can see Addison in her posture. She says, “I know she loves the class. I knew she would. I’d hoped she wouldn’t, but she does.”
I open my mouth to say something, but she holds up a finger.
“I see so much of her father in her,” she says, almost in a dream, her voice barely a breath. “As much as I tried to deny it, it’s there.”
The dean and I both stare silently at her. Finally, she stirs from her reverie and realizes she has an audience. “So let him finish the term.”
The dean sighs. “All right, but if your concern about grading—“
“There is no concern. His grades are fair.”
Then she stands up, straightens her dress and the scarf around her neck, and steps outside, closing the door behind her.
I look at Dean Armstrong, who just shakes her head disappointedly at me. “Obviously this raises concerns about your ability to continue with us next term.”
I nod. “I understand.”
And I do. Because whether or not St. Martin’s Press accepts my book, it’ll be fine. I’m meant to be a writer. And I’m going to write. Goddammit, from now on, I’m going to fucking write.
Addison
I sit on the cement floor, with my back against the metal cot in the small jail cell, staring at the old toilet in the corner. In the block, there is only one other person, a drug addict across the way, who’s curled up on his bed, oblivious to me. Except for his snores, i
t’s so quiet.
It gives me all the time I need to think.
But I don’t want to think anymore. It all comes back to how hopeless things are. My mother had me arrested, and is leaving me to rot unless I learn to heel and be her lap dog. It’s like she has a string around my neck and is pulling the cord tighter until I come to her. She’s probably in the meeting now, giving Cain hell so that he’ll never want to come within spitting distance of me ever again.
She’s so good at driving everything I want away, I think, until I realize that he’s the only thing I ever really wanted. Before, I just followed her blindly, believing she wanted what was best for me. He’s the one who made me realize that I can want something different, and it’s okay. It might even be good for me.
The door outside clangs, and I hear footsteps. When I look up, a police officer is standing in the hallway. He fumbles with the key, then slides the door open, motioning for me to follow. When I do, I see her, standing in the doorway.
My mother.
She doesn’t look at me, and doesn’t say a word as she fills out the forms to have me released. She says nothing as we step out into the parking garage, and nothing as I slide into the limousine next to her. It’s only when Hobson pulls out of the garage that she puts her face in her hands and starts to cry.
I don’t know what to do. I’ve never seen her like this. Automatically, I start, “Mom, I’m sorry—“
She holds up a hand. “No. You have nothing to be sorry for, Addison. I know. I know I’ve been wrong.”
I blink, shocked. “You do?”
“Your father was not the terrible man I made him out to be,” she says.
I sit there, so still I can hear my heart beat. She’s rarely spoken about my father, Hayden Eco, and when she did, it was always with a scowl, as if she’d tasted something sour.
“I dropped out of school for him. I gave up my aspirations to become a doctor so that I could have his child. I worked for years and years at low-wage jobs to support him while he was writing,” she says softly. “And he repaid me by having a string of affairs.
“After we divorced, he tried to get me back, but I was so hurt. He was flighty and impulsive, and spiraled down, doing drugs, drinking, getting worse and worse, and I couldn’t let that back into my life. Into your life,” she says. “When he committed suicide, I was relieved. I thought I could bury him, so that you wouldn’t remember him and would never find out what kind of man he was. But then his book was published, and he became a posthumous success.”
She looks at me, her eyes wet with tears.
“I knew the moment I met Dr. Hill that you would be in love with him, and I could tell by the way he spoke that he was in love with you,” she says, wringing her hands together. “And I couldn’t stand for it. A literary type, just like your father.”
“Oh, mom,” I blurt, staring to cry, too. “But Cain is not like that. If you just—“
“I know. I know that,” she says, holding out her hand. “I thought I was protecting you, working in your best interest. But what I realized today was that he was the one doing that. He loves you, Addison.”
I nod through my tears. “I know.”
“And you don’t want to be a doctor,” she says. It’s not a question. It’s a statement, something she already knows to be true.
When I nod, she doesn’t get angry. She just pulls me into a hug, and we stay like that, crying together, all the way home.
Epilogue
One Year Later
Cain
“So,” Emil says to me as I balance my cell between my shoulder and chin and I straighten my tie. “We just sold rights to three more countries. That brings it to thirty-one, and twelve weeks as a NY Times Bestseller. How does it feel?”
“Pretty fantastic,” I say, checking my face in the mirror. I’ve had enough coffee to wire half the city, and the dinners on tour have been feeding me so well that I’m sure I’m going to come off this twelve-city fling with at least a dozen extra pounds. “Where am I today?”
“Chicago, baby,” he says. “Memphis tomorrow.”
Right. All the back rooms of bookstores look the same. This Barnes & Noble, has more refreshments set up for me than I can eat in a year, as well as a pile of letters and signs from my fans. Fans. Outside, the line started to form for me about three hours ago. From the din outside, it sounds like a full house. It’s a little surreal, but after a number of starred reviews from the major publications and a rave review from the NY Times Book Review that called my book one of the greatest works of the century, this is my reward.
I love it all, truthfully, I do. I’m the Next Big Thing, maybe just for now, until a new one tops the lists. But I’ll never take it for granted that I get to stay home and work on my new book. This is my career, after all, and it pays the bills. But there’s only one thing that would make this tour better . . .
As I pull on my blazer, a microphone crackles outside. I check my watch. Eight PM on the dot. The bookstore manager’s voice can be heard outside. “Got to go, Emil,” I say into the phone. “I’m on.”
“Good luck, man,” he tells me, and I end the call. I put on my spectacles and give myself another once-over. Oh yes, I look sufficiently like the man in the photo on the book jacket.
“We are honored to introduce bestselling author of THE OUTSIDE WORLD, Cain Hill!” she shouts, and the crowd erupts in applause.
I step out of the door and onto the podium, noting that the line snakes through the stacks, and straight out the door. Holy shit, this is bigger than New York. It’s a mix of men and women, old and young—I’ve managed to captivate them all, somehow, with THE OUTSIDE WORLD. I wave and smile politely at everyone, then sit down at the table surrounded by stacks of my hardcover. I pick up the Sharpie and look up at the first customer, an old woman who is holding five copies of my book. “You’re my favorite author,” she gushes breathlessly. “This book truly astounded me! I’m buying a copy for each one of my sons!”
“Thank you,” I say, again and again as she continues to recount the entire story to me in such minute detail, you’d think the characters were real people. It floors me, every time, that a creation from my own head could have so many people so emotionally invested. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
As I sign each book, she hugs them to her chest like prized possessions. This. This is what makes all of those hours toiling alone, thinking I’m churning out absolute shit, worth it. When I told that to Addison, she said that I should enjoy it to the fullest. I knew she was thinking of her father. He’d only ever toiled in complete misery, and never gotten a chance to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Maybe he never knew fruit this sweet existed.
And dammit, it’s really sweet, I think, as another fan comes up for my signature. It’s an attractive young woman with blonde hair that reminds me of Addison’s, in a midriff-baring top. She asks me to sign her stomach, like I’m a rock star. I shake my head. “I’m sorry, books only,” I explain.
She shrugs and pushes a book over to me. “Everyone says it’s the best book they’ve read,” she coos. “And from the sexiest author, too.”
Addison may want me to live this life to the fullest, and I’m sure she worries I’ll do as her father had, and spread myself around to the many gorgeous women who show up at my signings. But truthfully, I’ve never been tempted. I have all I need, now. And I’m not even a stockbroker.
“Very sexy,” someone behind me agrees.
I look up and see Addison, smiling down at me.
Jumping up, I pull her into my arms, like a mirage I have to hold to make sure it’s real. I stare at her, blinking with the thought I might wake up and realize it’s a dream. “What are you doing here?” I ask her. “In . . .”
I forget. “Chicago,” she reminds me.
“Right. Chicago. I thought you were working on your novel.”
“Just finished,” she says, smiling. She’s gorgeous and flushed and wearing the white fisherman’s sweater I’d gotten her for
Christmas. She pats her bag, which is brimming with a large stack of pages. “And I want you to read it. I’m sure it’s purely C work, though.”
“Oh, you’re a B, at least,” I tease her, still dazed that she’s standing in front of me. I’d expected I’d see her when the tour got through, two weeks from now, for Christmas. I touch her hair, inhaling the intoxicating strawberry scent she carries everywhere she goes. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Disappointed?” she asks.
“Far from it.”
That’s when I look up and realize we are far from alone—there are crowds of people gathered around us, hanging on our every word. The bookstore manager grins and says, “Is this your girlfriend?”
I nod and scratch my chin, as the thing I’ve been thinking most about comes to mind. As it does, and idea blooms in my head. “Possibly more.”
Addison raises an eyebrow. “Possibly more?”
That’s when I decide to go for it. I’d been waiting for a quiet Christmas Eve in my apartment, our apartment, even though that’d felt so cliché. I’d wanted something romantic, something “us.” And what could be more romantic and “us” than a giant bookstore, surrounded by hundreds of bibliophiles? The fact that I haven’t taken the tiny velvet box out of my jacket since I bought it only seals the deal. This is the right time. All signs pointing this way. Fate.
Right on the podium, I reach into my pocket and unveil the box. I kneel, and pull back the lid to reveal the diamond solitaire.
She gasps. Along with the rest of the people on line. Some of them hug each other as her mouth drops open. This is where I’m supposed to ask the question, but at this moment, everything I’ve ever wanted is right here, happening for me. It leaves me speechless.
“Mr. English, at a loss for words,” she murmurs, her voice trembling. “Are you asking me what I think you’re asking me?”
