“This can’t be.” But I won’t argue with Jo Jo’s evidence. I stop myself from texting Lisa. From calling her and screaming. “I speak to Grace’s mother every day!” I say.
“I’d put a moratorium on that. In legal terms, I advise against it. Let our investigators deal directly with the family.”
“What about Zoe? And Lily? They can’t avoid one of their best friends in school.”
Jo Jo speaks over my torment, and the words sound like a warning. “We’re waiting for a warrant,” she says.
Javier finishes Jo Jo’s thought. “As soon as it’s issued, detectives will go to the home. They’ll search her phone, her computer. When the video turns up, which we suspect it will, you have to decide whether or not you want to press charges.”
Charges against a stranger is one thing. Grace Howard is another. I’m suddenly riddled with doubt.
“We want to press charges,” Bobby insists. “No matter who it is.”
“If that’s the case, we’ll go to the SA’s office,” Jo Jo says. “We’ll provide the evidence, and they’ll take over. They’ll consult with Zoe, who will merely be a witness. The case becomes the State versus the accused. Going after this person sends a very strong message. The laws don’t take these crimes lightly. If convicted, the suspect has a permanent record.”
The details make my head spin. Now that it’s Grace, everything’s changed. It’ll be her house they’ll invade. Her bedroom. Her computer. The same house where we spent Saturdays barbecuing by the pool. An idea takes root and slowly moves through me. I can barely string the sentence together. “Does this mean Grace filmed Zoe?”
“We won’t know until we get the warrant for her phone. Right now we have the forensic link from her IP address to the upload.”
I’m crushed.
“Computers and phones are tricky. The State will have to prove no one other than Grace used either one. Sometimes it’s a matter of password protection. If Grace is the only one who knows the password, it would be hard to prove someone else got in.”
My hands squeeze into fists. That had to be it. Someone used Grace’s computer. Someone used her phone. There’s no other explanation.
Zoe shifts in her seat. “Will Grace be arrested?”
“If we do our job correctly,” answers Jo Jo, “then yes.”
I fall back in the chair and stare at the ceiling, shocked that this is happening.
“What will she be charged with?” Zoe asks, her shoulders deflating.
“That depends on the State Attorney. The gamut runs from cyberstalking to sexual cyberharassment to possession and distribution of child pornography. The number of counts is based on the number of uploads.”
The room silences. We are fastened to our seats; the horror of this moment unspools around us. I watch Bobby. His lips press together. His forehead is lined with worry. His eyes are in shadow. And then he explodes.
“What the fuck was Grace thinking? What the hell is wrong with her? I swear I’m going after her. I’m going after the whole family. They’ll have nothing when I’m done with them. Nothing. How dare she do this to Zoe!”
I gasp. I think about Lisa and me pushing the girls in their strollers along Ocean Drive. At Fisher Park. A string of memories whittled down until they’re meaningless.
“Grace will pay for what she did,” Bobby scoffs. “And I won’t feel sorry about it. She’s not the victim. Zoe is. I’ll be happy to see that family go through half of what they’ve put us through.”
I twist around when I hear this. Victim. It’s a tiny fissure that lets humanity through. It shines on Zoe’s face. I see her searching her father’s eyes for approval, to trust that maybe he’s on her side.
“Me too,” she whispers, getting up and standing beside him. “Whatever I have to do.”
I should interrupt. I should stop this madness from spiraling. But I know it’s too late. The wheels are in motion. We needed to know, and now we do. But how could we have suspected it would be Grace?
Bobby is nodding. “I don’t really care how justice happens, only that it does, and fast.”
“I spoke with Price Hudson’s parents,” Jo Jo continues. “They’re intent on the State formally pressing charges. In fact, they specifically stated they concur with whatever the Ross family decides.”
I’m adrift, my eyes glazed, taking it all in. My mind is somewhere else altogether. I want to fight for Zoe, but Lisa’s face stops me. It’s the line between crime and punishment, revenge and forgiveness. I am straddling a fence I can’t bring myself to cross. Go forward. Go back. Someone gets hurt. Someone suffers. Nobody wins.
“The decision is in your hands,” says Jo Jo, packing up her briefcase and standing up. “If you’re after justice, we have to file a case. I suggest thinking about it. We’ll be in touch.”
Jo Jo’s departure leaves us in eerie silence. Zoe remains seated between Bobby and me, twisting her fingers. Bobby stares out the window, plotting revenge.
I squeeze Zoe’s hand. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” she says.
“How could Grace do this?” Bobby asks. “Why would Grace do this?”
The questions crowd around us, and there are many. Answers are hidden in boxes we can’t open. Lisa loved Zoe. Her concern was genuine. What would this do to her? What would this do to our friendship? Hurt people hurt people. What was inside Grace, hurting her to the point of lashing out?
Bobby jumps up. “I’m calling Drew.”
“You can’t!” I say.
“Grace broke the rules. I’ll do whatever I want.”
“Daddy, don’t,” Zoe begs.
“Bobby,” I begin, “we should talk about this. Do you really want to go after our friends? A family we’ve known for years? Maybe we can settle this alone . . . in a civilized manner?”
He rears his head at me. “Grace bullied Zoe. The worst form of bullying. They all need to be held accountable. Yes, we’re going after them.”
I’m thinking about the players involved. Everyone’s a victim. Everyone suffers. And my heart has split open wide. How Grace intentionally did this and sat in our home watching Zoe suffer kills me.
The door opens, and in walks Lily.
“Welcome to the shit show,” Zoe says to a clueless Lily, who comes over to kiss me hello. She smells like coconut, and her cheeks are pink from the sun.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“It was Grace!” Zoe yells. “Grace uploaded the video to YouTube.”
“No way,” she says, her mouth open in a perfect circle. “No way.” She says it again, because she can’t believe it. “No freaking way.”
“Yup. Grace did this to me.”
Lily drops her bag on the floor and sits next to her sister. “Why would she do that? I don’t understand . . .”
I’d been asking myself that same question and drawing a blank.
“C’mon, Zoe. Maybe someone took her computer or her phone. She’s one of our best friends!” She searches my face for an explanation, but I can only shake my head.
“She’s no friend of mine,” Zoe says. “The girl’s basically ruined my high school existence. I’m marked for life.”
Lily takes her sister’s hand. “Have you spoken to her? Have Mom and Dad called the Howards?”
“We’re not allowed to talk to them during the investigation,” I interject. “The police are handling it.
“Oh my God, this is crazy!” Lily manages. “I can’t believe it. I don’t get it.”
“It’s easy,” Zoe says. “Grace is a bitch.” Then she starts to cry again. “I’ve never had a friend betray me in such a mean way. It has to be a mix-up. It can’t be Grace.” She stops to wipe her eyes. “I hate her. She didn’t give me a chance. She picked something that was nonnegotiable, something she could never take back. What do I do?”
“We hold her accountable, Zoe,” Bobby says. “You defend yourself. You don’t let her get away with hurting you.”
I’m not s
ure this is the answer, but I’m not sure of anything at the moment. He wants to seek justice, but his intentions are blurry.
“I’m not going back to school. It makes me want to throw up, thinking about my friend doing this to me. It’s unforgivable. I can’t look at her.”
I realize I’m digging my nails into my palm. There’s blood, and I don’t bother to wipe it off. I get up to console her, to give her the little strength I have left, but she gets up first and heads for her room. Lily is close behind.
Bobby sits beside me with his head bent into his hands. I want to comfort him. I want him to comfort me, but we are too divided. I remember how we used to find each other in the dark. How he could sense my moods and make me laugh, capture me in his arms. Now we are strangers pitted against each other. I don’t know if we can find our way back, and a cold chill nips at my skin.
“Please talk to me,” I whisper. “Please.”
“For fuck’s sake, Emma . . . what the hell do you want from me?”
“I want to be a family again. I want to help our daughter together. I want you to understand why I did what I did. That I loved you that much. Forgive me. Forgive Zoe . . .” And when I think I’m finished, I add, “Love us. Unconditionally.”
Nothing’s getting through to him. He swipes at his arm as though my words touched him and he’s flicking them away. “People are never what they seem,” he sighs. “How a friend of Zoe’s could do this. Someone this close to us.” He shakes his head and stares down at the floor. “I don’t know you either. Do I?”
His disappointment climbs deep inside me, clawing at my defenses. “You know me, Bobby.”
He clasps his hands, and I notice his bare finger. “Where’s your ring?”
“Where’s my ring?” he repeats, his beautiful eyes gone cold and dark. “Where was your ring when you slept with someone else?”
The harshness strips me of a response.
He says, “I’m going to stay in the suite tonight.”
The employee suite. The pressure against my chest—I can’t catch my breath. Everything I’ve feared has risen to the surface, and he’s actually leaving. I hold on to the cushions. Dizzy. “Bobby . . . you can’t do that.”
“I can,” he says, turning away from me. “There are too many lies . . .”
A lone tear runs down my cheek. I’m helpless to undo the pain I’ve caused.
I try to apologize, but the words are muffled in sobs. “I should’ve told you. But losing the baby . . . it was over. I could forget about what I did . . .”
Tears drown the black of his eyes, and his lips tremble.
“I feel so betrayed,” he says. “That baby I mourned . . . what am I supposed to do with those feelings?”
My body is without life, my eyes soulless and dead. I told myself all those years ago that it was Monty’s baby. It had to be. My voice breaks, and another round of tears escapes. “When I was pregnant with the girls . . . it was different. I felt different.” I try to get him to look at me.
His mind is somewhere else, so I retrace how we got here. “Monty didn’t mean anything to me. He wasn’t you. He could never be you.”
“Stop.” His hands cover his face. “I don’t want to think about that night. Every time you mention his name, I imagine what you were wearing . . . him touching you . . . how you looked in his eyes.” The anguish drowns his words. “I can’t.”
If only I could take away the pain. Instead I cower in raw, immeasurable shame. He gets up and leaves me there alone, and all I can do is collapse and wonder, What have I done?
CHAPTER 24
The space Bobby has vacated is cold. I don’t go after him. I don’t beg. Lying was wrong, and his resentment is real and deserved. A wide range of emotions wash through me, and the anger mounts for thinking I was protecting either of us by hiding the truth. Anger at him—fairly or unfairly—for the unwillingness to accept the many parts of the people he loves.
I check on the girls, and they’re showering. Lily’s phone is on her nightstand, and several missed calls from Grace have piled up. I want to delete her from Lily’s contacts. Delete her from our lives. But I know some things can never be completely erased.
My phone rings, and Lisa’s picture flashes across the screen. I hit “Reject,” and she texts me immediately. Where are you? Everything ok? Haven’t heard from you.
Zoe walks in swathed in her Ross robe and her hair wrapped in a towel. I sit on her bed, and she plops herself on the blanket beside me.
“You okay?” I ask. My arm comes around her.
The towel slips to the floor, and neither of us picks it up. Her damp, dark hair shades her face.
“What do you think?” I ask. “Do you want to make a case of this?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “I think so.”
“You need to be sure.”
“I don’t know,” she says. Lily is drying her hair in the bathroom. The whirring of the blower floats through the doorway.
“I know.” I hug her close. “None of it makes sense.”
“Do I have to go to school? I can’t look at her. I can’t.”
I wipe the hair away from her eyes. “No. I’ll e-mail Dr. Mason. One day at a time. But maybe we should call Dr. Rubin. Maybe she can offer some advice over the phone.”
She nods. “Is Daddy mad at you?”
I’d hate for her to know how he’s refused to sleep beside me. “I think Daddy’s disappointed in a lot of things right now.”
“The kids at school talk,” she says. “They say I have to feel really bad about myself to do what I did.”
“But that’s not you. We talked about that.”
“I know. But everyone wants some deeper reason. Even Chelsea asked me the other day. I drank and got carried away. It wasn’t anything more than that.”
“Your outburst the other day led me to believe otherwise . . . are you sure there’s nothing more you think we need to talk about?”
“I feel that way sometimes, I do. I have insecurities and doubts, but that’s not why I did what I did.”
“And that’s your story. Trust it.” My hands squeeze hers hard so she knows how much I mean it. “Sometimes reasons are others’ excuses—for themselves. Things happen. Circumstances. Inhibitions. Some reasons are out of our awareness completely.
“I never want you to feel betrayed by your body or your actions. You’re going to grow up and experience a lot. Society isn’t always kind to women. Make sure you’re aware of your intentions. Respect yourself. And please, please, be careful. There’s a lot of scary stuff out there.”
“Tell that to the girls who call sex a recreational sport.”
“I still think they’re too young. But this is good. It’s important for us to have this talk.”
“It’s weird.”
“Yeah, I suppose the stork dropping you off is easier to take in.”
She laughs, and my heart fits back into place.
“Zoe, you can experience sex in a beautiful way.” I’m thinking about her father, and the memories are long. “If you’re doing it to make a boy like you, I think you’ll be disappointed. You don’t have to touch someone to feel close. The closeness comes from knowing each other and trusting each other. And that’s when sex will surprise you in ways you never imagined.”
Her eyes lighten. The pain dissolves. There is more blue than silver.
“And yes, there are women who merely enjoy sex. When they’re older, responsible adults.”
“Oh geez,” she says, covering her eyes. “It wasn’t like that. I promise.”
“I know, Zoe. I’ve accepted what you did and who you are.”
She nods. “I would love to have a boyfriend and be a girlfriend. Like Molly and Sam,” she says. They’re the celebrity couple at Thatcher. “To like someone like you and Daddy. I love hearing your stories about the beach and the hotel. Price and me . . . we were different . . . but I accept what happened. I’m a good person, Mom. I know I am.”
I hug her ha
rd. “I know you are. And I love you.”
“But I won’t accept what Grace did. It was wrong, and we have to do something about it.” She gets up and saunters over to her closet. Lily joins us, and the girls take their time getting dressed.
My phone dings. An e-mail from Ocean Drive. The proofs are ready. The Royal Family. It feels like a lifetime ago.
Lily handles her phone while she reminds me she needs new sneakers for lacrosse. Her eyes change when she sees the missed calls from Grace on the screen. She holds up the phone and asks, “What do I do?”
“You do nothing,” I say. “You let the authorities handle it.”
“What is it?” Zoe asks.
“Grace is blowing up my phone.” I imagine calling her and giving her an earful. I imagine saying things I can never take back.
“I’ll never forgive her,” says Lily.
Hours later, we’re at the dinner table, and Bobby is badgering Zoe about Grace in between bites of kung pao chicken and Mongolian beef. His bag is packed and hidden in our room. I had watched him fill the leather case, feeling my heart turn over with each item he packed. He had said he’ll slip out after dinner.
“Why hide it from the girls?” I had asked, prickly mad.
“This is something different,” he’d said. “This is between me and you.” But I knew he was lying. We were all a part of his departure. It hurt worse, because it was directed at me.
We used to enjoy Sunday night dinners at Tropical Chinese. Tonight we’re huddled around the table with takeout from Sum Yum Gai. Bobby is eating out of the carton with chopsticks, while I pretend not to notice. We have far bigger problems to deal with than germs.
“Did you and Grace have a fight?” he asks.
She hesitates. “We all argue and fight. Nothing warranted this.”
“You can’t think of a single reason why she would do this?”
I reach for my glass, and my hand brushes against Bobby’s. He jerks his away, and the glass slips from my hand and spills across the table.
“I didn’t do anything,” Zoe shoots back.
Somebody's Daughter Page 22
