by Kate Flora
He turned his back on us and drifted over to the window. Whatever earlier impulse he’d had to comfort her was gone.
“I’ll find you Nina’s number,” Lorena Norris said, looking eager to off-load the task of contacting her to me. So eager she opened her bag, got out her phone, and scribbled something onto a small piece of paper. She handed the paper to me, and I checked the handwriting before putting in my briefcase.
What a day. There was my mother thinking I was being difficult, and I was thinking Mrs. Norris was being difficult, and she was thinking Gareth was being difficult. Everyone needed a decent meal and some rest. But everyone also needed some answers and the quest for those prevented any of us from seeking rest.
“Maybe this will be easier in the morning, when you’ve had a chance to rest,” I suggested. “Let’s find out if your daughter is awake. But please be thinking about how this might have happened. About the names of anyone who might help us determine the facts about Heidi’s situation. As her mother, you’re the best source.”
I wanted to say, “pregnancy,” but it seemed to draw such negative reactions from her I used the euphemism.
Heidi was awake, Gareth confirmed, but since Ted Basham had been with him when he got the call, Basham had gone to the infirmary to see her. Gareth suggested that the Norrises get settled at their hotel and he would call them when Heidi was ready for another visitor. He reiterated Heidi’s request that Mrs. Norris visit by herself, and I saw them share another of those conspiratorial looks. I made a mental note to have Gareth remind the nurse in charge that Heidi didn’t want a visit from her stepfather.
What a miserable mess.
They left spitting and snapping, Mrs. Norris’s nose way out of joint because, though she seemed not to care much about her daughter, she cared a lot about not being bested by her ex.
I didn’t care about any of them. Well, I cared about Gareth, and I thought I’d come to care about Heidi. I’m a big defender of the underdog, and the vulnerable, and she was definitely both of those.
I gave them time to get good and gone, then stuck my head into Gareth’s office, explained that they had left, and told him I’d be in to discuss the situation as soon as I’d made some phone calls.
Once I had a room to myself, I checked my voicemail. There were some work calls that needed to be returned, but nothing from my family. I handled the work calls because they could be done quickly and the clients would be pacified. Then I checked texts. Again, nothing. I started going through my family roster again, desperate by now for some information about my father’s condition. By some miracle, despite getting no response from my mother or my brother, I was able to reach my Uncle Henry.
“Thea, dear,” he said, “is everything okay with you? We’ve been trying to reach you all day.”
I wasn’t sure what version of trying to reach me involved not taking my calls, returning my calls, initiating any calls, or leaving me any messages, but the snarky reply that came to mind—How, by mental telepathy?—would get me nowhere. Besides, I might not get along with my mother, but I had no beef with my favorite uncle. “I’ve been calling,” I said, wondering if for some reason they’d been calling me at home, where no one would ever expect to find me on a work day. “I’m here in Massachusetts working on a boarding school crisis.”
He made a quiet “Hmm” sound. “I’m afraid we’ve got a bit of a crisis of our own.”
My stomach knotted. “Tell me everything. Tell me what’s happened with Dad. Mom left a message that there was an emergency, but she didn’t say what it was. Thanks to my staff, I know he’s in the hospital, but I haven’t been able to get any information about his condition.”
He hesitated so long I thought I’d lost the connection. And then, because my life is so full of negative stuff, I decided he didn’t want to tell me the worse news. At last he said, “I’m sorry, Thea. It’s definitely a heart attack,” he said. “He’s in the cardiac care unit.”
“And no one called me? No one called me? What’s his condition? What if he…” I checked myself. Yelling wouldn’t help. And it wasn’t his job to keep me in the loop.
“He’s stable for now, but you should be here, dear, just in case.” He didn’t need to finish the sentence.
I couldn’t help myself. I said, “I should be there? It’s that serious? But no one has tried to reach me, Uncle Henry. No one. Not even you or Rita.”
I thought his silence acknowledged the truth of my statement.
My office brain immediately started making lists of what I had to do before I could leave. It was the story of my life that I often had to be in two places at once. I’d become adept at handling things by phone as I rushed from one place to another. But there was no way I could handle my dad’s heart attack by phone. And I was far from done here at Simmons. Sometimes I could call in someone else from our office, but there was no one with the bandwidth to handle this. I’d just have to stick some bandages on the current situation, head to the hospital, and see how things were.
“Are you at the hospital now?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. In the meantime, please ask Mom or Michael to call me.”
“I’ll try Michael,” he said. “Your mother’s…well, she’s in kind of a state right now.”
I wasn’t surprised. Mom is tough as nails and a brilliant organizer and a professional volunteer who scares everyone in her orbit into cooperating. Her soft spot is my dad. They might bicker and disagree, and he was far kinder, but basically, like many well-married, and long-together couples, they were joined at the hip. He was her first priority and she was his. I’d learned that the hard way—expecting him to take my side when she was being cruel and unreasonable—and having him back her instead. Ah. Family. My own, and, as I was seeing here, poor Heidi Basham’s.
Dammit. I needed to be here. I had so much work to do.
I couldn’t stay.
“Is Michael there?”
Another long silence. I knew what this was about. Michael had been there, probably with Sonia. But Sonia didn’t like unpleasantness—hovering by a sickbed was not her thing—and she didn’t much like anything that wasn’t about her. No doubt she’d dragged Michael off for a meal, one that would last several hours. But if that was the case, why the heck wasn’t he answering his phone? I knew the answer to that, too. Because he’d turned it off, not wanting to be disturbed in case there was bad news. Sometimes it was hard to believe we’d been conceived by the same parents and raised in the same house.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I repeated. “Please. Call me if…”
“I will,” he said. “And please, Thea, drive carefully.”
As if that time I’d driven off the road and been in an accident had been from careless driving instead of being rammed by a bad guy. I suppressed a sigh. Families are complicated. “See you soon.”
My mind racing, I braced myself to give Gareth the bad news, and headed back to his office.
Seven
I planned to fill Gareth in on the little I’d learned, get caught up on his information, and head for the hospital. He’d be unhappy with my departure. He had a traumatized student, irate and incompatible parents, an anxious student body, and a faculty hoping for answers. By morning, that group would no doubt include the police again. I expected to find him pacing the room. Instead, Ted Basham had returned after a remarkably short visit with his daughter, and he and Gareth were sitting in comfortable armchairs, each holding a drink. Gareth was looking weary, but composed, Basham like a man seriously in need of the drink he was holding.
Gareth nodded toward his glass. “Can I get you anything?”
Sure, I thought, a split personality? A superpower that included being able to be in two places at once. I felt like I was being drawn and quartered by the powerful pull of my dual obligations. “No thanks. I’m fine.” A drink at this point would render me useless on both fronts even if mothers-to-be could drink.
&
nbsp; I took what was supposed to be a calming breath and pulled out my pen and a pad of paper. I still like taking notes by hand, the act of writing helps to register the information in my brain, though now I often use my phone’s recording ability as backup. I looked at Gareth. “I’ve just had some bad news.” He flinched as I rushed on. “My father’s had a heart attack. He’s in intensive care. I need to go…” I tried to think what to say that wouldn’t alarm him. “We can catch up on the last hour or so, then I have to leave. Assuming things are stable, I’ll be back in a few hours.”
When he didn’t say anything, I started in. “Let’s catch each other up. How’s Heidi?”
It was Basham who answered. “She doesn’t know what hit her. Sorry. That’s a poor choice of words. She…uh…she really doesn’t believe that she was pregnant. Or didn’t know that she was. She’s sure she hasn’t had a baby, despite the evidence of her own body. I guess I’m going to need to talk to that shrink tomorrow. Get a clearer idea about what’s going on. I sure hope she has some insights.”
“Dr. Purcell says that getting a handle on Heidi’s situation may take a while,” I said. “It will take time to build a relationship that will enable Heidi to confide in her.”
Basham nodded. “Makes sense to me. But I’d appreciate Dr. Purcell’s insights.”
He was an attractive man in an artsy way. Tall and broad-shouldered, with longish hair, black jeans and a black shirt. A couple of interesting, handcrafted rings and some bracelets. Copper, and some of those fund-raising things that look like big rubber bands. He’d said he had spoken with Heidi often on the phone, so maybe he would have more information for us.
“We will do our best for your daughter,” Gareth said, “but you’ll need to get Heidi her own lawyer. The school’s attorneys have been advising us, but she’s not their client.”
“I get it,” Basham said. “Can you, or they, suggest someone?”
Gareth located a paper on his desk and offered it to Basham. “Here are some names and numbers.”
Basham nodded, like everyone needing their own lawyer was something he understood, made some notes in his phone, and tucked the paper in a pocket. “Okay,” he said, “what do you need from me? How can I help?”
“Information,” I said. “Insight into Heidi. Into how this could have happened. The how, the when, and the who. Your ex-wife said Heidi didn’t have a boyfriend.”
“What Lorena probably said,” he interrupted, “is that Heidi wasn’t attractive enough to get herself a boyfriend, when Heidi is lovely. Sweet and fresh and so natural looking and unspoiled. She’s sick, that woman is. I can’t believe I didn’t see it years ago. Can you imagine being competitive with your own daughter?”
Suddenly, he dropped his head into his hands and his shoulders slumped. “I should have fought harder for custody. I should never have left Heidi to deal with that pair. I travel a lot, which is not a stable situation for a child, and she said she’d be okay. I shouldn’t have believed her. She’s a sweet girl. Trusting. I thought she’d be all right, which was wishful thinking on my part. She just doesn’t have the skills to protect herself against that.”
“Against what, Mr. Basham?”
“Narcissism. Indifference. Abandonment. On Bradley’s part, I think genuine dislike. When he went after Lorena, who looks hot even if she’s colder than the North Pole, he didn’t bargain on getting a kid, too. I don’t know what he thought was going to happen. Lorena doesn’t give two damns about Heidi, but the minute she thought I wanted custody, it became another one of those battles she just had to win.”
He squeezed his head between his hands like he was trying to keep it from flying apart. “I suppose they have no idea who the father of this baby is? Who the bastard is who…”
“Do you?” I asked.
He stared at me like it was an idea he’d never entertained before.
“You said the two of you talk on the phone. I get the impression that’s a fairly regular thing?”
He nodded. “It depends on my schedule, which isn’t always my own. But we try to stay in touch.”
“Regular even before she came to Simmons? While she was still living in California with her mother and stepfather?”
He nodded again. “We try to talk every week or two. It doesn’t always work out, but we try.”
“Did she ever say anything that might have suggested the father’s identity?”
“No.” He considered. “Heidi’s kind of a late bloomer. She really hasn’t been interested in boys.”
“What about boys who might have been interested in her?”
“She’s never mentioned any. There are some boys here she’s talked about, Ronnie and Jaden, but the impression I got was that they’re friends, not boyfriends. And there wasn’t anyone back home that I ever heard about.”
“What about times when she might have been blank about what happened? Sometime when she might have gotten drunk or gone to a party…”
“Heidi doesn’t drink,” he said. “Or party.”
This wasn’t helping. He might know something, perhaps even something he didn’t know he knew, but he was refusing to dig in and be analytical. Playing the wronged and abused father of his “sweet little girl” was useless to us, and to Heidi. He needed to understand that his obligation to step up for his daughter involved more than criticizing his ex or being charming. I stared at the man lounging comfortably in his chair, enjoying Gareth’s good Scotch, and contrasted it with my image of a frightened girl alone in the night, delivering a baby.
Ignoring my partner, Suzanne’s, frequent admonition to treat people with kid gloves, I put some steel in my voice. “Something happened to her, Mr. Basham. From everything we’ve heard she was not a girl who partied or drank, and you’ve just agreed that’s true. But somehow, whether she consented to it or was even aware of it, a sex act took place and she got pregnant. It only takes once. Someone is responsible, and knowing the circumstances may help us—us and the police—to understand why she’s in denial. Whether it happened under traumatic circumstances or she was seduced by someone she trusted. Whether she might have been in a situation where she was drugged and taken advantage of. There are date rape drugs where the victim has no memory of the events.”
His head was in his hands again. Despite the circumstances, he didn’t want to think about this. “Why do you need to know? Why not the police?”
I had to get out of here before my depressing vision of a child being raised in a household with this man and Mrs. Norris overwhelmed me.
Luckily, Gareth took that one. “The police do need to know and they will ask these questions. Of you and your ex-wife. And Heidi, of course. The difference is that they’ll be looking for a crime. Crimes plural—a crime on the part of whoever got her pregnant at fifteen, and a crime on her part for abandoning her baby. If someone hadn’t found that baby so quickly, she might have died. We’re asking these questions in part because we’re trying to get ahead of them—to shape the story in the light that’s best for Heidi. Figuring out how we can support her and protect her from prosecution, if possible. Dr. Purcell will be an important resource for Heidi there.”
There was the sound of sloshing ice as Gareth drank. I was envious. Sometimes a fortifying drink really helps. A relaxing, mellowing drink. A “take the edge off your fear” drink.
I could have used some mellowing. My father was in the hospital, and I was delaying rushing to his side to explain things that any truly sensible and caring parent would already have known. Trying to extract cooperation when cooperation should have been eagerly offered.
“That’s a part of it,” Gareth said, continuing to explain why we were asking our questions. “The other reason for these questions is the nature of this school. Since you’ve been in regular contact with Heidi, I’m sure she’s told you about Simmons. We endeavor to build a real community here, Mr. Basham. Being a part of this community means that everyone takes responsibility for his or her behavior. For actions that are har
mful to others. Heidi chose to come here because of who we are. By doing that, she accepted our values and agreed to live by them. Now she has done things that the community finds abhorrent—abandoning a helpless newborn and claiming that the child wasn’t hers. Then claiming that she has never had sex or been pregnant, when the clear evidence is to the contrary. That’s a lot of ways she’s violated the community’s values.”
He hesitated again, then said, “Part of my job is to help the community understand. Initially, they are going to think it’s not possible that Heidi didn’t know she was pregnant, and to see what she did as a betrayal of our shared values. I need to help them see how Heidi’s position could be true for her. Help them understand how this isn’t black and white, it’s complicated. Psychologically and physically complicated.”
Looking wretched, Basham held out his empty glass like a supplicant. “At the risk of acting like Lorena…could I have another?”
Like the rest of the world would, I flashed on Oliver Twist.
“Of course.”
Gareth refreshed the drink and went on with his explanation. “One of the reasons Heidi needs her own attorney—someone to protect her interests—is that I have mixed loyalties here. My loyalty to Heidi, as one of my students, and my loyalty to this school, and the community we’ve created. We have a unique philosophy here—one that isn’t for everyone, one that’s important to the students who choose to come here. I need to retain my current students and continue to attract like-minded students for future classes. To do that, I have to take whatever steps are necessary to protect the school’s reputation.”
He nodded at me. “That’s one reason Thea is here. To help us shape the message and protect our community. And crass as it may sound, Mr. Basham, we’ve sent our acceptance letters to next year’s applicants. I need to do my best to ensure we enroll a strong class for next year. Obviously, a scandal like this—”
