CHAPTER 50
CARTER
I was not like any of the other parents at Phin’s school. I expected more than they did. I had rules and clear boundaries. I didn’t pretend Phin was my friend, and I didn’t call him “buddy.” I didn’t lose too much sleep over the emotional bumps and twists of the early teens.
Until I got a call the morning after Phin found out who his mother was.
They said he was crying uncontrollably and refusing to talk about the reason for the tears.
I felt guilty for sending him to school, and that was only the most recent of a long list of things I could have done better. I didn’t know when it would be too much. When the list would get so long it would strangle him. I’d burdened myself with lies, and now he was burdened with the truth.
When I got to the office, it was worse than I’d been told. Cora, the assistant head of the school, looked up from her desk, pressed her lips together, and handed me a box of tissues. Phin was on the couch, curled into a fetal position, facing the backrest. His shoulders shook.
Cora spoke softly and clearly. “He found out something about his mother, apparently? He was presenting his project and said it was all a lie.”
I sat on the edge of the couch and stroked his hair.
“What was a lie?” she asked in a flat voice.
“Specifically,” I said, “the project and his life.”
Phin’s eyes were closed, and his skin was clammy and wet with tears. When I touched him, he didn’t react.
She stood up. “Let’s let him rest.”
We went onto a bank of couches outside her office. I was sure he was getting kicked out. The hippy-dippy school actually had very strict rules about lying and keeping your shit together. Without cooperation, the whole system fell apart.
Phin’s project was a lie, and who knew what crazy thing he’d said when presenting it? I’d seen kids get kicked out for less.
Maybe a more structured education was what he needed anyway. Except he loved his school, and taking him out would hurt and disrupt him. As Cora indicated one of the sofas, I decided I was more concerned about Phin’s stability than what he’d said to the class.
“He had a rough night,” I said as I sat, “but he wanted to come today and hand in the project, which I know was supposed to be based on fact. We understand his grade will reflect that it’s not.”
“We’re not concerned with his grade.”
“He might . . .” I couldn’t finish. He might fail. He might not be in the rest of the week or month. He might need more attention than you think. “I can’t guarantee he’ll finish the semester.”
“Mr. Kincaid, is there something on your mind?”
“He loves it here.”
“And we love having him. We’re not in the business of kicking kids out when they’re having a hard time. What happened today was normal under the circumstances.”
“What happened? What did he say?”
“That his mother was Genevieve Tremaine, and his dad is his uncle.”
I rubbed my eyes hard enough to see stars. “He didn’t know,” I said from behind my hands. I took them away so I could look at her. “I didn’t want him to. But now he does, and he’s not good at secrets.”
“We’re trying to make sure the class is discreet. We’ve spoken to them about it.”
It all came to me. Cora exuded calm and competence, but asking anyone to keep such a juicy story secret was a waste of time. I was out of my mind thinking he could stay at the same school. There was no way that was going to turn out well.
“They’re in seventh grade.” I didn’t have to do more than state the simple fact. She nodded. They’d tell their parents, who included a TV executive, a studio lawyer, and an actor in $100 million tentpole movies. Who all knew who else. The murder would be rehashed in the Hollywood Reporter in forty-eight hours or less. It would filter to the internet sites, where Phin would see it even if I threw the router in the trash where it belonged.
“I’ve spent the past eleven years protecting him from what happened to his mother. You don’t have to like how I did it, but that was my motivation. Now there’s no way to keep him from it.”
“He was going to find out eventually,” she said. “The community here can help him deal with it, but I don’t think we can pretend it didn’t happen.”
“It’s one thing for him to know. I didn’t want the world to know.”
She nodded, hands folded in front of her. I didn’t know if she was judging me or how difficult it was to hide it. Fortunately, I didn’t care what she thought of me. I cared only about my son.
My nephew. Whatever. My responsibility.
I stood and held out my hand. “Thank you for speaking with me. I’m going to take him home.”
“Let us know how it’s going.”
I went back into her office. Phin hadn’t moved. I picked him up. He was so skinny I could carry him as if he were a baby again, one arm behind his knees and another at his shoulders. He started crying when I moved him. His face was beet red and swollen. I backed through the school doors to get into the parking lot. The security guard stood up when I came through. His name was Marco, and he and Phin always exchanged a few words of greeting when he passed.
“He all right?”
“Yeah.” I held him closer. I didn’t want anyone to see how upset he was. I didn’t want him to have to explain tomorrow or ever. I still wanted to protect him. “I can’t sign out with—”
“It’s okay, it’s okay. No worries.”
“Thanks.”
Phin’s cries echoed on the concrete walls and floor. I got to the car. The keys were in my pocket. I’d have to put him down to get them.
What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t let him out of my arms to put him into the back seat of the car. To drive where? For what reason? I stood at the side of my car and realized I couldn’t let him go, period. Even if he’d stand on his own two feet, I couldn’t let him go.
Right after Genevieve had been killed, he’d been fine. He was just hanging at Uncle Carter’s house for a week. His young brain just rolled with it until he realized his mother wasn’t coming back; then he cracked like an egg and everything came out. He cried for two days. He wouldn’t be quieted with food, water, or utter exhaustion. The doctor gave him a sedative, which, thanks to the undiagnosed ADHD, made it worse. The only thing I could do was pick him up and carry him. He turned it down to low sobs as long as he was close to me and I was moving.
At the end of day two, he’d collapsed into sleep mid-sob. When he woke up eighteen hours later, he called me Daddy. And that had been that.
He was thirteen years old and eighty pounds when he found out what happened to his mother. But I carried him nonetheless. When I stopped to take a rest, he cried harder, so I kept moving. I carried him around the corner, down Olympic, back down some random street with a lot of trees. He’d always loved looking up into the trees. Loved digging in dirt and chasing birds. Had I exposed him to enough nature? Had I taken him camping? Skiing? Had we eaten outside enough? Looked at the stars and talked about God? Or had I just demanded perfection?
The lies were over now. As he sobbed in my aching arms and I walked up and down and around the neighborhood, I knew it was over. The secrecy I’d enforced. The security I’d demanded. The Plexiglas shell I’d put over him was gone. He wasn’t my son. He’d never been my son, and he knew it. He probably hated me. He had to.
I deserved it. All of it. But I carried him because I didn’t know how to stop.