Willow
I flew to my window. Below, my parents were in the driveway, climbing out of my dad’s dark gray BMW.
“Oh fuck, they’re home. Why are they home?”
I spun around. Isaac was already putting his jeans on. “Fastest way out?”
“God, I don’t know,” I said. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, making it hard to think.
From outside, I heard loud voices. My clock radio read 3:30 in the morning but my parents were arguing, my mother’s shrill voice echoing across the quiet streets.
Isaac had his boots on now. “Willow?”
“Wait,” I said. “Hold on. They never come in here. We wait until they go to bed, and then I’ll take you out the back door.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded and opened my door a crack to listen. The security system beeped at the front door and my parents carried their argument into the house. My dad spoke in hushed tones, my mom at the top of her lungs, and both their voices carried easily through our cavernous house.
“When is it going to be enough?” Mom said. “When? When they relocate you to the North Pole?”
Isaac gave me a look. I shrugged, shook my head.
“I’m a senior vice president,” Dad said, sounding tired and strained. “It’s an emergency situation, so I need to be here.”
“And then? Canada, Daniel?”
“Look, Regina, if you wanted to stay in New York so badly, you should’ve stayed.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Their voices roamed downstairs, from the kitchen into the den. I shut the door.
Isaac ran a hand through his hair. “They won’t come in here?”
“They never have before.”
“Canada?” he asked.
“I don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Footsteps came up the stairs. I could hear my mother muttering to herself between deep sniffs. We held our breaths as she went past my room and slammed the door to the master bedroom.
“That means Dad’s sleeping in the den,” I whispered.
We waited for a nerve-wracking forty-five minutes, to ensure my dad was asleep, then I snuck downstairs to make sure the coast was clear. The den door was closed. The silvery-green light of a TV on in a dark room glowed along the crack beneath.
I crept back upstairs to take Isaac by the hand and lead him down. We hurried on silent feet through the dark house, not daring to breathe. At the back door of the kitchen, I kissed him quickly.
“I love you,” I whispered, disarming the security system.
“I love you,” he whispered back. “Never doubt.”
“Never.”
He slipped into the darkness, an inky shadow moving across the backyard. I shut the door, rearmed the security panel, then rested my head against the cool glass pane. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“What are you doing?”
A little scream burst out of me on a current of heart-stopping fear. I spun around to face my father, in an undershirt and slacks looking tired. A glass in his hand, something amber with two ice cubes floating in it. His drawn, tired face morphed from confusion to dawning realization to anger, like a spectrum.
“What are you doing?” he asked again, slowly enunciating each word. He rushed to the kitchen window and looked outside. “Who’s that? Who was here?”
“No one, Dad,” I said. “You and Mom were yelling and it woke me up. I came down to see…”
My reasons disintegrated under my father’s hard stare.
“It was him, wasn’t it? The boy from the junkyard.”
“Stop calling him that. And no—”
“Why were you messing with the alarm?”
Before I could answer, my father seized me by the upper arm and dragged me away from the window. I gasped at the strength of his grip. He’d never grabbed me this hard before.
“Dad, you’re hurting me.”
He sat me down on the living room couch—hard—and stood over me.
“I have had it,” he said, his face turning red. “I told you, you’re not to see this boy. And now I find him here? In my house?” He craned his neck and shouted over his shoulder. “Regina, get down here.” He turned back to me. “Give me your phone.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Bring me your phone.”
“No,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “Nothing happened. You’re being paranoid.”
My mother came downstairs, tying a silk kimono robe around her waist. Her hair was still stiff from an updo and her face scrunched up from sleep. “What’s going on here?”
“He was here,” Dad said.
“Who? Oh God, not that boy?” My mother looked at me imploringly.
Yes, I thought. That boy. Who is everything to me.
“Yes, he was here,” I said, my voice harsh despite the pulse pounding in my throat. “Justin Baker. I had Justin Baker over. Does that change things? Everything fine now? Great, I’m going to bed.”
I started to stand, but my dad loomed over me. “Sit. Back. Down.”
I sat.
“Was it, honey?” Mom asked. “Justin? Because he seems so nice…”
Something in me broke then. A dam bursting; all the hiding and lying flooding out and exhaustion pouring in. I was tired of hiding Isaac, tired of feeling ashamed of him, tired of listening to my parents’ prejudice against him. The hope in my mother’s eyes it was Justin. The look on my father’s face as he pondered the possibility he had the wrong suspect…
“You hypocrites,” I spat. “You don’t care that I might’ve fucked a boy under your roof. You only care if I fucked the right boy.”
“Willow.” Dad’s voice was a sparking fuse, ready to blow.
“Isaac is not that boy. He’s the boy. The only boy. He’s good to me in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine—”
“I don’t want to imagine anything,” Dad shouted. “He’s nineteen. You’re seventeen. He’s an adult. You’re a child. I could have him arrested for statutory rape.”
My face drained of blood and my body felt boneless and heavy.
That unspoken, secret word I could never pin on Xavier. Now it was in my father’s mouth, pinned on Isaac. I thought I’d be sick.
“No,” I said faintly. “He didn’t. He never…”
“He came over while we were out of town, skipped out of your room at four in the morning, but nothing happened?”
“Oh God, Willow.” With a groan, Mom sank down on the chair beside the couch.
My eyes darted between the two of them. “What is wrong with you two? Why are you so angry?”
“Do you know why we had to cut our trip short?” Dad asked. “Because that boy’s father put our company in the news. It alerted our stockholders to degenerate franchise owners running Wexx stations. My job—the entire reason we were sent here—is to clean up messes like the one Charles Pearce made of his business. He took our name and logo, smeared shit all over it, and then lit it on fire. And now his son, a high school dropout, is fucking my daughter under my roof?”
“Daniel,” my mother said, her face pale. “Hold on a second…”
Dad whirled on her. “No, I will not hold on. You’re perfectly fine with this? What were you doing every day while she was at rehearsal? You let this happen.”
“No, Dad, you have to believe me,” I cried. “He’s good to me. He’s—”
“Stop talking!”
I quailed against the couch. I’d never seen him like this, enraged, veins throbbing in his neck.
“You’ve been seeing him. All of this time. Making a fool out of me. Lying to my face every time we spoke.”
A splash of blue and red lights lit up the front windows. My mother’s eyes widened, and then she put her head in her hands. “Jesus, the police. What will the neighbors think?”
I went cold all over. The police. Isaac would be arrested. There’d be no opening night of Hamlet. No casting agents to give him a chance at a better life.
“Good,” my father said. “We’ll tell them what happened. Or maybe they caught him already.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I said. “He slept in my bed but that’s it. We just slept.”
“Stop lying to me,” my father said. “Or maybe we can let the cops take a look around your bedroom for proof that he defiled you under my roof?”
As Dad went to answer the door, I looked to my mother, who sat statue-still, her face pale and her fingernails drumming the armrest.
I stared after my father, my entire body trembling, then turned tearfully to my mother. “Mom…?”
“You have to understand,” she said. “He’s under so much pressure.”
“He’s acting like a maniac.”
“It’s not his fault. You know how he gets when he thinks he’s being pushed around. We just found out…” She pressed her fingers to her lips.
“Mom, what?” I swallowed hard. “What did you find out?”
My dad stormed back into the living room with two male police officers in tow. One tall, one shorter, both intimidating in size and uniform. The taller of the pair had Murphy on his pin, the other was named Underwood. Each had a gun strapped to his waist on one side, a baton on the other. Their glances went up and down my body, taking in my short shorts, my sleep shirt with no bra. Two men pinning me to the couch with their hulking presence and flat stares.
My dad crossed his arms and spoke. “Mrs. Chambers, next door, saw a young man leaving our house by the back door. She called the police, thinking we had a break-in.”
I mustered my courage. “What was she doing watching our house in the middle of the night?”
“She heard your parents arguing, young lady,” Murphy said. “Would you like to tell us what happened here tonight?”
“And it better be the truth.”
“Nothing happened,” I said. “We were sleeping. That’s the truth. Why is it so hard to believe, Dad?”
“Because he—”
“Because he’s poor?” I cried, tears streaming down my cheeks now. “Because his father’s a drunk? What if he were rich? What if he went to private school? What if his father was the CEO of a billion-dollar company? Would you believe me then?”
Mom went pale, staring at me.
My father’s expression faltered, confusion in his eyes. “We’re not discussing ridiculous hypotheticals,” he said. “We’re talking about what happened tonight.”
“Nothing happened tonight,” I said.
It happened last summer.
Call the police, Angie had said.
Now the police were here. Standing in my living room, large and imposing, detached and bored, dealing with a family drama at four in the morning. I felt no malice from them, but no sympathy either. No connection. No sense of safety. They filled up the room with a masculine indifference to the experiences of a seventeen-year-old girl. How would they react if I told my parents the truth about Xavier?
All at once, I could envision it perfectly from their perspective. A scared young girl who got caught with her boyfriend in the house, telling everyone that the real crime occurred almost a year ago, with a different guy, in a different town, in a different house with no evidence. It would look like the worst, most pathetic kind of deflection.
Telling them the truth wouldn’t hurt Xavier. It would only destroy everything around me. It would open me up to invasive inquiry, endless interrogations to prove something that could not be proven. To answer question after question with I can’t remember.
I looked up at my father.
“Nothing happened,” I whispered. “I keep saying it and you can’t hear me. I’m saying words with my voice and they’re the truth and you can’t hear me.”
My father sighed and turned to the officers. “Can’t you just arrest him, or bring him in for questioning? He violated her in my—”
“Stop saying that,” I screamed from the couch. “He didn’t hurt me. He never has.”
Underwood held up the palm of his hand to me, his voice hard. “You need to calm down.”
“It’s not technically a violation, sir,” Murphy said.
“But he’s nineteen years old. She’s only seventeen.”
I stared as these men stood over me, talked about me as if I weren’t there. I was here. Yet I wasn’t. Half dreaming, half awake. Going insane because everything made perfect sense.
“The age of consent in Indiana is sixteen,” Murphy was saying. “But if you want us to bring him in to answer a few questions, we could do that. They’re still investigating what happened at the auto yard station, and it’s not the first time his name’s been on the radar.”
I couldn’t speak or breathe as a different scene unfolded. Isaac arrested for questioning. Brought to the station in handcuffs. Sexual assault added to a list of crimes he never committed. The final act in the tragedy of his life story. A story he never asked for.
“No,” I said getting to my feet. Or tried to. My knees buckled and I sank on the carpet by Dad’s feet. “You can’t do that. Please listen to me. I won’t…I won’t see him again. I promise. He’s leaving town. Casting agents are coming to see him in Hamlet. He’s leaving Harmony. Please, Dad. He needs this show. Don’t take that away. I promise I won’t see him again.”
The officers exchanged looks. “Sir?”
“Dad. I’m begging you.”
A silence descended. My father’s jaw worked side to side as he thought.
“Thank you, officers,” he finally said, his eyes heavy on me. “I think we have this under control. However, I reserve the right to change my mind and have him hauled in. If I find the story is worse than what my daughter is insisting. Regina?”
My mother broke out of her reverie and roused herself, tightening the silk belt on her robe as she stood. Like a hostess at the world’s worst party, she led the officers to the foyer. “Thank you so much for coming.”
I sat on the floor at my father’s feet, my hair falling all around me, tears drying on my cheeks.
“He’s leaving town?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“With his father in the hospital?”
“Because he’s in the hospital,” I said to the carpet. “Isaac needs to go make money to help his father. Now more than ever.”
“Make money acting?” My dad spat the word as if it were garbage in his mouth. “Him and ten million others? It’s just that easy?”
“You could help him,” I said, raising my head.
“Why would I do that?”
“For me.”
“After both you and he disrespected me and my authority for God knows how long? Give me one reason I should.”
I gave him the worst possible reason. The one thing I thought would soften my father’s heart and save Isaac and me. Instead, I ruined us in three words:
“I love him.”
My mother had returned from the foyer. She froze at my words, then gripped the back of the chair. Her eyes fell shut as her mouth closed with a click of her teeth.
The color drained from my father’s face as the realization unfolded. This wasn’t just sex anymore. Not a casual fling with the local bad boy. A reckless affair that would end with the season. This was love. This was the future. Isaac, a continued presence in my life and Dad having to tolerate someone he found unworthy of the Holloway name.
“No you do not,” he said, pronouncing every word. “The last nine months, I’ve watched you throw your life away. Throw away your chance at a decent college when you were on your way to the Ivy League. I will not stand by and watch you ruin the rest of your future with that lowlife.”
“Dad, stop,” I cried, my heart breaking in my chest.
“This nonsense ends tonight. You are not to see him again. Ever again.” He gave a rough exhale, running a hand through his thinning hair, satisfied. “I was disheartened earlier, Regina, but now I’m glad for the relocation. Given the circumstances, I think it’s just what we need.”
“What relocation?” I said.
“We’re moving. Mr. Wilkinson needs me to run our Canadian operation. We’re moving to Edmonton at the beginning of June.”
I sniffed. Then a laugh burst out of me. “Canada?” I laughed again. “No.”
“Yes.”
My laughter dissolved into fresh sobs. “No. We’re not moving again. I can’t…”
“You can and you will.”
“I won’t,” I said, staggering to my feet. “I’ll stay here. I can live with Angie until I turn eighteen. I’m not going.”
“You are. And that’ll be the last you see of Isaac.”
“You can’t do this. You can’t stop me. When I’m eighteen—”
Dad gripped me by both shoulders. “I’m your goddamn father and I have the final word. You’re done with him. If I hear that you so much as text him, I’ll have him arrested for statutory rape and I’ll let the entire world know it. Hollywood has zero tolerance for sexual predators these days. Whatever chance you think he has at a career will be demolished. I’ll use every resource at my disposal, every press contact, every string I can pull…”
…pour poison in their ears…
“When I’m done, he won’t be able to get a job in a Los Angeles McDonald’s, never mind a movie.”
“Why?” I cried in a croaking whisper. “Why would you do that to him? To me?”
To my shock, my dad’s eyes filled with tears and his grip on my shoulders softened. “Because I love you,” he said.
I shook my head. “You don’t…”
“Willow, listen to me. I know his type. I’ve seen it before. I am sparing you a lifetime of pain. Alcoholism is genetic. It’s only a matter of time before failure will drag Isaac down, and he’ll drag you down with him.” He sniffed and hardened his voice. “And I’ll be goddamned if I stand by and let that happen. It’s for your own good. I have experience. I can see the big picture. You can’t, because you’re a seventeen-year-old girl who thinks she’s in love.”
He let go of my shoulders, dismissing me and everything I felt or wanted, as easily as blowing out a candle.
“What about the play?” I managed to say. “I wanted…one show.”
He shook his head. “Not with him in it.”
“Just one show?” I said. “Please? Then he…he’ll go and that will be…the end. And we’re moving.” A sob hiccupped out of me. “Dad, I promise, I’ll… be better.”
Mom finally spoke up, her voice a thread. “Dan, let her have one show. She’s worked so hard. For months.”
My father’s jaw shifted back and forth again. The anger was draining out of him, the intensity of the night giving way to exhaustion. And perhaps, pity.
“Opening night,” my father said. “You have opening night and no more. The next two days, you go to school and you come home. You go nowhere else.”
“Okay.”
“On Friday, we take you to the theater and we drive you home. That’s it. You don’t see Isaac Pearce after Friday. Or everything I told you will come to pass.”
I nodded, feeling something inside me blacken and curl, something my grandmother had been proud of.
I clung to the wick but there was hardly anything left.