36
Dominic drops into the empty space beside me on the subway. I stare at the pole in front of me and count the fingers wrapped around it. For several moments Dominic says nothing, but we both know what’s coming.
“You okay?” he offers eventually.
I shrug. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
The train jerks to a stop, and Dominic waits for the “stand clear of the closing doors” announcement to finish before saying anything else.
“So do you know when they’ll…” He glances at me, possibly waiting for me to finish the rest. I don’t. “You know, go after them?”
“Him,” I correct. “They promised me—only him. And no, I’m not an agent or even a credible citizen. Just an informant. I’m not privy to that information.”
Around me, my classmates—Holden blazers, complete with the school crest poking out from beneath heavy winter coats—talk quietly, the early morning hour forcing everyone into a temporary calm.
“What about your mom?” Dominic asks. “Do you know how long it will take?”
To what? Get her out of prison? Get her sentence reduced? I’m not sure which will happen.
“I imagine those things take time,” I tell him, and turn to him with a smile. “Hopefully less than ten years, right?”
Despite my attempt to make a joke of this, Dominic doesn’t return the smile. “Was it that bad? Setting a trap for your own father and luring him into it?”
“When you say it like that…”
He levels me with a look. “I’m being serious.”
The grin drops from my face. I turn my attention back to the fingers and the pole. The anger from yesterday afternoon rises up in me like a disease that laid dormant. Tangle that with Sheldon’s Plan B and it’s a no-brainer. “It was easier than I thought it would be.”
Easy to lure him in, not so easy to think about why it was easy. Because he doesn’t care about his wife. Not enough to face the hard stuff. What had he said yesterday? That she would have wanted him to move on. Jesus Christ, she’s not dead. But I get that people look up to him. They look to him for leadership. It isn’t so much that he’s chosen to take care of the “family,” it’s that he’s changed the rules. The second my mom was out of the picture, suddenly the principles, the very tiny yet essential moral compass I was raised with, vanished from their daily practice. It’s almost like those ideals were never his. Makes me wonder who my father really is, at his core.
“I don’t think I would have been able to go through with it,” Dominic says.
The train rattles, and Dominic slides into me, smashing me against a large man smelling like a gallon of freshly chopped garlic. I hold my breath and attempt to earn back the inches between us while turning over Dominic’s words in my head. It doesn’t take long for me to conclude that he isn’t questioning my character. Or putting angel wings on himself.
“You like them,” I accuse. When I look at him, he looks away. With a sigh I say, “It’s fine. I get it. Their life probably seems fun, exciting even. And sometimes it is, but when it’s your whole life, when you can’t escape it…” The garlic man seems to be listening in on us. I lower my voice. “I’m just saying that they’re easier to like when they aren’t your family.”
Dominic leans forward, resting his arms on his long legs. He glances at me for a split second, a storm in his eyes. “At least your family spends time together. Your parents actually taught you things, made you read books, learn multiple languages—you’ve hardly been to school, right? They single-handedly educated you. You know that my parents have never taught me a single thing? Not even that knives are dangerous or the stove is hot. They hired people to do that. My entire life.”
I almost can’t believe what I’m hearing from him. I mean I knew how he felt about his own family, but I hadn’t expected this reaction. I thought he could handle being around them without this happening. Without buying into the illusion.
“You have definitely been drinking their Kool-Aid,” I groan. “My parents taught me accents and how to appear to know another language. Also how to pick locks, manipulate people, capitalize on someone’s weakness. Definitely in the running for parents of the year.”
“Your family…they know one another. My parents don’t know anything about me, and I can’t remember the last time we were all in the house at the same time, awake. But your dad, he looks at you for two seconds and he’s got everything figured out.”
“No he doesn’t,” I argue. “Don’t let the glitter deceive you. He doesn’t know anything about me. Everything I’ve told him since we’ve been in New York was a lie.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t explain it. I just know that he knows you. He knows what you’re capable of, what you can and can’t handle. He knows exactly how to hurt you.” He shakes his head. “My parents think taking away my credit cards will hurt me. They have no idea that I don’t give a flying fuck about money.”
The train comes to another abrupt halt, and Mr. Lance calls from the front that this is our stop. I spring up from my seat and turn to Dominic. “Look, I agree your family sucks, but that doesn’t make mine great. The likely answer is that they both suck. Differently.”
I follow the herd of khaki pants and red plaid skirts from the train, up the steps of the subway station and back out into the cold, dreary morning. We walk a little ways before Lance and Geist group us together in front of an old but beautiful building on the campus of Columbia University. Ms. Geist gives yet another lecture on unofficial admissions interviews, and I tune her out.
Justice finds me and hooks an arm through mine. “I asked Mr. Lance if I could take you with me to that brunch my dad arranged, asked him if he thought the connections might be good for you.”
“And?” I prompt, wondering why she would want to include me, especially if this was giving her an advantage for admissions.
“He just shrugged and said that was up to you,” she says, and then gives me this worried look. “What’s up with him? You were his Golden Girl.”
My stomach twists for a whole new reason. I want to not care that I’ve somehow ruined things with my favorite teacher, but lately I don’t seem to have much luck getting what I want. Is this the downfall of attempting the honest life? Finding even more things to accidently care about?
“I don’t know what his deal is,” I say, trying to sound evasive. I’m not interested in analyzing this. “What time is that brunch? Can it get me out of sitting in on Introduction to Sustainability and Environmental Science in the Eastern World?”
Justice’s response is completely lost in the space between us, because my father, who appears to be lurking behind a giant statue, has given a familiar signal of two short, soft snaps to get my attention. Only I’m not alone in noticing him, which is not what he intended, I’m sure.
Justice glances at the spot where Dad disappeared from to hide behind the statue again, and then she turns to me, one brow lifted. “Please tell me that isn’t another ex. There’s older and then there’s older. Let me be the first to tell you that something is very wrong inside your head and you need help.”
Some of yesterday’s anger returns along with some internal panic. I’m caught between two undesirable choices—facing my dad again or ignoring him and allowing more than Justice to notice his presence. I release a deep breath and whisper to my friend, “He’s my dad.”
“Your dad—” she starts, confusion all over her face. Probably because she and I have never talked about my parents. Ever.
I wave a hand to cut her off. “It’s a long story. Messy, complicated divorce. Regulated visits.”
“Are you…?” Her eyes widen. “Is he dangerous? Should we tell someone?”
“He’s not dangerous.” I glance at the group and then back at the statue. “Give me a minute, okay? Text me if anyone is looking for me.”
With quiet feet and hopefully unnoticed movement, I make my way to the statue and slip behind it, where Dad is waiting impatiently. I don’t know what he wants or how he even found me, but my best option is to let him speak and then get rid of him. Shouldn’t the FBI be on their way to arrest him anyway?
For a moment I have this urge to warn him. But then I remember Sheldon’s Plan B, and every hurtful thing he said to me, and soon I’m hoping to actually witness the handcuffs go on him.
Dad immediately grips my shoulders with both hands, holding me in place. “Thank God I got you alone,” he says, sounding so incredibly relieved.
“What?” I demand, putting a bite to the word.
“Yesterday…” He glances around, checking, then checking again. “I need you to know the truth and then I’ll leave you alone.”
“Considering you’ve had eighteen hours to come up with a beautiful lie—”
“Yesterday was a lie!” he says, and then exhales, leans in closer, and speaks in a low voice. “The Zanettis tailed me; they were right there. And your mother is the one thing that I haven’t let them near—”
“Yeah, because she is in prison,” I remind him. What the hell is wrong with him?
“You think they don’t have connections in every federal prison?” he says, his eyes wild with fear. “You think they couldn’t make an accident happen?”
My heart sinks down to my stomach along with the realization of where he’s going with this. “But why? Why get involved with them?”
“It’s a long story. I only have a minute. You’ll have to take the short version.” He drops his hands from my shoulders and leans against the statue. “Right after the FBI took your mother, I went a little bit crazy, looking for every and any way possible to get her out. I researched judges in South Carolina, started following one I thought had the potential to be useful. He’s got a gambling addiction worse than any I’ve seen before. Bookies were on him day and night. He told me he’d likely be assigned to your mom’s case if there were an appeal to her sentence. I fronted him some cash to keep him alive—those bookies were dangerous as hell. He promised a short sentence if I paid him a hundred grand. I said that was insane; we’d never earned that kind of cash from any con. He told me the Zanettis were looking for someone like me to expand their revenue operations. I wasn’t going to go there,” he pleads. “I never would have gone near those mobsters, but then Sally got cancer…”
He pauses, watching me closely, waiting. I work hard to catch my breath, to keep each inhale and exhale even, but I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “You’re making money to pay off a judge and get Mom out? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m sorry, honey.” He gives my shoulders a squeeze again and sympathy fills his face. “I was scared it wouldn’t work out and that I’d let you down again. Plus it seemed like you were happy with your sister and that agent—”
“Whoa, whoa,” I say, shaking my head, needing a quick reverse to five seconds ago. “How do you know about Harper?”
“How do I know?” he says. “You think I’d just let my little girl run off and not check up on her? God knows I was way too bullheaded to do that with Harper. Couldn’t make the same mistake twice.”
“You…you went after me? Oscar must have followed you,” I conclude, putting pieces together. “That’s how he found me.”
“He didn’t follow me all the way to you.” Dad grins. “I did manage to lose him near the end. That way he didn’t know exactly where you were.”
“You knew this whole time that I was lying.” I mull that over, hardly able to believe it.
Dominic was right. He does know me.
“I just want you to be happy,” he says. “I don’t care where or what that is. And it’s your secret to tell.”
Reality hits like a cold punch to the gut. Oh God, what have I done? “Dad, I need to tell you—”
Something over my shoulder catches his attention, and suddenly he looks at me, panic-stricken. “I have to go. We’ll be off the grid, but I’ll be in touch. Okay?”
He steps around me and ducks into a crowd of students and parents on a tour. I don’t know who he’s hiding from, but I can’t help it—I run after him.
“Dad!” I call once I’m far enough away from the Holden group.
Sprinting now, I keep my eyes on him while he hops from group to group, but like Oscar, he’s gifted at becoming invisible. I lose sight of him for a while, and then when I finally spot the black tails of his coat again, we’re outside the campus and he’s all the way across a busy street, preparing to duck into a subway station. I’m out of breath, my chest burning from running in the cold. I hit the button in front of the crosswalk ten or twelve times as if it might change sooner. I step off the curb, debating darting into traffic, and my entire foot sinks into a puddle of ice-cold slush. I shake water from my boot and after spotting a small opening, I take off across the road. The slush under my shoe, combined with a tiny patch of ice on the road, sends me flying forward, landing on my hands and knees, barely keeping my face from making contact with the hard pavement. Pain radiates through my body, and for a moment I’m afraid I can’t move.
Tires squeal. I look up and go completely deer-in-headlights as a large truck slides forward. I brace myself for impact, but the tires roll to a stop inches from me, and I scramble to my feet, my heart all the way in my throat. I’m shaking from head to toe, but I manage to get myself to the other side of the road. The three cars that hit the brakes to avoid hitting me send a wave of icy gray slush from the road right at me. Little pellets beat at my skin, chilling me to the bone. I close my eyes and take the last step up to the curb.
“Dad!” I shout again. I’ve lost him. I thunder down the subway steps, earning some looks at my soaking-wet uniform and hair dripping with gray slush. As I’m digging my Metro card from my skirt pocket, I catch sight of him again just as a train is slowing to a stop. The doors open, and I push through dozens of bundled-up New Yorkers, quickly swiping my card and pushing through the turnstile.
He steps onto the train—I’m still fighting my way in—and turns halfway, as if he heard me approaching. But about twenty feet from me, a man I don’t recognize and Agent Sharp step onto the train, stand right behind my dad. Sharp whispers something.
I halt right outside the doors, unable to breathe or move. Oh God, this is it. It’s happening. Right here. Right now.
Because of me.
The doors slam shut and the train lurches forward, carrying my dad and the FBI agents preparing to arrest him. I stand there in the station, watching train after train go past, carrying only strangers, until an old woman taps my shoulder.
“Are you all right, dear? You look lost.”
Tears bubble in my eyes. I want to scream: I take it back! I take it all back! But it wouldn’t do any good. Nothing would change the fact that I single-handedly put both my parents in prison.
The world my dad built around himself since we reunited in New York has all been an illusion, hiding his real feelings, his fears, his love. All the things that would have stopped me from doing what I did.
And for a few seconds, I finally understand what it feels like to be conned. To be the people on the other side of all the jobs my family and I have done. To believe one reality so wholeheartedly only to have the curtain drawn back, revealing a completely different reality.
The old woman taps me again, and I know I have to move. I have to go somewhere or she’s going to form some conclusions about my mental state and take action. But I can’t just walk back to Columbia, to my Holden classmates, and pretend everything is okay. I need…I need someone who can…
Someone who puts loyalty above self-preservation.