behind on her work, I would have—”
“I’m afraid it’s more than that,” Mrs. Luce cut him off smoothly and returned to her seat. She pressed a button on a round black machine. The sound of calling birds and water tumbling over rocks filled the room, competing with the click-clack of two suspended silver balls knocking against each other.
Was the machine her attempt to soothe him? He thought of Christie and wondered if she tried this stuff with her patients.
“There’s more?” Eli echoed.
“Take a look at this.”
A jagged piece of paper appeared before him. Becca’s right-tilted handwriting popped from the page.
“‘Keep it up and you will—’” he read aloud then stopped, the last word too extreme, too improbable, to speak. Eli shoved the note back across the desktop. “That’s not hers.”
Mrs. Luce raised her eyebrows and lowered her square chin. “I think we both know that it is.”
“Becca would never write that.” His lips pressed into a firm line. Mrs. Luce needed to understand. She was new. Didn’t know that Becca wasn’t some troubled kid. “She’s never had a disciplinary referral. Ever. If you look at her report card, you’ll see she’s a straight-A student.”
Mrs. Luce’s nostrils flared. “Have you seen her report card, lately?”
He swallowed back the rising guilt. “Not recently, but she had a 4.0 GPA last...last...” His mind skimmed back and stopped at Christmas. But that couldn’t be right. Had it been that long? The distance between him and Becca yawned before him, a football field of sullen silences and monosyllabic answers.
“Semester. Yes. She was one of our top students. But she’s currently incomplete in living science and health.” She handed him the transcript. “And coupled with this recent threat on another student’s life, I’m afraid we will not be able to recommend her for enrollment at our affiliate, Elisabeth Irwin High School.”
The edges of the paper bent beneath his tense fingers. He perused her grades and double-checked the name at the top. This had to be a mistake. A misunderstanding. Becca would not flunk out of school. Not on his watch.
“Can we get Becca down here?” He dropped the paper as though it burned. “She’ll clear this up.”
Mrs. Luce chewed on her bottom lip then picked up the phone. “Please escort Becca Roberts to my office, Cynthia.”
Escort? He suppressed a snort. Was his daughter a criminal? What had happened to innocent until proven guilty? He and Mrs. Luce stared at each other, the silence stretching to its breaking point. Moments later, footsteps sounded in the hall. The door opened. Becca.
He strode to the door and opened his arms. Becca must be scared. Would need his assurance. But she took a far seat without acknowledging him, her eyes darting everywhere but in his direction. She couldn’t have looked guiltier. He pulled out his chair and dropped into it. Was she responsible for the note? The incompletes? He rubbed his temples.
“Becca,” Mrs. Luce began in a stern voice. “Please look at your father and tell him what you told us.”
Her wide pupils turned her blue eyes black. “I wrote the note,” she croaked. Her fingers fidgeted with the tulle band wrapped around her braid.
“What?” His mouth fell open. He pointed at the paper scrap. “That’s yours?”
Becca nodded and studied her crisscrossed flip-flops.
“Why?” His voice came out hoarse and low. He hated that it had taken a stranger to make him pay attention to his own daughter. “Why would you tell someone they were going to die? You...of all people...after what we’ve gone through.”
Becca’s ashen face jerked away. “Yeah. What would I know about death? We’ve never talked about it, right?”
His silence on the subject had been to protect her, not hurt her. The disposable cup bent in his hand. “That’s no excuse to threaten to hurt someone.”
“Is that what you think?” Becca stomped to the door. “That girl’s a smoker. I was warning her about dying of cancer. You know—cancer? I think you might have heard of it, Dad. I didn’t want her to end up with our sucky life.” He flinched at her bitter tone.
The metal doorknob rattled in her hand. “May I be excused, Mrs. Luce?”
“Of course, dear. You may return to the study room.”
“Thank you.” Becca slipped through the door without a backward glance.
His hands gripped the chair’s plush arms. This was worse than he’d imagined. Would Becca fail eighth grade? Leave her friends, change schools? He’d fought hard to keep his kids’ lives as unchanged as possible, to maintain the life they’d had before his had fallen apart. Would this event bring everything tumbling down?
“Mr. Roberts, when we first questioned Becca, she simply confirmed that she’d written the note. In light of this...” Mrs. Luce cleared her throat “...clarification, we might need to reconsider our decision not to recommend her for promotion if she can make up her work.”
“You think?” he asked rhetorically, furious with himself and sorry that Mrs. Luce had been put in the middle of this mess. He grabbed the annoying, clanking silver balls and stilled them, guilt heavy on his shoulders.
“Mr. Roberts,” she began, pulling the apparatus out of his reach. “We see this every day. Children acting out in school when something is wrong at home.”
“Everything’s fine,” insisted Eli, wishing he felt as sure as he sounded.
“Your family is facing a devastating crisis.”
He shifted in his seat. Someone must have told her about his cancer. The guidance counselor. What was her name? The one who smiled a lot. Sort of like Christie without the charm.
“Mrs. Kevlar,” he murmured and pulled out his twitching phone. He powered it off without looking at the screen.
Mrs. Luce nodded. “Yes. Mrs. Kevlar told me of your health issues. And of your wife’s...absence. Is there some chance that she might be of help?”
Absence? Was that the euphemism used for being dumped? He passed a hand over his eyes. “Let’s leave her out of this. She won’t want to be involved.”
“But surely, as a mother, she’d—”
“She was never a mother to them.” And it was true. He’d changed their diapers, read them to sleep, made their lunches, ordered their birthday cakes. As the eldest child of twelve, his ex had once told him she’d already done her share of parenting.
Mrs. Luce’s face softened. Did she pity him? Now, that he couldn’t stand. His family might be having a tough time, but they’d get through it. They always did.
“And have you been engaging Becca and Tommy? Talking to them about everything that’s going on? Encouraging them to express their feelings?”
Now she sounded like Christie.
“We’re going to counseling today,” replied Eli, certain now, more than ever, that he’d been right to make that appointment. If only he’d done it sooner. Prevented Becca from digging herself this hole. He noticed a penny by his loafers. It was heads up. Christie would say that was good luck, though fate was hardly on his side today.
Mrs. Luce rested her head on the high brown back of her chair. The rain-forest sounds quieted, replaced by the muffled thrum of Manhattan traffic. After a long moment, she leveled her gaze on him.
“Given the extenuating circumstances, I believe we can work out a plan so that Becca still has a chance of attending Elisabeth Irwin this fall.”
His heart sped as he leaned forward. “It would mean a lot.” He would do whatever it took