Full Ride (34 page)

“My mom has supported me just fine,” I snarl. I spring to my feet. I'm done. I can't stand another second with this evil man.

I'm whirling around, headed for the door, when I feel Mr. Trumbull's hand on my shoulder.

“You came here with a request,” he says softly. “I just had to see how serious you were. How badly you want it.”

I freeze.

“You already told me there's nothing you can do,” I say.

“I never actually said that,” Mr. Trumbull tells me, and I can hear the change in his voice. He really should not use his lawyer techniques on someone who sat and watched him disembowel witness after witness during the longest three weeks of my life. I recognize this shift: This is his buddy-buddy voice, with the undercurrent of
What? You thought I was being mean? How could you misunderstand so badly?

“Oh, so now you're going to help, after all?” I ask. I don't sit back down.

“I'm going to tell you your choices,” Mr. Trumbull says. “You can appeal to your mother—the asking price has gone down immensely, but she could still get a book deal or an interview
deal. Maybe leading up to the five-year anniversary of the trial—something like that.”

“You want me to ask my mother to sell her soul?” I ask incredulously. “And mine?”

Mr. Trumbull holds up a cautionary finger.

“Or you can write a letter to your father,” he says. “Ask for his help.”

“Have you of all people forgotten he's in prison?” I ask. I'm still poised to flee. “How can he help me from there? By dropping all his accusations against Excellerand? Signing something that guarantees he'll never testify against them? Ensuring he'll be in prison seven more years?”

I can't keep the bitterness out of my voice.

Do you think my father loves me enough to spend even an extra second in prison?
I want to ask.
When he didn't even love me enough to avoid doing the crimes that sent him to prison in the first place?

“No, no,” Mr. Trumbull says impatiently. “He'd give you
money.
Or access to it, anyway. I'm sure you heard the rumors about your father's funds in the Cayman Islands? Surely, if you just ask . . .”

I stare at Mr. Trumbull in amazement.

“Is it even legal for you to tell me to use that money?” I begin. I have to stop and try again. “If that money really exists . . . if my father really loved me . . . don't you think he would have found a way to give it to me already?”

I jerk away from Mr. Trumbull's hand and stalk toward the door.

He lets me go.

Revelatory bombs are going off in my brain.

This is why I stopped believing in the Cayman Islands money,
I think.
Because Daddy would want to share it with Mom and me. He does love me. And us. He does!

Maybe these aren't revelations. Maybe it's just desperation, hope against hope because there's nothing else for me to believe in.

I can't think like this without crying, and I can't let myself cry until I get out of Mr. Trumbull's office, past the receptionist, out of the building. I concentrate especially hard on turning the door handle, propelling myself into the hallway outside.

Step one—done,
I think.

I keep my head down passing the receptionist. She seems to be totally focused on her computer screen, anyhow.

Step two,
I think.

I'm at the elevator bank now, and I stab at the down button with a shaking hand. It takes me three tries to actually hit it.

Never mind,
I tell myself.
No one's watching.

“Oh, wait—Ms. Jones?” the receptionist calls from her desk.

What—does she think it's part of her job to critique clients' elevator-button-pushing abilities?
I wonder.

I turn back, ready to mumble some excuse or apology—anything to get away. I can hear the elevator dinging closer, floor by floor. Why does Mr. Trumbull's office have to be so high up? I don't think the elevator's going to be here in time for me to slip away.

The receptionist—Tria?—is actually rushing toward me. It's a race: Tria vs. the elevator.

Tria wins. She's right beside me now.

And she's holding out an envelope as though she expects me to take it.

“It's my first week on the job,” she says. “There's so much I don't know yet. This letter came yesterday for you and your mom, and I kept meaning to ask Mr. Trumbull what I was supposed to do with it. But I guess I can just give this to you, and then I won't have to ask Mr. Trumbull another stupid question . . .”

I'm thinking Mr. Trumbull would be a pretty intimidating boss. He probably treats Tria like she's on the witness stand all the time.

“Thanks,” I say, taking the envelope.

The elevator arrives at that exact moment. I brush past Tria and hit the button for the first floor and then, quickly, the one to close the doors. But the doors are just starting to ease together when I turn around. Tria is still standing there, as if she's doubting herself now. I can almost see her thinking,
What if Mr. Trumbull wouldn't have wanted me to give that letter to this girl? But it's addressed to her—who else would it go to? Shouldn't Mr. Trumbull be happy I've taken care of it without bugging him?

The shiny silver doors close, blocking my last view of Tria. I sag against the wall.

Awful, awful, awful,
I think.
Is there any way that could have gone worse?

I bend forward, the closest I can come to curling into a fetal position while still standing. I can't let myself go completely, not while I'm on the elevator and we could stop on any floor. It turns out, I still have some pride left. But bending forward means the iPhone in my pocket stabs into my stomach. I yank it out. It's still faithfully recording the soft thrum of the elevator gliding down.

At least I can stop that,
I think, tapping the screen.
That's one thing I can accomplish.

I will never again want to listen to what Mr. Trumbull said, or what I said back to him. I will never want to let anyone else hear it. I might as well erase it right now.

But I'm still shaking. As I look down at the phone, ready to erase everything, I'm apparently incapable of holding on to anything else at the same time: I drop the letter Tria gave me to the floor of the elevator. I bend down to pick it back up, and the address is screaming up at me: “Susan and Becca Jones, c/o Burton Trumbull . . .”

Just the sight of that address is enough to bring tears to my eyes, because it's in my father's scrawling handwriting. Every other letter we've gotten from him over the past three years has been typed.

What changed?
I wonder.

But of course, maybe the letter inside
is
typed. Maybe it's just the envelope that Daddy wrote by hand this time.

Why?
I wonder.

My brain is donkey-stubborn. It won't let me pick up the letter, cram it in my pocket, and turn my attention back to the
iPhone. But I'm also somehow reluctant to actually open the letter and see my father's routine comments about the prison food or his prison buddies who got there by doing who knows what themselves or, his usual question, “How are the two of you?”

I drink in the sight of my father's actual writing and mentally review the whole process. Sending our letters through Mr. Trumbull's office has always been just one more way to protect us. It kept anyone in Deskins from finding out that we're connected to Daddy, that we're connected to a prisoner. Always before, every time a letter from Daddy arrived in Mr. Trumbull's office, I guess the old receptionist would have put Daddy's envelope in a second envelope, addressed that envelope to Mom and me from Mr. Trumbull, and then dropped that envelope in the outgoing mail.

There wouldn't be any reason anyone in Mr. Trumbull's office would take Daddy's letter out of the original handwritten envelope and then put it in
two
layers of typed envelopes instead,
I think.
Would there?

A reason springs to mind immediately: That way Mr. Trumbull could hide that fact that he's been reading our mail.

I gasp a little and jerk my head back, as an even more puzzling reason presents itself to me: That way Mom and I would never see the actual return address on Daddy's letters.

I think this, because now I'm looking at the return address on this letter, written in Daddy's own hand, and it doesn't say what I expect. It doesn't give his location as “Federal Correctional Institution, Herlong, California.”

Instead, it says, “United States Penitentiary, Atlanta, Georgia.”

Daddy's here?
I think.
In Atlanta? Same as me? Where I could see him if I just took another short bus ride?

I can't take my eyes off those words: “Atlanta, Georgia.” It's as if I think that looking away even for an instant will cause the letters to rearrange and change into “Herlong, California.”

The elevator dings and I jump—I'm back on the ground floor. I stumble out of the elevator through a lobby full of adults in suits, where a teenage girl in jeans stands out and looks odd. I hadn't thought about that going up to Mr. Trumbull's office. If Excellerand has cameras trained on this lobby, they'd notice me right away. And if I stop to read a letter with a return address that even a fairly low-res camera could read as being from “Roger Jones” . . . what then?

I press the letter from Daddy against my chest, the blank side of the envelope facing out. I put my head down and barrel toward the door.

The sidewalks out front are empty, but that just makes me feel more exposed. I walk a block, then two. The envelope is practically burning against my hand, but it doesn't seem safe to glance
at it again in such an open space let alone actually read the letter.

There,
I think.
There.

Beside a low brick wall around a Starbucks patio, I see a cluster of bushes. I wait until I'm sure no one is looking, and then I slide down between the wall and the bushes. Branches snag my hair and the bricks scrape my arm, but I'm out of sight.

I squat down in the mud, brace myself against the wall, and dare to look at the envelope again.

It still says “Atlanta.”

I flip the envelope over and slide a trembling finger under the flap. I pull out a thin sheet.

It's more of Daddy's handwriting. Nothing in this letter is typed.

I file that under “Interesting, but who knows what it means?” I blink a few times because my eyes seem determined to go blurry on me. And then I read:

My dear, dear Susan and Becca,

I know you probably get sick of hearing me say how much I miss you, but it's still true. I know you are busy, and I know I deserve you still being mad at me, but your letters seem to come slower and slower. Becca, I enjoyed reading the two essays you sent from your schoolwork—the one about the girl who went to your school 15 years ago, and the one about
Moby Dick
—but what I really want to hear about is your life.

What? I never sent Daddy any of my essays! Would Mom have actually . . .

I remember Mom's reaction when I told her about my Court scholarship application—she never read that essay. There's no reason she would have snooped on my computer and sent my schoolwork to Daddy.

Then who did? How could Daddy have seen those essays?

I shiver but force myself to go back to reading Daddy's letter. He talks about how I got a lot more out of
Moby Dick
than he ever did in high school, and about how the food at the penitentiary is getting monotonous after three years of the same thing week after week, the same scorched grits, the same overcooked okra . . .

Wait a minute—three years of grits and okra? That means he's been in Atlanta for three years, doesn't it? Why would grits and okra be on the menu in California?

I finish the letter and immediately start reading it again. But what I'm looking for isn't there—there's no paragraph I accidentally skipped over the first time explaining, “This is why I'm in Georgia when you thought I was in California” or “This is why I thought you've been sending me your school essays, when you really haven't.” I also don't find the answers I want the most: “And this is how you can go to college without tipping off Excellerand—and without having to cut off and abandon all your Deskins friends. . . .”

But if Daddy actually told me what to do, would I trust his advice?
I wonder.

I put my head back against the brick wall and ease Mrs. Collins's phone out of my pocket. I dial the home number for Mom's friend.

It only rings once before Mom's voice rushes at me: “Becca, I'm so glad you called! I was just telling Denise that it's killing me, not knowing how you're doing!”

This is code. I know Mom is trying to tell me,
Denise is sitting
right here with me, so if you're going to tell me something I need to hear privately, let me know so I can work it out.

I don't want Mom to hear about Daddy's letter or my time with Mr. Trumbull while she's sitting beside someone who can't know the truth about us.

But I'm also having trouble figuring out what I would feel safe telling Mom by phone, in any location, when even my school essays were sent places I never expected. Have hordes of spies been watching us all along? Could there be listening devices on the brick wall behind me? In the bushes around me? What's really going on?

“Um, I'm okay,” I say, even though it's a lie. “I just met with the, um, college advisor. It didn't go very well, but I'm looking into other possibilities. Don't worry.”