Page 146 of All These Beautiful Strangers
Yael: R they going to arrest that psycho bitch?
Stevie: C, answer your phone plz
Drew: Call me later you guys! I need deets. The parental unit finally gave me back my phone.
Yael: C, u did good, girl. We’re here if you need us.
Well, at least some people didn’t hate me.
The door opened and Headmaster Collins came in looking all stern and serious.
“It’s a circus out there,” he said, closing the door behind him.
I put my phone back in my pocket and sat up straight. Headmaster Collins took a seat behind his big oak desk. I could tell he hadn’t been prepared to be called in this early on his day off, because he was unshaven and his hair was only half combed. The top button in his collared shirt had been buttoned in the wrong hole, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him.
“I won’t pretend it wasn’t brave, what you did,” Headmaster Collins said. “You acted with valor and integrity. It’s heartening to see that at least some of the values we’ve tried to instill in you in this institution have taken root.”
Headmaster Collins folded his hands on his desk and looked at me solemnly, and I knew I wasn’t going to get off that easily, with just a pat on the back and a “job well done.”
“That being said, doing the right thing doesn’t exonerate all of the wrongs that were committed,” he said. “Theft. Vandalism. Cheating. Lying. I can’t turn a blind eye to the serious misconduct that went on.”
“Am I expelled?” I asked.
Headmaster Collins sighed. “Every member of the A’s is going to face expulsion,” he said. “However, in light of your coming forward, I’m willing to make an exception in your case. There’s only one week left in the semester. I’ll let you sit for your exams and finish out this semester. If you withdraw enrollment for the spring, I won’t put an expulsion on your academic record. You can start again somewhere new. I’m sure, with a sizable donation, another institution can be persuaded to take you on midyear.”
I’d known expulsion was a possibility when I’d written the article. But still, the reality of it hit me hard. No more Knollwood. This place had been my home for the last two and a half years and now, it was being taken from me. Still, I knew things could be worse.
“Thank you,” I said.
There was a knock at the door.
“That would be your father,” Headmaster Collins said. “I know he would like to have a word with you before you give a statement to the police. So, I’ll give you two a moment.”
When he left, my father came in and sat in the seat next to me.
We were both silent. My feelings toward my father were complicated. Part of me felt guilty for outing his secrets so publicly in the Knollwood Chronicle. Especially since I knew now that he hadn’t actively participated in my mother’s murder. The things he’d told me were mostly true. But still, my father wasn’t blameless. He had treated Jake cruelly, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the things Claire claimed about my father were true—that he had been cold toward my mother, that he had physically hurt her. Those last words I’d heard my mother utter to my father still haunted me: Get your hands off me.
“Do you think they’ll have enough to pursue a case against Margot?” I asked after a while.
“Well, they’ll have your eyewitness report of what you saw that night by the lake,” my father said. “And some circumstantial physical evidence with the watch and the suitcases. That’s something. The bad news is, by the time they get a search warrant and go to the Southampton house, Margot will have had the opportunity to destroy that evidence.”
“She can’t,” I said, “because she doesn’t have it anymore. Well, at least, she doesn’t have all of it.”
“What?” my father asked.
“I called Greyson yesterday,” I explained. “He drove up yesterday afternoon and got the suitcases. He’s gotten very good at breaking and entering.”
Shock registered on my father’s face. Then, he laughed. It caught me off guard and I chanced a look at him. He rubbed his chin and was serious again.
“I wish that you’d confided in me,” he said. “I wish you’d come to me about all this. And when I think why you didn’t,” he said, “it occurs to me that the reason you didn’t was because you didn’t trust me.”
I stared down at my hands. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. Because he was right. I had doubted him. I had chosen not to trust him. In my darkest moments, I had thought he might be exactly the person that the tabloids made him out to be.
“But the truth is—I deserve that,” my father said. “For years, I held myself blameless. I told myself Grace had chosen to leave, and I was angry with her—so angry with her. But now I see I was partly responsible. It was my actions as a selfish, spineless teenage boy that killed Jake; my inability years later to be truthful with your mother when she asked me about Jake’s death; and my crass assumptions and callousness toward her that last summer that led her not to confide in me. Without those things, Grace would still be here. I don’t know if I can ever really forgive myself for that, so I don’t know how I can ask you to.”
I looked up at him. I didn’t know what to say.
“My whole life, I’ve tried to protect you,” he went on. “Maybe that’s difficult for you to see. I know I didn’t handle everything in the right way. When your mother . . . disappeared, I was broken. Utterly broken and angry. I felt like this raw shell of who I used to be. There was a time when I didn’t feel capable, or worthy, of being your father. And that was why I sent you and your sister away to stay with your uncle. I tried to stay away from you. I thought you were better off without me.”
