sat cross-legged on her bed, an earbud in and her smartphone in her hands. She looked up with an expression that said, Why are you bothering me?
Molly sat at the foot of the bed, anyway. “Is something going on with you and Trevor?” she asked bluntly. “I haven’t seen you with him lately.”
“Bet you’re really sorry, aren’t you?” Resentment gave a razor edge to every word.
“I’m sorry for anything that hurts you. Please believe that, if nothing else.”
Dark smudges surrounded Cait’s eyes. Heavier than usual makeup, or had she rubbed her eyes, forgetting that she wore mascara? Wanting to reach out to her, Molly restrained herself.
Cait shrugged. “We broke up, so I guess you can go out and celebrate.”
“Honey…”
“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Cait stared wildly at her. “Especially not with you.”
Molly flinched at the sheer venom and knew her daughter saw it. She wanted to say something parentlike, wise, understanding, but her mind was a giant blank. After a moment, she nodded, stood up and left the room without saying another word. She heard the sob behind her as she closed the door, but she didn’t stop, felt no temptation to go back.
She went to her own room and sat in the easy chair where she often read. It had to be ten minutes before she was calm enough to feel rational. Mostly rational. Right at this moment, she couldn’t figure out how parents went on after scenes like this and looked at their children with love. She couldn’t even figure out why this particular scene had hurt so much. All she knew was that it had.
On instinct she changed to running clothes, including the iron maiden bra she had to wear when active. She’d use the middle school track. She was less likely to be recognized there than at the high school. She ought to be putting on dinner, but if Cait got hungry tonight she could feed herself. Molly didn’t even knock on her daughter’s door on the way out to tell her where she was going.
She found the track deserted and, after stretching, began to run. Slowly at first, then pushing herself harder and harder. She was on the third mile before she recognized the stew of emotions inside her as a sense of betrayal. The person she loved the most had turned on her, and all the child psychology she could summon, all the reason, didn’t seem to help.
She doesn’t really hate me, no matter how it sounded. How it looked. I know better. I know if I’m patient, when she’s eighteen or twenty she’ll return to me, my loving daughter. I know that. I do.
Hormones. Pulling away. Cait’s behavior was typical. Probably more typical than the way she’d breezed through the usually difficult middle school years.
I’m an adult. I’m the parent.
Yes, she was. But did that excuse Cait?
She was running all out now. Too fast, her lungs heaving. The slap of her feet on the track was all she heard.
I love her.
I don’t deserve this.
Finally she had to make herself slow, then walk. Her eyes stung from sweat and her thigh muscles felt like jelly.
The childish hurt had faded, replaced by a crushing sense of failure. What was she doing in a profession for which she was obviously so ill qualified? She cringed at the superiority she’d felt as she counseled parents from her own lofty height as the mother of the perfect child. To think she’d dared when she knew so little about being a parent or even a teenager. She certainly hadn’t been a usual one herself. She had never been able to rebel.
Who was I to talk? she marveled. And then, No wonder Richard Ward looked at me like that.
She felt stiff and slow and older than her thirty-five years when she got back in her car and started for home.
* * *
CUTE LITTLE CAITLYN Callahan seemed to be a thing of the past. So far as Richard could tell, there wasn’t another girlfriend, per se, although there were certainly girls. Trevor was coming home smelling of cigarettes first, then booze and finally pot. They had one ugly confrontation after another. Richard wondered if there were still military-style boarding schools.
It was nearly the end of October, which meant midsemester grades would be coming out. Richard warned Trev that if he was failing, he’d lose his cell phone.
He had always believed you taught your kids your values, then trusted them. When treated with respect, people were more likely to push themselves to meet expectations, he’d been sure. Worked for employees, should work for kids, right?
The day he searched his son’s bedroom was a low. The very necessity made him admit that Trevor was in real trouble. That, as a parent, he was in real trouble.
He worked quickly, efficiently, trying not to let himself think too much about the way he was violating Trev’s privacy. Drawers first—underwear and socks, shirts, jeans. Nothing untoward. Closet—mostly unused sports equipment and shoes in a jumble on the carpeted floor, a few jackets carelessly hung, unpacked boxes on the shelf. Richard lifted those down, one by one, but found them still taped shut and identified in bold black marker—Trev’s Summer Clothes. Trev’s Ski Parka, Quilted Pants Etc. Trev’s Books. And so on. He put them all back where they’d been. Moved on to the desk.
There he found precious few signs that school assignments were being completed, but a few returned quizzes and tests that gave him hope. Apparently Trevor had been advanced enough in school that the routine work was a gimme for him. Maybe enough to save him with passing grades?
It was a sad day when that was all he could hope for.
Actually, that wasn’t the only positive. He also failed to find any drugs. So the pot he’d smelled probably hadn’t been Trevor’s. He didn’t find any cigarettes, either. Or even matches or lighter. Maybe Trev hadn’t gotten as stupid as he’d feared.
He did find a couple of magazines featuring naked women in lewd poses, but those weren’t any surprise. What teenage boy didn’t have some under his mattress?
Once he was sure Trevor’s room looked the same as when he’d entered it, Richard went downstairs to his home office and refuge. He sat behind his desk to brood. His mouth curved wryly as he remembered those long-ago days when he, too, was a teenager and unable to think about much besides girls and sex. His curiosity had raged from the time he was maybe eleven or twelve. Mom wouldn’t have touched the topic with a ten-foot pole, but Dad had sat him down for a few awkward conversations that were less than informative. Mostly he’d tried to drive home a singular point—be very careful not to get a girl pregnant. Richard grunted. Dad must have felt as much of a failure when Lexa turned up pregnant and Richard had to give up college to marry her as he did now, unable to understand or reach his own kid.
His smile died as he wondered whether Trevor was actually sleeping with those ever-present girls. Another thing Richard hadn’t found, come to think of it, was condoms. Huh. How would Trevor react if his father presented him with the gift of a box of them? Or would that seem too much like a green light to go crazy sexually, so long as he wore the condoms?
Another question to which he had no answer. He could imagine Trevor’s reaction if his father tried to sit him down for a conversation about safe sex.
Did
