an acceptable substitute, a brother figure. Usually they shared a warm, mutual affection. But tonight she didn’t even try to mask her displeasure that she was talking to Trip and not Graham.
‘Can you please get me out of this hellhole?’ she whispered into the phone. ‘They said they won’t let me out of here until morning, but that can’t be possible.’
‘Sit tight. I’ll call a few people and get this sorted out,’ Trip said with reassuring confidence.
‘Hurry, please.’
But either he didn’t hurry or there was nothing he could do, because Karolina didn’t speak to Trip again until he showed up to bail her out at seven the following morning. Without Graham.
Trip read her face immediately. ‘Graham wanted to come, of course. I was the one who advised against it.’
Karolina took a seat in one of the plastic chairs next to Trip. Her entire body ached from lying on a bench in the holding room – not a cell, exactly, more like an outdated boarding gate at an old airport.
‘I’m not an idiot, Trip. I understand pretty clearly that the optics of a sitting senator walking into a county jail to bail out his wife aren’t great. But you can’t blame me for wishing he’d done it anyway,’ Karolina said, trying to hold back tears. ‘Can you tell me what the hell is going on?’
Trip’s cell phone bleated, and he silenced it without looking at the screen. ‘I’m going to be honest with you, Lina. This is a first-rate shit show.’
‘You think I don’t know that? I’m the one who slept in jail last night. In jail. And where is my husband?’
Trip’s brow furrowed. He cleared his throat. ‘Lina, it’s not—’
Karolina held up her hand. ‘Don’t. First I want to know who has Harry. Who’s getting him to school?’
Another throat clear. Karolina almost felt bad for directing her anger with Graham at Trip. Almost. He looked so miserable. ‘Harry stayed the night at Elaine’s house.’
‘He’s still there?’
‘You know Harry called her when they arrested you last night. Naturally, some of the journalists picked up the story from the police scanner, and a few cameras were waiting outside your house when Elaine went to drop Harry off. She just kept driving and took him back to her place. The media has staked out your house, and we didn’t want to put him through that. At least now no one knows where he is.’
Karolina nodded. As much as she disliked her mother-in-law and the idea of her son having to hide out at Elaine’s house, she had to agree it sounded like the best option. ‘Fine. Now, how are we clearing up the rest of this nightmare? This is entrapment! False arrest! We should be talking lawsuit!’
Trip coughed, looked at Karolina, and coughed again.
‘Trip? What’s going on?’
‘It’s just that … Well, it’s complicated.’
‘Complicated? That’s a funny word. I would say confusing, perhaps. I’m certainly confused that I was arrested for drunk driving when I was not driving drunk. And even if I were driving drunk – which I absolutely was not – my husband happens to be a United States senator with more connections than a teenager on Instagram, and I know full well that if he wanted this to disappear, it would have already,’ Karolina hissed.
A garbled announcement came over the loudspeaker, and a female police officer hurried past them and out the front door.
‘Why don’t you take me through it, Lina? Tell me exactly what happened.’
It was only now, many hours into her ordeal, that Karolina felt like she may not be able to control her tears. She’d been stoic through the arrest and braver than even she would have predicted when she realized that no one was coming for her. But in the face of Trip’s familiar kindness, his obvious concern – even though it should have been her husband sitting there – it was all she could do not to weep.
‘Sorry,’ she said, swallowing a sob. ‘I’m just … overwhelmed.’
Trip cleared his throat. ‘Did you and Harry go out at all last night?’
‘Out? Of course not. I mean, only if you count running to the grocery store at about five to stock up on chips and salsa for the boys. He invited four friends over to hang out. I ordered them pizza, and they played Xbox and God knows what else twelve-year-old boys do. FaceTime girls? Each other? I don’t know. I’m not proud of it, but out of spite, I opened one of Graham’s thousand-dollar bottles of cabernet and poured myself half a glass. I knew that was all I was having, but it felt very satisfying to stick the barely drunk bottle into the fridge – he would have a heart attack when he saw it, and truthfully, I was looking forward to it. But that’s all I had. Half a glass.’
‘Okay, and then what?’
‘And then nothing! The boys wolfed down an entire Carvel ice cream cake in like thirty seconds, and they all piled into the Suburban around nine-thirty. Before I got to Billy Post’s house less than a mile away, two cop cars appeared out of nowhere. Full lights and sirens, like a real emergency. I pulled over to let them pass, but then they came up to my window.’
Trip nodded as though Karolina were confirming a script he already knew. ‘What did they say?’
‘They asked if I’d been drinking. When I said of course not, they said I was driving very erratically. Which is ridiculous, because I was actually driving very slowly in our residential neighborhood.’
‘They said they saw empty bottles of champagne rolling around in the back of the Suburban.’ Trip said this quietly, looking down at his hands.
‘Oh, did they? Well, that’s impossible. Because I don’t even like champagne. Neither does Graham. It gives us both headaches—’ She paused. Unless the kids had gotten into it? Karolina scrunched her nose in consideration. Was it possible? Twelve was hardly too young to try sneaking alcohol for the first time. Was she being delusional in thinking Harry would never try a drink? No, she knew her kid. She knew he’d be exactly like every other teenager and experiment with all kinds of things, but she was also positive that he wasn’t there yet. And even if she was completely off-base and the boys had gotten into Graham’s prized wine cellar, there was no way five twelve-year-old boys could even open a bottle of champagne undetected, much less polish off two bottles. She remembered back to the night before. Both Harry and his friends had all seemed completely normal: rowdy, yes, but certainly sober. ‘No. That wasn’t it. I have no idea how the bottles got there.’
Trip placed his palm over the top of her hand, and it felt warm, comforting. ‘I’m so sorry, Lina. This can’t be easy.’
All it took was that small expression of sympathy for the tears to start freely flowing again. Karolina was certain she had dragonlike streams of mascara running down her cheeks, but considering she’d just spent the night in jail, she figured it wasn’t the worst of her appearance problems.
‘But here’s the part that makes absolutely no sense. They brought me back here. Then without giving me a Breathalyzer or anything, they throw me in that room for the night. On what grounds? Empty bottles in my car? How is that even allowed?’
Trip’s
