“Let’s take this one step at a time, and then see how you feel,” Nancy said, trying to slow things down. “Why don’t you spend two months in L.A., now till the end of the year, and then make a decision about what you want to do. That gives you two months to hang out with Dad and feel better and start to recover before you make any major decisions. It’s too early to decide any of it now.” It seemed like a reasonable compromise to everyone, except Vivienne, who said she wanted to stay in L.A. for the whole school year. Chris loved the idea but he wasn’t sure how long he could keep Kimberly at bay in a furnished apartment now that she’d been living in the house with him since June, and loved it. She was already feeling displaced by Vivienne, who was only eight years younger than she was. He felt like he was going to have two daughters on his hands. Both were very vocal about what they wanted. “What about Thanksgiving?” Nancy asked cautiously. Vivienne had already been planning to spend Christmas with her dad, and Nancy had rented a ski house in Vermont with friends for two weeks, but Nancy had been looking forward to Thanksgiving with her daughter.
“If we go when I get out of the hospital, I don’t want to come back right away. Can I spend it with Dad?” Vivienne asked innocently and not wanting to upset her. Nancy reluctantly agreed. She was getting the short end of the stick here, but at seventeen, and after the trauma she’d just had, Nancy was willing to indulge her and do what Vivienne wanted. She wanted her daughter to be happy, and she had uprooted her very quickly when they left in June. She had talked her into coming to Saint Ambrose, and that had exploded like a suicide bomb in their faces now, so she felt obliged to give in to Vivienne to some degree, even if it was hard for her, and would leave her alone without family for either of the holidays. Nancy had no family other than Vivienne, and neither did Chris. But he had a girlfriend, and Nancy had no man in her life, only her daughter. But the focus had to be on Vivienne now, and not her parents. Their plans were going to leave Nancy alone for both holidays. But neither Vivienne nor her father was thinking about that, and as always, Nancy had to be the bigger person and the adult. She was willing to do it again now, after what Vivienne had been through. She wanted Viv to get over what had happened, whatever it took.
“I think you should try to go back to school in January, and stay on track for college. That’s an important goal.” She said it to both of them, and wasn’t sure they were paying attention. She was always the voice of reason, duty, and responsibility, which weren’t Chris’s strengths, but Nancy wanted them to be Viv’s, although she was willing to give her a pass right now. She decided to leave them alone for a little while after that, to celebrate their victory, that Vivienne would be going back to L.A. with him, which was what both father and daughter wanted. Nancy went to lick her wounds quietly in the hall. She ran into Gwen Martin as soon as she stepped out of the room. She looked tired and exasperated and Gwen smiled at her.
“Are you all right?” she asked Nancy. “You look sad. Is she doing okay?”
“Pretty much. Sometimes better than others. She’s been having nightmares, which is to be expected. She’s decided to take some time off from school and stay with her father in L.A. for a while, over the holidays too. I just hope she gets back on track in January. I don’t want to see her miss a year of college too because of this.” Gwen nodded, thinking that the boy who had raped her was going to miss out on college forever. If he went to prison, he might never go back to school, and none of the kind of colleges that any of the boys had planned to apply to would accept them after this. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, and all the best colleges in the country, which had been a foregone conclusion for all of them, would be out of the picture, if convicted of rape. The rapist, whoever he turned out to be, would be getting a high school equivalency degree in prison, and if he cared, taking classes online, and working in the prison laundry or machine shop, and spoiled rich boys were not popular in prison. The rapist would have hard years ahead of him, in exchange for a night of insanity. But Vivienne would pay the price for it for the rest of her life too, and it wasn’t her fault, however much Vivienne doubted herself and blamed herself now, and questioned her own actions, getting drunk with the boys that night. But the boy who had raped her had thrown his life away.
“If the state brings charges, we’ll need her back for the trial,” Gwen told Nancy, “but that won’t be for about a year. She won’t have to go to the defendant’s routine court appearances before that, unless he pleads guilty, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. All of the boys’ lawyers have been telling us what good boys they are. They probably were, until one of them went nuts on Halloween night, and they all went crazy on tequila.”
“Do you really think one of them will be charged with rape?” Nancy asked her. It was hard to believe one of them had done it, given who they were and their flawless histories.
“I don’t know. It depends on a lot of things. Whoever is guilty should go to prison. I believe in crime and punishment. They won’t learn otherwise, and they’ll think they can do whatever they want for the rest of their lives. That’s not a good thing.” Nancy nodded agreement, thinking about Chris. He had cheated on her and broken her heart, and she had punished him too, by taking his daughter and moving to New York. Now Vivienne wanted to go back to him. So he wasn’t punished after all. She had wanted to get as far away from him as she could and start a new life, but Vivienne hadn’t been ready for that. Now she had been punished too. Nancy felt terrible about it, and regretted her decision to send her to Saint Ambrose. “I hope everything works out for her,” Gwen said gently. “She’s young and strong and smart and a nice kid, with good parents. I think she’ll be okay.”
“I hope so,” Nancy said softly.
“Is she with her dad?” Nancy nodded. “I’ll come back tomorrow. It wasn’t important. Take care of yourself,” Gwen said and meant it. She felt sorry for Nancy too. What the boys had done with their foolish night had broken so many hearts. Almost too many to count with their own families in the mix. They never thought of that.
Chapter 10
When Sam Friedman came to see Adrian, he was sitting in front of the school on a bench waiting for him. It was a beautiful autumn day, although it was cold, but the sun was out, and he’d been sitting there for an hour, so Sam would see him as soon as he showed up. Sam had to sign in at a visitors’ desk to meet with Adrian, and as soon as he had, they went back outside.
Sam was a forty-year-old child advocacy lawyer who did a lot of work for the court, and in the three years he had represented Adrian, he had really come to like him. He was a funny, awkward, incredibly bright kid, and he looked hardly any different than he had at thirteen, although he was now sixteen. His bad luck was that he had crazy parents, both of them shrinks. Spending an hour with either of them was enough to drive Sam insane. He couldn’t even imagine growing up in a house with both of them. But fortunately for Adrian, they had very little interest in their son, except to enhance their battles with each other, and they never showed up to see him. He had spent the Christmas holidays with Sam once, because he had nowhere else to go, and Sam felt sorry for him, and got permission from the court and his parents to take him home for a week. They’d had a good time together. Adrian said it was the best Christmas he’d ever had, which seemed pathetic to Sam. He liked him, and thought he was a wonderful boy and his parents were living proof that even money and education didn’t make people good parents.