“May I make you a cup of mint tea?” Bonnie asks in her musical voice, which almost sounds Irish. “It’s delicious.”
We both nod and watch her walk back toward the kitchen. Neither of us speaks for several minutes. We just sit there and wait until Bonnie returns with a small wooden tray. On it are three steaming teacups on mismatched saucers, along with pink Happy Birthday napkins. The tray also holds a miniature pitcher of milk and a bowl filled with sugar cubes that remind me of Lyla’s tea set when she was little. Lyla and I each take a cup before Bonnie places the tray on a wicker chest doubling as a coffee table. She then sits on the red chair beside Lyla’s, sharing her view of the backyard. She points out the window, up into the trees. My back is to the window, but I know what they’re looking at.
“Do you see that marvelous tree house?” Bonnie asks Lyla.
She nods, looking transfixed.
“Know who built it?” Bonnie says, slowly stirring two lumps of sugar into her cup. She makes that tinkling spoon-on-china sound that is hypnotic.
“My dad?” Lyla guesses.
Bonnie smiles, nods, and taps her spoon on the edge of the cup before placing it back on the tray. “Yes. Your dad…I’m biased but I have to say—it’s the best tree house in all of Tennessee. Maybe anywhere.”
As Lyla smiles back at her, my heart floods.
“So tell me,” Bonnie says, furrowing her brow and putting on her shrink face. “Why aren’t you at school?”
Lyla puts her cup down on her saucer, then says, “Ask my dad that question. He’s the one who made me leave in the middle of a science quiz.” She glares at me.
“Does this have anything to do with the photo? Taken of you at the party?” Bonnie asks, looking directly at Lyla. I give her bonus points for being so straightforward.
Lyla nods, then quickly and adamantly insists that Finch’s ex-girlfriend took that photo—and that he is innocent. Completely innocent. Without addressing her claims, I fill in a few important blanks—namely Lyla’s visit to Finch yesterday, and our vandalized porch. Lyla says Polly did that, too, then finishes with an account of this morning’s episode in the school lobby, calling it “humiliating” and accusing me of “always” making things so much worse than they have to be.
“So Finch is innocent, and I’m the bad guy?” I say, Bonnie’s soothing effect starting to wear off.
“Dad! I was in the middle of a test!”
“You said it was a quiz.”
“Same difference!”
Bonnie gives her a compassionate nod, then says, “Okay. So, Lyla? How would you have preferred your dad handle this situation today?”
Lyla sighs, then gives a long-winded, rambling answer, covering everything from the orange paint on my clothing to the way I was shouting in the lobby. “Like, couldn’t he have just called my headmaster and not made a huge scene? Covered in paint?”
Bonnie looks at me. “Do you understand how she feels?”
“Sure. I guess,” I say. “And she’s right that I shouldn’t have lost my temper…but I had to do something. And sometimes it feels as if Lyla is more concerned with little details…and appearances…than the bigger picture….For example, I really don’t think it matters that I have a little paint on my clothes.”
Bonnie gives me a hint of a smile, then looks at Lyla again. “Do you know what he’s trying to say?”
Lyla shrugs, then grants Bonnie the same answer I gave her. “I guess,” she says.
Bonnie clears her throat and continues, “And don’t you think he’s trying to do the best he can to help you?”
“Yes, but this actually isn’t helping me,” Lyla says. “At all. He has no clue what it’s like to be me…and this is my school he’s barging into. My world.”
“Not for long, it isn’t,” I say under my breath.
Lyla makes a loud huffing sound, points at me, and says to Bonnie, “See? See! He wants me to leave my school over this! Tell him that’s ridiculous. And soo unfair! This isn’t Windsor’s fault.”
“Okay. But do you understand why your father feels some animosity toward Windsor? After all, someone from the school took that photograph of you. And no one has yet been punished for it. All these days later,” Bonnie says, articulating the reasons for my anger and frustration so beautifully and succinctly that I want to high-five or hug her.
“Yeah. Okay. I get that,” Lyla says. “And I appreciate that he’s a really good father and stuff….But…he’s always so angry at everyone….It’s like he thinks the whole world is against us or something. And they’re not. They’re just…not.”
The truth of her statement hits me hard, and I feel them both staring at me as I catch my breath.
“Tom?” Bonnie says softly.
“Yeah?” I ask, my head spinning.
“Does Lyla have a point here?”
I slowly nod. “Yeah. She does.”
Holding my gaze, Lyla says, “I mean, Dad, some people in Belle Meade do suck. Some people are huge snobs and look down on us. But a lot of them aren’t like that at all. Some of them are just like us, only with more money…and if money and appearances and stuff like that don’t matter, then they shouldn’t matter either way.” She looks so earnest and emboldened.
I nod again, hearing her and feeling the truth of her words on a level deeper than I thought possible.
“I just want you to trust me sometimes,” she continues. “To make my own judgments about people…which might not be the same as yours. Whether that’s Grace…or Finch…or anyone else. And yeah, I’m going to make mistakes…but now it’s time to trust me. If I mess up, I mess up. But I want—and need—your faith in me.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding and blinking back unexpected tears. “I’ll try.”
“And, Lyla?” Bonnie says. “You’ll try, too? To cut him some slack? And understand how hard it must be to raise you on his own?”
“Yes,” Lyla says, first looking at Bonnie, then shifting her gaze to me. “I’ll try, too. I promise, Dad.”
Her answer pushes me closer to the edge of crying, though I manage to keep it together by taking a sip of tea.
“Well,” Bonnie says. “This is a really good start.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Yeah,” Lyla echoes.
“Now,” Bonnie says briskly. “What do you say we take a little tour of the world’s finest tree house?”
After Tom’s grand exit, Walter dismisses Finch for the rest of the day, instructing him to return to school in the morning for his scheduled hearing. I don’t speak to him until we get outside, telling him to go straight home. That I’ll meet him there.
Finch nods, then turns toward the student lot while I walk straight ahead to my car. I get in, put on my seatbelt, and take a few deep breaths. Before I start the ignition, I make myself call Kirk, knowing that I can’t drive and talk at the same time. Not to him. Not about this.
“Hey!” he says with what I can tell is forced cheer. “Where’ve you been?”
“I thought Finch told you?” I say. “I went to Bristol.”
“Yeah, he told me….What gives?”
“What gives?” I say.
“I mean, why did you go home?” he asks, as I see Finch’s Mercedes appear in my rearview mirror. He drives past me, then up to the front gate, and makes a right turn toward home.
“To see my parents. And Julie,” I say.
“Okay. Well, why didn’t you call me?” he asks.
“I was just really busy….I needed to get away….Kirk, we have to talk.”
“All right,” he says. “How about dinner tonight? Just the two of us?”
“No. Now. I actually need you to come home right now. Finch and I are on our way. Walter just asked him to leave school for the day.”
“What? Why? What’s going on?” he says.
I finally have his full attention—and not some patronizing portion of it. “I’ll see you at home, Kirk. I’m not doing this over the phone.”
* * *
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