Exposure (26 page)

“ ‘Every, every minute,’ ” she whispered, starting on her shirt’s buttons.

“I need to warn you about something.” She stopped and looked up. He said, “Did Cameron tell you about the search warrant?” and paused as she nodded. “My lawyer says the DA is probably looking to see whether I’ve been messing with other girls. Amelia, they’re going to find
everything
. Your dad …” He shook his head. “I keep thinking, you’re seventeen, almost eighteen … you could come stay with me and, I don’t know, petition for emancipation or something.” He took her hands in his and kissed each palm, then folded his fingers over hers.

Amelia said, “I doubt your mom would go for that.”

“She might.”

“And then she’d lose her job after my dad gave Braddock unbelievable grief for getting involved.”

“He wouldn’t fire her; he likes her too much.”

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter,” Amelia said, “ ’cause I’m not going anywhere. This will all blow over. My dad’s going to have to face reality, and when he does, we’ll get everything back on track.”

“What if it doesn’t blow over? You want to stay here like this?” He gestured to themselves, to the fact of their meeting in her bathroom, to needing a coordinator and a lookout even for this. “It’s going to get worse when he hears what’s in my—”

“Maybe he’ll never find out.”

Anthony said, “And maybe pigs will all sprout angel wings and take to the skies.”

The image made her smile. “That would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it? But okay. Fine, then. I’ll just tell him. I’ll tell him before the police do, and I’ll keep working on him, and he’ll give in and accept it. He’s not evil. He thinks he has to protect me in some certain way, but when he sees that I’m still me even after having been defiled by you,” she said, smiling and tugging on his shirt’s hem, “he’ll realize it’s all going to be fine. He’ll put me back in school, and we’ll reschedule evaluations—did you call them already?”

“No dice,” he said, his expression darkening. “There’s no more openings. They’re booked solid, so—”

“Hey,” Cameron said, knocking softly on the bathroom door. “Someone’s coming upstairs.”

“Damn it.” Amelia shut her eyes and drew a deep breath. Why couldn’t they catch a break? She kissed Anthony quickly and said, “Stay here, okay? Stand in the corner of the shower; I’ll shut off the lights, they’ll never look.”

“I want to. You know I want to, but it’s too risky,” he said, opening the window wide. Then he pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair.

Cameron knocked again. “Amelia,” she hissed.

Anthony released her. “Throw the ladder down as soon as I’m off it, and I’ll take it with me.”

Amelia blinked back tears. “If I don’t see you, good luck in court.”

He kissed her hard, then carefully climbed onto the windowsill and out onto the ladder.
“Adieu,”
he said, smiling sadly. Amelia watched him descend the tiny ladder while, in the bedroom, Cameron was saying, “She has a stomachache. This stuff about Anthony upsets her, Mrs. Wilkes, I won’t lie.”

Anthony jumped from the ladder and waited while Amelia carefully unhooked it from the sill and let it fall.

“Amelia?” her mother said, knocking. “Are you all right in there?”

Amelia turned toward the door. “Would you bring the Pepto?” she called. “I’m not feeling so good.” She leaned out the window once more and saw Anthony winding up the ladder. He was barely visible in the moonless night. He waved to her, then disappeared into the woods.

“Okay, I’ll get it,” her mother said. “Is there anything else I can get you?”

Amelia leaned her forehead against the window frame and thought of Anthony’s arms wrapped around her just a minute before, and of his gentle hands, and of his soft, generous mouth. She imagined walking up Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue hand in hand with Anthony on a chilly night with the city’s lights glowing on their smiling faces. She envisioned her father in a dark gray tux, toasting her and Anthony at their wedding reception, saying how glad he was that he’d given them a chance to prove him wrong.

“Oh, Momma,” she said, “I’m not sure there’s a medicine that’ll do what I need.”

Anthony got into his car and sat there in the dark, cooling down, hating that his time with Amelia had been so brief, loving that he’d been able to see her at all, hoping that she hadn’t gotten caught. The sight and feel and taste of her were to him like blood to a starving vampire. He was restored, slightly. Enough to take the edge off. But she was his drug of choice, and if their communication didn’t become more frequent and more satisfying, he didn’t know what he’d do. Warring impulses
(Stage a protest sit-in on her front porch? Have her father and the DA knocked off?)
took his mind off the immediate questions of when and how he was going to be able to see her again—for about as long as it took him to put on his seat belt, start the car, and put it in gear.

When? How? He sat there, the engine idling, his heart rate slowing to a heavy thump of indignation. What right did the magistrate have to forbid him to be in touch with Amelia? What right did her parents have to isolate her? How could what they’d done together, the private souvenirs they’d made, be criminal? So many things in the world made no sense at all, but he and Amelia? He and Amelia were as right, as sensible, as the sun’s rising in the eastern sky and falling in the western. All these people who were acting like it was otherwise needed to lighten up, open up, and recognize that while maybe they hadn’t ever been as fortunate or had anything as genuine or as right, some people did. Love was real, and it wasn’t only for the over-twenty-one crowd, damn it.

Disseminating harmful materials to a minor. If these words, this charge, hadn’t fucked up his life, he’d laugh at them.

But okay, he thought, taking his foot off the brake. Moving on. Friday night. Can’t sit here waiting for the world to turn, as if by sunrise the laws would have changed and his life would be put back in order.

There were plenty of things he could do tonight—catch a movie with Rob and some of the other guys, drop in to a party at Brittany Mangum’s, go to Frankie’s Fun Park and waste a few dollars playing old-school video games the way he and his friends sometimes had in his pre-Amelia days. Nothing much appealed, though. Frankie’s was neither cool nor fun to do alone, and any social appearance would mean he’d spend all night fending off questions, some well meaning, some not.

Fine, then. He’d go back home. Read something. Write something. Whatever.

16

HEN THE DOORBELL RANG EARLY
S
ATURDAY MORNING
, Amelia barely heard it over the treadmill’s humming motor and the rhythmic thumping of her feet as they pounded the track. She’d logged six miles and was considering a seventh when the sound of Buttercup barking made her slow down, and then, when the barking continued, made her stop.

Using the towel she’d draped over a rail, she wiped her face, still listening, then grabbed her water bottle and headed upstairs from the basement fitness room. Buttercup continued to bark her frightened warning bark. Amelia started up the steps cautiously, calling, “Momma?” as she went. As she neared the top, she heard her mother saying, “I’m sorry, hang on,” and then the sound of the dog’s nails scrambling on the tile floor as her mother shut Buttercup away, presumably in the conservatory.

From the top of the steps, Amelia saw a woman in a Wake Forest Police uniform holding a canvas bag and standing to the right and slightly behind a tall man in a blue dress shirt and tan slacks. Both faced away from Amelia, watching her mother latch the conservatory’s wide French doors.

“I’m so sorry,” her mother was saying as she turned back toward them. “She’s not usually like this, I don’t know what’s got into her.” The words could have applied equally to Buttercup or to Amelia. The dog sat with her nose against one of the glass panels, snuffing and whining and pawing the floor at the door’s base.

“Yes, ma’am,” the man said. “It’s quite understandable.” His deference, genuine as it sounded, unnerved Amelia. What were these people doing here? She backed up a little, her hand gripping the polished rail, and waited.

The man handed her mother a piece of paper. “Here’s the warrant. We’ll be searching each room and whatever we collect will be bagged and inventoried. If you’d like to just have a seat, we’ll let you know when we’re finished.” Amelia went cold, gooseflesh rising on her arms and neck.

Her mother looked down at the warrant for a moment, then said, “I don’t—”

“I think you’ll see that everything is in order,” the man said reassuringly. “We won’t bother anything that isn’t specified.” As he spoke, the woman gazed around the front hall, taking in all the things that were so familiar to Amelia that she never noticed them anymore. The antique chest of drawers that stood outside the conservatory, a piece her mother said had come from an Irish castle and dated back to the eighteenth century; the wide Aubusson rug, in the thickest wool of the creamiest ivory, with a delicate ring of blush roses and greenery in its center, wisps of blush ribbon curling about the ring and stretching into the corners, all bordered by roses and greenery. It was, to Amelia, the Spring Wedding rug, on which she and Cameron had once played Make-believe Bride. The elaborate hickory grandfather clock, hand-carved by her grandfather and her uncle Alan as a wedding gift to her parents twenty years earlier, would seem impressive to new eyes. The conservatory, where Buttercup still whined, and where, in the morning’s accommodating sunshine, the gleaming piano threw light onto that good-little-girl portrait, was an impressive, unusual room.

“I don’t understand,” her mother said, cupping her elbow with one hand while the other went to her collarbone. “Why on earth are you here for her things? My daughter told the other officers everything there was to tell.”

“You’ll want to contact an attorney for all the details, ma’am. Our job is to collect the items, and then we’ll be out of your hair.”

Her mother’s mouth and brows tightened. “I’m not sure about this.… Won’t you come in and have a seat while I check with my husband? He’s just gone outside to the, to the garage.”

The pair glanced at each other, then the woman said, “Ms. Wilkes, you’re free to call him in if you like, but this is a
search warrant.
” She enunciated the two words carefully. “It’s authorized by the court. We’re going to get started now.” With this, the officer walked across the hall and out of Amelia’s sight. The man followed with a brief glance back at her mother, who remained standing near the door.

Amelia went to her then. “Momma, I heard the police come in.”

“Oh! Amelia. Yes. They have a search warrant.… Now, where did I leave my phone? I’ll call Daddy.”

Amelia followed her mother into the parlor, where her mother’s antique maple secretary sat among the plush upholstered furniture and velvet curtains. Although there was, in the mudroom, some sort of electronic panel called a Smart Box, which had the circuits for controlling the lights and home audio and security system, the real domestic control took place here at the maple desk.

“There it is,” her mother said, going to the desk.

“Wait.” Amelia rushed to put herself between her mother and the desk. “Don’t. Leave him out there in the stable.”

“What? Why?”

“He’ll m-make it worse. Please.”

“He’ll have a fit if this goes on and I don’t tell him.”

“Momma”—Amelia grabbed her mother’s hands—“for my sake, please, just let them take the things and go. There’s n-nothing he can do anyway.”

“What are they looking for, Amelia? What did that boy tell them?”

“I don’t know,” she said, letting go and edging away. “You won’t let me talk to him.”

Her mother grabbed her shoulder. “The two of you—what else have you done?”

If not for her mother’s accusatory tone, and the sound of footsteps in the hallway, and the long tradition of saying everything except what was revealing and meaningful, Amelia might have answered her mother’s question candidly. She might have expressed the dread that came from knowing what the investigation would soon uncover. If she’d felt she could truly talk to her mother, she might have suggested that she take cover because soon, and possibly without any further warning, the sky was going to fall.