Talked with the president of Harvard about Harry’s admission.
Ella coughed back nausea. For sixteen years, seventeen next week, she alone had been responsible for the decision making that affected Harry’s life. She had been his advocate and mental health coach, his full body armor. The parent who’d educated teachers and set up code words that enabled Harry to leave the classroom when he had excess energy to burn; the parent who had battled the family’s health insurance provider over services, drugs, and appointments; the parent who had monitored Harry’s sleep, nutrition, stress, and meds. She alone had given their son enough praise for two parents. Felix had been the breadwinning workaholic. That’s what he did: he worked, while she parented to the point of collapse. And then Harry achieved perfect SAT scores, and Felix, no longer content to ride in the family backseat, snatched the parental car keys and reset the GPS for Harvard. Harvard, when she’d been pushing for the University of North Carolina so Harry could stay close to everything that mattered to him, everything that kept him safe. And now Felix had begun to confuse Harry with comments about how only losers stayed in state and attended public universities.
I’m an Oxford man, Harry. That means something.
Yes, if you allowed it to mean something.
The discomfort in her throat and chest eased, but the anger had returned. Good. She would nurse it, stay strong despite the exhaustion that crept into her thoughts, her bones, and her muscles. Had she ever been this weary?
Maybe she should flag down the flight attendant and order a Bloody Mary. A double.
What-ifs multiplied like a combat-ready squad of Star Trek Tribbles: cute, furry, and armed with bazookas. What if, when Harry went to college, she took Katherine’s advice and moved out? Every time Ella and her best friend opened a bottle of cabernet, Katherine accused Felix of being a control freak, which he was. But could Ella Fitzwilliam do that—break apart her family after she’d fought so hard to keep it balanced on the imaginary high wire of raising an exceptional child? If not, could she at least rip up every one of Felix’s to-do lists, those neat, color-coded notes of perfection that ruled their lives?
Her stomach flipped and flopped as the plane took another plunge, this one dislodging her Holly Aiken tote from under the seat in front. She nudged the bag back into place with her foot. Felix had taken six months to notice the bag, and once he’d discovered that Holly Aiken was a Raleigh designer and the bag was not a T. J. Maxx special, he’d launched into a diatribe on financial irresponsibility and the state of the college fund. She had explained, calmly, that the bag was a gift from her dad. Felix had never apologized.
“I’m going to hug my little girl so tight when I get home,” the stranger said. A dad who offered hugs and probably declared every piece of finger painting to be a van Gogh—as did most fathers. Not Felix, though. He had never found anything worthy of praise in Harry’s early artwork. One blemish, one flaw, and the whole was ruined.
Ella shook her head. A bit too hard, given the aura of dancing lights. She turned back to face her neighbor, and the world took a few seconds to catch up. “How old is she, your daughter?”
“Three.”