There was no way to know, really. Our lives might have gone differently. They might not have. But Julia seemed happy in her life with her Wall Street husband and two perfect little girls. So maybe her life took the path it was meant to take. But mine?
I thought I wanted to teach. I thought I wanted a quiet life. I thought being CEO of Ashland Furniture was the worst thing I could possibly do with my life. But in the last twelve years, I’d built it into something so much more than my father had ever dreamed of, let alone managed to achieve in his lifetime. Ashland-Philips Corporation was a billion dollar company where Ashland Furniture was barely staying out of the red year after year. I liked that I’d done that. I liked the reputation I’d built, the money I’d made, the success I’d achieved. What started out as a desperate attempt to keep my mother and sister housed and cared for had become a challenge that I welcomed every day without really realizing it. Without it these last few weeks, my days felt almost empty.
Except for JT.
I wanted my son. I wanted to take him back to Oregon with me, wanted to show him who I was and what I could provide for him in terms of his future. I wanted him to be more a part of my life than just what he was now: my student.
“I can’t keep doing this,” I said to my sister a little while later. “I can’t keep watching him throw his future away one exhausted day after another.”
“He’s a teenager, Harrison,” Libby said. “All teenagers behave that way.”
“But you should have seen the defiance in that woman’s eyes. She’s not going to do anything about his behavior. She’s more concerned about that bakery than she is JT.”
“She’s just trying to survive in the wake of tragedy. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?”
I stopped pacing my makeshift office in the spare bedroom of my rental, the ball of anger I’d been holding on to since Penelope walked out of my classroom suddenly dissipating in place of a sudden rush of incredulity.
“Are you seriously comparing her to me?”
“There are similarities. You had to give up your dreams when Daddy died to take care of me and mom. This Penelope did the same thing when her parents died.”
“Yeah, but—“
“Give her a break, Harry. It’s only been a little while. Maybe she needs more time to figure things out.”
“And maybe more time will just lead to JT going to jail. Or worse.”
“I know you’re frustrated. But marching in there and taking custody of that boy—her only surviving family—isn’t going to make things any easier on JT. And the last thing you want to do is traumatize your son before you even have a chance to tell him who you are.”
Why did she always have to be right?
“Fine,” I muttered. “But I’m telling you, if something happens to him, I won’t hesitate to call my lawyer and set things into motion.”
“It sounds to me like he’s just acting out. He’s like his father that way.”
There was laughter in her voice that I didn’t appreciate. But, then, I couldn’t deny the truth in her words. I wasn’t exactly the best behaved teenager, either. I was, after all, the guy who went to New York on a college summer trip and came home with two tattoos and a kid I didn’t know about. My father must have hit the roof when he realized what had happened. Worse than the time I came home drunk off my ass and threw up in the bushes in front of the house when I was sixteen.
But my behavior wasn’t the issue here.
We hung up a while later, after discussing business back at Ashland-Philips. Libby was a great CFO, but the big decisions still had to cross my desk. So, on top of grading high school essays, I spent most of my evenings making phone calls and reading over contracts. It made for a very long day, and morning often came much sooner than I would like. Exhaustion made my temper a little sharper than it needed to be. I was beginning to regret my words to Penelope Monroe when the principal of the school called and made me feel even worse.
“I understand that you’ve never worked in a small town like this. But things move a little slower around here. And we don’t usually make threats against the guardians of our students unless they give us no other choice.”
“I realize my words might have been a bit hasty.”
“More than a bit, Mr. James. You can’t threaten to call child protective services just because a child doesn’t turn in his homework as often as he should.”
I closed my eyes, picturing JT—hair unwashed, clothes wrinkled, creases in his cheeks from sleeping on his crossed arms in my class—and bit my lip to keep from saying that I believed there was more at stake here than just unfinished homework. I was learning my lesson, slowly, but I was learning it.
“I’ll apologize to Miss Monroe.”
And that’s exactly what I was attempting to do the next morning when I pulled up in front of the ranch style house where JT had lived since he was three years old. It looked quite innocent from the sidewalk, a neat brick exterior that looked just like the other houses on the block. But as I made my way to the front door, I could hear screaming coming from inside.