“But you can understand why he feels he owes you, right?”
“I guess I just feel like, in a way, I’m the lucky one here, for being in the right place at the right time to help him, and to get to know him after. If he’s going to be in my life, I want that all to be because he wants to, not because he feels obligated.”
Oh, my God. The moment I pause, I desperately wish I could take everything I just said back. I’ve made myself sound like a woman who’s crushing on Brett Madden.
Even if I am, I don’t want anyone knowing about it. Especially not him.
A tiny smile of satisfaction flickers across Kate’s face, and then, thankfully, she’s whisking the conversation off in another direction. “Catherine, tell me something,” Kate leans forward, until she’s perched at the very end of my rickety wooden chair. If she’s uncomfortable, no one would ever know. “You wouldn’t allow the police to release your name after the accident. You kept your identity hidden for a week, even from the Madden family, who were desperate to meet the woman who saved Brett’s life. Why?”
I’m sensing this is the segue into talking about Scott Philips. “I didn’t want all the media attention that I knew it would bring.”
Her eyes narrow. “And did that have anything to do with what happened in 2010, with your high school teacher?”
I swallow, and remind myself that I’ve already been through this and I came out on the other side. And avoiding it won’t make it go away now. “Yes.”
She leans back in the chair. It creaks, and I panic momentarily, imagining it breaking apart and Kate Wethers falling flat on her ass in my living room. I wonder if they’d edit that part out. “For viewers who are unaware, seven years ago you claimed that you were involved in an intimate relationship with your art teacher, Scott Philips. You were seventeen and he was thirty. He was arrested on charges of corruption of a minor, but the charges were dropped not two weeks later when you recanted your statement. The district attorney claimed that there was not enough evidence to take this case to court, even though the police report showed evidence of text conversations between you two, as well as an eyewitness report of Scott Philips waiting in his car outside your home in the middle of the night.”
Kate pauses for a few seconds. I’m noticing that she does that when she’s about to ask a question where I have to talk a lot.
“Can you tell us a bit about this teacher in your own words?”
“Wow.” I can’t help the nervous giggle. “I haven’t talked about him in a really long time.” I feel a nudge against my leg. Brett, trying to get my attention.
“You okay?” he mouths, worry in his eyes.
No. I smile and nod.
“Just, anything. What was he like as a teacher, for starters?”
“He never felt like a teacher to me. Not like all the other ones. He was more like an older friend, someone I could talk about music and books and art with. Everyone called him Scott in class. He was attractive and flirty.”
Kate’s eyebrows raise. “Flirty?”
“He had this smirk that girls in school talked about. A lot of girls liked him.”
“And he liked you.”
I drop my gaze to my hands. What can I say that won’t get me into trouble? “I thought so.”
“You exchanged texts, did you not?” She adds, as if to reassure me, “The police had proof of them. One of Scott Philips telling you how beautiful you were.”
I nod. Scott claimed that the text telling me I was beautiful was innocent in intention but extremely poor judgment on his part. I seemed like a girl with low self-esteem. He was only trying to boost it.
“And then your mother followed you as you were sneaking out one night and witnessed you climbing into a car driven by him. She was the one who filed the report with the police.”
Another nod. Scott claimed that he was on his way home from a friend’s house and saw me walking down the street, so he pulled over. His friend corroborated it, though much later on it became common knowledge that that friend was in Philly that night. Ironically, at a Flyers game.
“How did you feel when she did that? Were you angry with her?”
Brett’s hand slides against my thigh ever so subtly, and I know he’s checking to see if I’m okay with this, if I want Simone to intervene.
But I remember what my mother told me about saying what I need to. “I was crushed. I didn’t see it the way she saw it. I only saw a man I loved and wanted to be with. I hated her for a very long time because of it.”
“You say you loved him. Did he ever make you feel like he might have reciprocated those feelings?” She seems to be choosing her words carefully.
This is where it gets dicey. What do I say? Yes, he told me that he loved me on more than one occasion and I’m tired of denying it, of allowing the lie that he and his family cultivated to go on. Of allowing Scott Philips to get away with it. But to admit that means opening doors I had no intention of ever opening again.
I choose my response just as carefully. “When I gave my statement to the police, I was terrified. I didn’t know I had any choice but to tell them everything. It was spring break, and a week later when school started, I was called into my principal’s office. He’s the one who told me that I was considered a victim and that, if I recanted, the charges against Scott would be dropped. I didn’t want Scott to go to jail, so I recanted my statement.”
Kate Wethers’s expression tells me that I was right, that I don’t need to answer her question directly to tell her everything she needs to know. “Your principal was Scott Philips’s father, was he not?”
“Yes.”
“Did he know you loved his son?”
“It seemed like it, but I can’t speak for him.”
“So, to summarize . . . Scott Philips was charged and released on bail, and his father—the principal—calls you, the seventeen-year-old victim, into his office and persuades you to recant your statement so the charges against his son can be dropped.”
I hesitate. I never told my mother about that meeting with Mr. Philips. She assumed someone had talked to me, convinced me to recant, but I never told her who. I didn’t want to give them more ammo to use against Scott. At the time, I was thankful for the out his father had given me. “Basically. Yes.”
“Why would you agree?”
“Because I loved Scott.”
She nods softly. “And did anyone else witness this meeting?”
“The secretary saw me go in, but she wasn’t actually in the room.”
Kate heaves a deep breath, the first time she’s done that this entire interview. “So, fast-forward a bit. The charges are dropped and Scott Philips returns to teaching in your school. Did you talk to him?”
I shake my head. “He never came back to teach my class.”
“And the local newspaper published an article on him not long after, basically painting you as this vixen who used her irresistible wiles to try and lure this thirty-year-old man into temptation with sexy clothes and relentless flirting. Of course they didn’t name you, but I would assume that everyone knew who you were?”