The Light of Hidden Flowers (29 page)

PART THREE

DAUGHTER

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

The next week, sitting at my desk at Fletcher Financial, I slipped into the cozy sweater of nostalgia, remembering Dad and five-year-old me and our Saturday morning routine. How the two of us climbed the steps up to the office, me holding my McDonald’s breakfast in one hand and the Holly Hobbie doll that Mom had given me in the other. There, Dad would take my doll from me and hand me the big copper key, and his titanic hand would guide my miniature one as I inserted it and strained to turn it. Then the sense of delight when the lock clicked and the door swung wide—an
Alice in Wonderland
entry into the enchanted space—draping me with the familiar scents of worn leather, musty files, and mahogany. Dad’s office, his space—the coveted, comfortable, cavernous clubhouse he loved so much. A space I learned to love because I knew it was the portal to bring me close to Dad.

The phone rang, knocking me from my daydream.

“Ms. Fletcher, please,” the formal voice said.

“Speaking.”

“Ms. Fletcher, this is Marcus Arnold, Director of Giving at the One by One Foundation.”

My heart thundered. Mrs. Longworth’s charity. I flipped open my binder to the tab marked “One by One.” By now I knew much about this sizable philanthropic organization that issued so many grants to NGOs and individuals. They had been operational since the early ’70s with the mission of helping the socioeconomically marginalized children of the world become self-reliant.

“Yes?”

“We are in receipt of your grant application and are interested in learning more about your project in India.”

“Wonderful,” I said.

“We know this is short notice, but the board would like you and your partner, Reina Shephard, to present next Tuesday, at our monthly appropriations meeting. Would you be willing to come to Chicago to meet with us?”

Next Tuesday
. Suddenly, I was tasting metal. I wasn’t exactly sure of Reina’s whereabouts and hated to schedule her without first connecting, but I had to say yes. Reina would make it work, I reasoned. She’d get here.

“Yes, definitely!”

Mr. Arnold spent the next five minutes apprising me of the protocol. How we would be called in when it was our turn to present, how there would be a projector for our use, should we need to plug in a laptop. He explained that the board would expect a bound copy of our proposal with all of the financials clearly delineated. I jotted down all of this information.

I sucked in a few deep breaths, looked at my notes.
I could do this.
I had six days to prepare for this meeting. Already I could picture my PowerPoint presentation, my neat graphs and charts, the net worth statements with pie charts. This was right up my alley. Preparation was my forte. And stunningly magnetic Reina would do the speaking. We could pull this off.

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

“I’ll e-mail you the specifics,” he said. “See you in a week.”

When I hung up, I walked to the mirror on my wall and looked into my eyes. “You can do this!” I would do this. I might die in the process, but there was no doubt I had started something that needed to be finished.

I called Reina and hit FaceTime, something I never did. When she answered and her cheerful face greeted me, I said, “Guess what? Guess who wants to meet with us?”

Reina screamed, hooted, and hollered for the next five minutes. “You have got to be kidding me!” she kept saying. “Oh, this is good; this is
so
good.”

When I told Reina that the presentation was scheduled for next Tuesday, that she would need to meet me in Chicago, her face fell. “Miss, hate to tell you, but I’ll be in Spain.”

A marble lodged in my throat. “Are you serious?”

“I can’t get out of it at this late notice,” she said. “UNICEF conference, and I’m leading a session.”

“I’ll reschedule,” I scrambled. “Let me call him back, and see when the next appropriations meeting is—”

“Missy, no. You’ll do it yourself, and you’ll be fabulous,” Reina said. “This is your thing—the numbers, the details. You’ll nail this baby.”

“Reina, I can’t,” I said. “I can’t make the presentation.”

“You can, and you will.” Not a centimeter of wiggle room.

“You sound like my father.”

“Missy, I know how much you loved your father—but enough with it! You’re not him, and he’s not here, and you’re entirely perfect just as you are. You will present how
you
present, not how he presented. You will do this, and you’ll be great.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, knocking my head against the wall.

When I hung up with Reina, I called Joe and, in his usual optimism, he said, “I knew you’d do it. I knew you’d take the world by storm. How can I help?”

“Will you go with me?”

The next five days I kept my head down and plodded through the numbers. Reina did her part, e-mailing me ten times a day. She knew the region so well, the conditions of the children from her work with UNICEF. In our opening paragraphs, she wrote of the quarter of a million children in New Delhi who live in slums or on the streets. These children did not go to school. The literacy rate was only 33 percent. For our objective, Reina wrote: “To identify known orphans, to educate them while tending to their basic needs of food, shelter, and protection from victimization.”

Under the section headed “How we will proceed,” she explained how we would partner with an existing NGO whose mandate was to work on issues affecting the urban and rural poor, with a specialized focus on children. Reina went on to include non-orphan girls, as well.

Reina spoke of the fathers: how it was they who were called upon to care for their daughters, to ensure their fair treatment, their rights; how their own poverty had most likely led them to keep the daughters at home, rather than send them to school. Part of our outreach would be to the fathers, to educate them about their future as well as their daughters’, should the girls remain unschooled.

For my part, I created a financial report detailing the costs of the school. Tuition, books, uniforms, extracurricular activities. Reports, audits, office needs. Electricity, construction, janitorial. Vehicle use, faculty salaries.

For our scope, I wrote that our school would open to forty girls, the twenty-two orphans currently living in Rohtak, plus eighteen others. Class sizes would be segregated by age: the youngest girls to age seven, the girls aged eight to twelve, and the girls beyond the age of twelve. We would hire three teachers, each responsible for her educational curriculum as well as a hefty program of singing, dancing, and making art. So many of these girls had been robbed of a joyful childhood. We were determined to restore a portion of this. They would learn while they played.

The days passed and the adrenaline pulsing through me kept me focused until finally only two days remained before I would meet with the One by One Foundation and convince them to give us a grant.

Joe called. “You’re ready! You’ll be great!”

Jenny called. “I was cleaning out one of your dad’s drawers,” she said. “I came across a handwritten quote. ‘In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take.’ Pretty appropriate, huh?”

Then Monday came and kicked through my door with its jackboot. No amount of Dad’s affirmations could free me from my doom.

Joe was scheduled to drive down from Jersey tomorrow, but I needed him tonight. I stared in the mirror and attempted to steady myself against the dotted mirages that flashed before me.
Who the hell did I think I was?
Missy Fletcher, who had one skill—managing money—was going to miraculously morph into an oratorical genius? I was going to stride forth in my power suit with my PowerPoint and PowerBar and deliver to this committee a presentation that would leave them shaking their heads, wiping their eyes, and looking for their checkbook?
That was your father, you idiot.

I was in mid-heave when the phone rang.

I sobered up immediately. I couldn’t say why. In a matter of seconds, my sticky skin dried, my heaves subsided, and my mind arranged itself back to normalcy.

Something was wrong.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

I had heard people speak of premonitions, of a twin feeling a twinge when her sibling was hurt, a mother stopping dead in her tracks when she sensed her little one was in danger. The ring of the phone was like that. Spooky. Eerie. It was Joe.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“We’re just getting home from the ER.”

“What?” I shrieked. “The ER?”

Joe sighed, let out a moan of frustration.

My heart punched at the walls of my chest. I needed to know, but didn’t want to know. If I knew, it would be real. I forced my mind to think of something common: Jake sprained his wrist. Olivia had a raging ear infection. But in my heart of hearts, I knew it was Katherine. At-risk Katherine. The girl who wanted to be invisible.

“What happened?” I asked, and then held my breath and waited for the earth to shatter.

“Kate,” he said, and this one word alone produced bile in my throat because Katherine hurting herself had been on my mind for some time now. “She was in the bathroom tonight. After a few minutes, I knocked on the door to check on her. She wouldn’t open up.”

“Why?”

“‘Open up!’ I yelled through the door, pounding on it with my fist.”

“Joe,” I begged. “Please tell me she’s okay.”

“She wouldn’t open it, so I busted it down. She was in the corner like a cat rolled into a ball, crying quietly. When I peeled her off the floor, she shielded her arm. I pried it into the light. There were burn marks inside her arm.”

“Joe,” I cried.

“She had lit matches—many matches—and pressed them into her arm.”

“Joe,” I wept, pressing my forearm into my stomach. “What did she say about it?”

“She said the pain, the physical pain, hurt less than how she was hurting inside. She just wanted a distraction.” Joe’s voice broke, and he started to cry. I had heard him cry only once. When his grandfather passed away, a good seventeen years ago.

“She’s asleep now,” he said, a gauzy calm lacing his midnight voice, the sound of a guy who had spent the last three hours in a hospital room.

“Joe,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

“My kid’s in pain, Missy,” Joe said, and then lost it—waterfall lost it. He sobbed, and all I could do was cry on my end of the line.

After a while, he pulled it together like guys do, kind of yelled and punched at the bed, I imagined. “Enough!” he said to himself. “Listen, Miss, I can’t tell you how horrible I feel about leaving you in the lurch, but I don’t think there’s any way I can go with you tomorrow.”

“Oh, please!” I said. “That’s so unimportant! The only thing that matters is Katherine. The
only
thing that matters. I’ll just cancel the meeting, try to reschedule it. Can I come up to Jersey and see you guys?”

“Missy,” Joe said. “Kate’s not the only girl that matters, and you know it. You’re fighting for an entire school of them. Don’t blow off your meeting. Go to Chicago. Make your presentation. And then come see us, okay? Promise?”

When I hung up, I could barely breathe. My heart raced, and I pounded my hands on the kitchen table. I wiped my eyes. “Help her!” I pleaded, because Katherine Santelli was the good in this world, and yet, this world was going to kill her. There had to be something I could do!

And as for my sorry state of affairs—no Reina, no Joe, no Dad. Just me.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

The next morning I flew to Chicago and took a cab to the towering glass headquarters of the One by One Foundation, right on the Magnificent Mile. Before I knew it, I was waiting outside the conference room for my name to be called. Before I knew it, I was asked inside. Before I knew it, I was standing at the head of a giant conference table, surrounded by twenty board members. Before I knew it, I was talking about the financials of the school as easily as I had once talked to Dad or Paul about the technical aspects of a client’s account. I knew my stuff, was able to answer any questions, and though the sense was otherworldly—surreal—I was as calm as could be.

And when I was finished, I texted Joe to check in on Katherine. She was at home, in bed. Joe’s mother was by her side. A marathon game of Scrabble was under way. Enough homemade cookies to last a few weeks.

Can I come to Newark?
I asked carefully.
I have some thoughts on Katherine, and I was hoping to meet with you and Lucy.

Both of us?
he texted back.

Yeah,
I typed, holding my breath.
Can you arrange it? Text me the details?

A seed—from where, who knows?—had been planted, and all of a sudden I had a plan, a crazy, outside-of-the-box plan. A Frank Fletcher plan. A Reina Shephard plan. A visionary plan. I would need both Joe and Lucy on board.

Trust me?
I texted.
And I love you. And say hi to Katherine.

Once in Newark, I took a cab to the Rise N Shine coffee shop. Joe had texted me that he and Lucy would meet me there. From the window I could see them sitting at a table. Joe was rubbing at his face, overwrought, mired in pain. Joe, my indomitable hero, my unstoppable champion, wore gray stubble on his face and a crushing sadness in his eyes. When he saw me, he brightened and waved. Lucy smiled tightly. I approached their table and said hello. I removed my jacket and went to the counter for a cup of coffee. Back at the table, we volleyed perfunctory pleasantries about my flight, the weather, the aroma of the French roast.

The strange thing was, I wasn’t scared. I was confident. I was calm. I finally got it, finally understood: So long as I was pursuing my passion, I would always find courage. I would be restored. My history of silence didn’t have to be my future.

When we settled in, Joe provided the preamble to our conversation. He looked at Lucy, then at me. “I think Missy wanted you to join us, Lucy, because she had some similar experiences when she was in middle school that Kate is having.” Joe looked toward me. “Is that right, Missy?”

I nodded at Joe, because he was right in a thousand ways. “That’s true,” I said. “But that’s not why I wanted to meet.”

This surprised Joe. “Oh,” he said.

I looked up at Lucy, at Joe. “I have an idea for Katherine, and before I say it, I want you
both
to know that it is not at all hinged on the relationship that Joe and I have started up.” I met Lucy’s eyes and held them. “I like Katherine a lot,” I said. “I think she is a gem of a human being with a heart of gold. She’s smart and lovely and a true joy to be around.” My throat filled with tears, and it took all of my power to not let them flood the gates. “Anyway, I want to be clear,” I went on. “I’m here because I care about Katherine, and for no other reason.”

Lucy clearly had no idea what I was talking about. Why should she? I was a stranger to her, and all but a stranger to her daughter. Who knew what I was about to come out with? But to her credit, she seemed sincere when she said, “I appreciate that, Missy. And I agree with all of it. Katherine’s a wonderful girl”—she glanced at Joe, then turned back to me—“and we’re worried sick about her.”

I pressed on. “None of us knows what tomorrow will bring. I don’t for a second believe that your marriage wasn’t wonderful for a lot of years.” They were a beautiful couple, I saw that, even now. “And Joe, what you saw at war . . .” I stopped, took a sip of water. They were staring at me, and why wouldn’t they be? What I came to say was sounding like nonsense.

I braced my hands on my legs. “I’m not making sense,” I said.

I took another gulp of water. “Here goes,” I said. “I’d like to bring Katherine with me to India.”

“What?” Lucy gasped.

“Missy.” Joe echoed his wife’s shocked reaction.

I went on. “Hear me out. Katherine has already tested two years beyond her grade,” I said. “Joe, you told me that. And here we are, already in December. Would it really hurt to pull her from school for the rest of the year? And in January, when I go to India to get the school ready to open, Katherine could come with me. I could homeschool her while we’re there.”

“She’s only fourteen,” Lucy objected. “She’s my daughter. What you’re suggesting—”

“I know it sounds crazy,” I said. “But Katherine is mature beyond her years, and it’s obvious she honestly desires to help others with this kind of work.”

Lucy twisted at her napkin. “How long will you be gone?”

“About a month and a half—six weeks, give or take.” I looked at Lucy expectantly.
Was she really considering this?

“She
is
only fourteen,” Joe said.

“I’ll care for her. I promise you both,” I said. “She will be well taken care of. I adore her, and I would love the chance to spend some time with her. And don’t get me wrong: she’ll be working. There is so much she could help us with: hiring teachers, working on their English, setting up the classrooms, choosing books and materials, and just being a positive role model for the girls who’ll come to the school.”

Lucy covered her face.

“She would feel worthy,” Joe said, as if to himself. “She would have a purpose.”

“That’s exactly why I think it would be good for her,” I said. “Working there will be a great healing experience for her. I really believe it. Gandhi said it: ‘The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.’”

Lucy looked up and wiped her eyes. “I don’t even know you, Missy.”

“We could get to know each other,” I said.

She trained her eyes on Joe. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s a radical idea—pulling her out of school, sending her to India,” Joe said, then fell back against his chair and shook his head, smiling. “But I think it might be the perfect plan. I can see it feeding her in a way nothing else could.”

“Are we really considering this?” Lucy asked, then laughed. “Is this for real?”

They were on board; I knew it. They wanted to pull Katherine from her school as badly as I did. “The next step would be to talk to Katherine, to see if she has any interest in this.”

There was no turning back from my adulthood now. I only hoped the yoke on my shoulders didn’t snap.