Avillage’s reputation to this point had never sustained a single blemish, and the company was viewed as a resounding success, even by most child-welfare advocates. Bradford kept his eyes trained on the end of the message, continuously shaking his head, contemplating how in the world he was going to deal with this.
When he finally looked up, still with no plan of attack, he started at the sight of his boss standing in his doorway. Prescott wore a disappointed but determined fatherly expression that read, “this is going to hurt me as much as it hurts it you.”
Bradford opened his mouth to speak first, but he couldn’t find the words.
“I’m sorry, Aaron. We’ve had a good run,” Prescott said matter-of-factly. “You know I couldn’t have built this company to where it is now without you. I will personally pay whatever legal fees you might run into.”
“What?” Bradford gasped. “That’s it? I didn’t write that email. James, come on. You know me.”
“I know you didn’t write it. But I need you to tell me that none of it’s true.”
Bradford huffed and puffed like a philanderer who’d been caught in the act. “James, this is my life! I’ve got nothing else.”
But he never said it was untrue.
“Put yourself in my position, Aaron. You know there’s only one way out here. No one’s bigger than the company.” Although his voice was calm, there was an inevitability in his tone that sent Bradford into a panic.
“James, look, I don’t know exactly what you’re going through, but you’re not gonna be around forever! There’s nobody else qualified to run this place!”
“Aaron,” Prescott sighed empathetically, knowing the day would come when he’d have to tell Bradford what he was about to say. “It was never going to be you. Avillage is my legacy. It was never going to leave my family.”
Was that a joke? Prescott’s kids had never set foot in the building — not even for social visits. Shocked, humiliated, devastated, Bradford’s mix of emotion, for the first time in Prescott’s presence, bubbled to the surface as pure rage.
“You’ve lost it!” he shouted. “Almost thirty years of service, and you throw me out like a piece of trash at the first whisper of misconduct? The cancer’s gone to your brain! I’ll have you declared incompetent!”
“I’m sorry, Aaron,” Prescott replied steadfastly, with no change in his sympathetic expression. “This is a private company. You know there’s no board to appeal to. My decision’s final.”
Bradford slammed his fists down on his desk and started to rise from his chair, but just as he did, his spine arched and his arms and legs stiffened like a frozen corpse’s. His eyes remained open as his teeth clenched down involuntarily on his tongue, sending a rose-colored froth out of the corner of his mouth.
Prescott shouted for Bradford’s secretary to call 911. Thirty seconds of forceful, rhythmic full-body jerks were followed by quiet flaccidity. Bradford’s office chair slowly rolled out from behind him as his body sunk to the ground in a heap, his eyes still eerily open, his breath sounds sonorous, and his pants soiled.
Dillon couldn’t have scripted a more undignified departure from Avillage.
CHAPTER 14
“I don’t think I can do it,” Annamaria whimpered into her phone from the backseat of an idling cab.
“Yes you can,” Ryan shot back emphatically. “Trust me. I’ve seen the fire inside you. Let it out. You have nothing to fear. The fear, the shame, the regret — they all belong with him. Give them to him!”
She nodded her head and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “I know,” she said, still sniffling. “I know.” She took one last glance at the sign just outside her window that read, “Rainbow City 10 km,” firmed up her expression and then gave her driver the go-ahead.
Nerves weren’t an issue for Ryan, who calmly slid his phone back into his front pocket and leaned forward on the edge of his seat, resting his elbows on his knees and interlocking his fingers in front of him, staring determinedly out the plate-glass window of terminal A5 inside Boston’s Logan International Airport. For him the hardest part had been waiting.
Traveling outside the United States without Prescott’s permission had never been an option, until he’d turned eighteen six days prior. But it just so happened that the final spring break of his life conveniently fell within a week of his milestone birthday.
While he’d researched the trip obsessively, he hadn’t whispered a word of his plans to anyone — not his parents; not even Annamaria — until the week before, when he’d legally become an adult.
The Cayman Islands were a perfectly reasonable spring break destination for an eighteen-year-old with more money than he knew what to do with, and it actually would be nice to escape Boston’s subarctic version of spring. But this trip would be all business. Jared Ralston’s reckoning was long overdue.
A rush of emotion flooded Annamaria’s heart and mind, as she scanned the grounds of the orphanage. Everything was familiar. But different. The old dirt parking lot had been paved over with smooth asphalt; the uneven, muddy soccer field was now carpeted with lush green grass with real goals and bright chalk boundary lines; and the cage-like chain-link fence had been replaced by a white-washed wooden fence, accented with the children’s brightly colored handprints. She couldn’t see the children as she approached, but she could hear their telltale squeals and laughter.
After slowly making her way to the orphanage door, she paused for a full minute, her heart in her stomach, waiting for the surge of emotion that would compel her to throw the door open and storm inside. But it never came. And gradually, thoughts that she really might not be able to do this began to creep in.
She considered calling Ryan again, but he was probably in the air by now. And her cell phone wasn’t picking up any signal anyway.
She then thought about retreating to the parking lot, where she could see the cab driver napping in the front seat — all the windows down, his head leaned back against the headrest, mouth wide open and nose twitching perturbedly at a swarm of gnats.
But she was suddenly struck with a trivial curiosity. The sidewalk she was standing on used to end at the door. She remembered that distinctly. Now it continued on to the back of the orphanage.
Convincing herself that solving this puzzle was a valid alternative to barging through the front door, she decided to follow the path and see where it led. Surely she’d find the courage to burst through the door afterward.
As she tiptoed quietly toward the back corner of the building, ducking as she passed by the headmaster’s window, she was startled by a man’s voice behind her.
“May I help you?” the familiar voice asked in Spanish.
She froze, still a few paces short of the back of the building, every fiber in her body tensing.
“Ma’am,” the headmaster said a little louder. “May I help you?”
Annamaria straightened up her posture, threw her shoulders back with a deep breath in, and slowly turned to reveal her identity, staring directly in the headmaster’s eyes.
Carlos Villanueva gawked at her as if she’d just returned from the dead. “Annamaria!” he gasped, falling to his knees under the weight of her glare.
“How could you!” she screamed, her trepidation replaced by rage.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he blubbered, making no attempt at denial, shamefully covering his face with his hands.
“I was just a little girl! I trusted you! And now I can’t trust anyone!”