“I’m sleeping over at Grace’s. Remember?”
I sighed, because I vaguely recalled giving her permission, though I had forgotten to call Grace’s mother to verify the plans. I told myself that I had no reason to distrust Lyla. She could be rebellious on the margins, testing the boundaries the way teenagers do. But for the most part, she was a good kid. She was smart and studied hard, which was why she’d ended up at Windsor Academy after attending public school through the eighth grade. The transition had been difficult for us both. My challenge was around logistics (she could no longer take a bus to school) and economics (tuition was over thirty grand a year, though fortunately, more than eighty percent of that was covered by financial aid). Her stress had more to do with the intense academics and an even more intense social scene. In short, Lyla had never before been around so many rich kids, and it had been a bit of a struggle to keep pace in their polished, privileged world. But now, nearing the end of her sophomore year, she had made a few friends and seemed happy overall. Her closest friend was Grace, a little spark plug of a girl whose dad worked in the music industry. “Are her parents home?” I asked.
“Yeah. Well, her mom is, anyway. Her dad might be out of town.”
“And Grace has a curfew?” I asked, feeling sure she did. I’d met her mother only a few times, but she seemed to have a good head on her shoulders, though her decision to give her sixteen-year-old a brand-new Jeep was, in my book, suspect.
“Yes. And it’s eleven-thirty,” she said, looking smug.
“Eleven-thirty? For a sophomore?”
“Yes, Dad. That’s everyone’s curfew but mine. Or later.”
I didn’t believe this but gave in with a sigh, having long since learned to pick my battles. “Fine. But you have to be back at Grace’s by eleven-thirty sharp.”
“Thanks, Dad,” she said, blowing me a kiss on her way out the door, just the way she used to do when she was little.
I caught it in the air and pressed it to my cheek, the second part of our old routine. But she didn’t see me. She was too busy looking down at her phone.
* * *
—
FOR SOME REASON, it was that air kiss that I thought about as I returned home around one-thirty in the morning, poured a Miller Lite into the frosted mug I kept in the freezer, and heated up a plate of two-day-old chicken tetrazzini. It was the last communication I’d had with Lyla—not a single text or call since. That wasn’t all that unusual, especially on nights I worked late, but it still nagged at me, along with a weird feeling of unease. Nothing catastrophic or doomsday, just fear-of-her-having-sex kind of worry.
A few minutes later, my phone rang. It was Lyla. I felt simultaneous relief and worry as I answered and said, “Are you okay?”
There was a pause before I heard another girl’s voice in my ear. “Um, Mr. Volpe? This is Grace.”
“Grace? Where’s Lyla? Is she okay?” I asked, panicking as I suddenly pictured my daughter in the back of an ambulance.
“Yeah, yeah. She’s right here. With me. At my house.”
“Is she hurt?” I asked, unable to think of another reason Lyla wouldn’t be calling me herself.
“No. Um. Not like…that.”
“Like what then, Grace? Put Lyla on the phone. Now.”
“Um. I can’t do that, Mr. Volpe….She can’t really…talk….”
“Why can’t she talk?” I said, growing increasingly frantic as I paced around our small kitchen.
“Um, well,” Grace began. “She’s kind of out of it….”
I stopped pacing long enough to put my shoes back on. “What’s going on? Did she take something?”
“No. Lyla doesn’t do drugs, Mr. Volpe,” Grace said in a steady, firm tone that calmed me just a little.
“Is your mom there?”
“Um, no, Mr. Volpe. She’s out, at a benefit thing…but should be back soon.” She continued to babble an explanation of her mother’s social itinerary, but I cut her off.
“Dammit, Grace! Could you please tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Um, well…Lyla just drank too much….Well, actually, she didn’t drink that much. She only had a little bit of wine and, like, one drink…at this party we went to…after we studied….But she didn’t really eat dinner. I think that was the problem.”
“Is she…conscious?” I asked. My heart raced as I wondered if Grace should hang up with me and call 911.
“Oh, yeah. She’s not passed out….She’s just really out of it, and I’m a little worried, and just thought you should know. But honestly, she didn’t do any drugs or even drink that much…as far as I know….But we were apart for a little while. Not that long—”
“Okay. I’m on my way over,” I said, grabbing my keys as I tried to remember the exact location of Grace’s house. It was somewhere in Belle Meade, where most of the Windsor kids lived, but I’d dropped Lyla off there only a few times. “Text me your address. Okay, Grace?”
“Okay, Mr. Volpe. I will,” she said, then resumed her disjointed mix of confessing and downplaying.
Somewhere between the door and my car, I hung up on her and started to run.
* * *
—
AFTER RETRIEVING A semiconscious Lyla from Grace’s, Googling “alcohol poisoning,” and talking with Lyla’s on-call pediatrician, I concluded that my daughter wasn’t in any immediate danger. She was just run-of-the-mill-dumb-teenager drunk. So there was nothing for me to do but sit with her on the tile floor of her bathroom while she moaned and cried and repeatedly slurred, “Dad, I’m so, so sorry.” Occasionally she even referred to me as Daddy—my former name, which, sadly, she’d dropped a few years back.
Of course she was wearing the dress I’d told her not to wear and her eyes looked like a panda’s, ringed in black. I didn’t bother to lecture, knowing she likely wouldn’t remember anything anyway. I did ask her some questions, though, hoping that the booze would act as truth serum, and that I could get enough of the story to be able to effectively cross-examine her in the morning.
The conversation was fairly predictable, going something like this:
Did you do drugs? No.
Did you drink? Yes.
How much? Not that much.
Where were you? At a party.
Whose party? A boy named Beau.