After sitting in her car crying for maybe ten minutes, Julia blew her nose, freshened her makeup in the mirror, and drove to the county employment office that had helped her find the job. Her intention was to file a complaint. By the time she arrived, though, and took a number, and waited, waited, waited, she thought what she’d better do was let it go and use this session to find other work. She didn’t have the time or the energy to fight some asshole mattress store manager just to, what, get the same job back? Probably.
The job counselor made a note that Julia had been let go for tardiness, then suggested she apply for a similar position that had opened the day before with Whitman HVAC. Julia dutifully drove across town to the company’s location, a low, square building in a remote industrial park. She saw a pair of brightly painted service vans with the not-yet-familiar blue-and-yellow logo, parked alongside a glossy red BMW sedan. If this was the boss’s car, she thought, she might as well turn around and go pick up Juniper. The last thing she needed was another thinks-he’s-a-hotshot man in authority trying to put the moves on her.
No way to know, though, without going in.
The car did belong to the boss. The boss, though, was nothing like she feared. He was, in fact, possibly the loveliest man she’d ever met.
Brad Whitman took the time to meet her personally and thank her for her interest in the job. At her callback for an interview, he accepted without further questioning her explanation of why she’d been tardy and fired. After she got the job, he took time to say hello each morning and to ask how her day was going. He praised her work ethic. He hung out with her during slow times and talked about his upbringing, asked her about hers. Sometimes he ordered in lunch for her and the other employees. He often inquired about Juniper. When Julia brought Juniper to the company picnic a few months later, he played tag with her and the other kids, he brought both Juniper and Julia ice cream sandwiches, he carried Juniper on his back for a relay race, and he asked—respectfully—if he might take Julia out for dinner the next weekend. Charmed by this and all that had preceded it, she decided to put aside her rule and say yes.
At dinner that next weekend, in a trendy downtown restaurant, he said, “I don’t really want to be your boss. I want to be your husband,” and presented her with a princess-cut solitaire diamond ring that must have set him back six or eight thousand dollars. It was crazily romantic. Julia’s mother, on the phone later that night, cautioned her to slow down, make him wait for her answer, see if he really was as good as he seemed. Julia was already wearing the ring.
* * *
At the curb now, in the Blakely Academy drop-off lane, Julia said, “Have a great day, girls. Juniper, good luck on the trig test. After school maybe we’ll squeeze in time for frozen yogurt before running and dance, okay?”
Lily, having unbuckled herself, reached her arms around Julia’s seat and hugged her from behind. “Great plan, Mommy!” she said. “I want sprinkles and a cherry, please.”
“Naturally.” Julia looked over at Juniper. “Sound good?”
“You know I don’t like to eat right before I run,” Juniper said, and got out of the car.
Julia told Lily, “Your sister is a grump.”
“That’s what Daddy said after he tried to cheer her up, too. I don’t want to be a teenager,” Lily said, slipping into her backpack’s straps. “Way too much drama. I’m going to skip it.”
“Good plan.”
Julia waited for Lily to climb out and then pulled away from the curb, thinking of Juniper—the tension in Juniper’s tone when speaking to her compared with the warmth she’d shown Lily. Something was just not right. Never mind giving her boundless time and space; this needed to be dealt with. She’d wait another week or two, see if things improved, and if they didn’t, it might be time to suggest that, although their church attendance had fallen off, they might see Reverend Matthews for counseling as a family, so that Juniper wouldn’t feel singled out.
As quickly as Julia decided this, though, she vacillated: Brad wouldn’t like her taking their business “outside.” He believed in self-discipline, in solving one’s own problems, so there was that. He also believed in keeping personal matters quiet. It was a privacy thing. He was a public figure of a kind, and while she trusted Reverend Matthews absolutely, Brad regarded him as being “a little too in love with his own opinions and with sharing them widely. Perfect for a preacher, sure,” he’d once said, “but don’t go telling the man every little thing about yourself or the girls or me.”
Maybe Juniper would come around on her own and Julia would be able to avoid a difficult conversation with Brad. He was so good to her, but he was also set in his thinking. He’d be reluctant to admit that Juniper could possibly have an actual problem, that everything wasn’t in perfect order, that he wasn’t in complete control of his domain.
And, well, Juniper was resilient, thought Julia, pulling into the tennis center’s parking lot. Probably she, Julia, was worrying too much. They’d been through a lot worse than this. Worse? For heaven’s sake, what was she thinking? This, their move, was a marvelous gift, not a problem! She needed to relax. Juniper was just being a normal teenager, and Julia was just being a normal overprotective mom. Everything was going to be fine.
6
Juniper waited near the Blakely Academy entrance doors for Lily to catch up, then walked with her inside.
“Knock knock,” Juniper said as they went toward the Lower School corridor.
“Who’s there?”
“Spell.”
“Spell who?”
“Easy: W-H-O,” Juniper said, and Lily burst out laughing in that whole-body, unabashed way she had. Juniper envied her. Everything was so straightforward for Lily, so clean and easy.
“You got me,” Lily said, grinning at Juniper. “I can hardly believe it.”
“I’ve been saving that one up. See you later, flower girl,” said Juniper, and watched while Lily continued on toward her classroom.
Back in the main corridor, a pair of teenaged girls, seniors, saw Juniper coming and stepped into her way.
“Well, if it isn’t Junipure Whitman,” said the first, a girl named Meghan who’d been deviling Juniper more or less the whole time she’d been a student at Blakely, and had ramped it up three years ago when word got around that Juniper had made a purity vow at church. “How’s your day so far, Princess Junipure?”
“Look at her expression,” said the other girl, Kathi, Meghan’s usual sidekick. “She’s totally like, Go fuck yourself.”
“But she’ll never actually say it because she’s so pure.”
“I wish I could be so pure,” said Kathi. “Wait, no, I don’t.”
“So dull,” said Meghan. “You should be at the Christian Academy with the other Jesus freaks.”
Kathi said, “Seriously, why aren’t you there?”
“Balance” was why she wasn’t there. When Julia married Brad and turned her life around, she wanted Juniper in private school away from the kinds of bad influences that had led to so much of her own trouble. New Hope had a small K–12 program, but Julia felt that secular education on weekdays and religious education on Sundays was the best formula for making sure Juniper’s influences were as well balanced as the meals she could now afford to feed her.