Page 139 of For Your Own Good
Yes, he’d taken care of that pesky FBI problem. With ease.
He looks down at Zach now, sitting in the front row. He’s wearing the same suit he wore to Fallon’s funeral, except Zach no longer looks like his father. He looks like a little boy.
Zach glances up, catching Teddy staring at him. Zach smiles. No, he smirks. The little bastard smirks at him.
Teddy shakes his head no. A slow movement that would go unnoticed to anyone who wasn’t paying attention.
Zach’s smirk disappears, replaced by shock. Then anger. Finally, he looks away and stares down at the ground.
That’s right, Zach.
Teddy wins. Again.
85
FROM HIS VANTAGEpoint, Frank can see everything. He sits at the end of the row of chairs onstage, giving him a full view of the audience and a side view of Teddy at the podium. Between them, the rock memorial is still covered.
When the second half of the program begins, Teddy talks about how the rock came into existence. Years of work had gone into it, so many ideas and designs considered, but Teddy makes it sound like it happened yesterday. Like he was the one who decided everything.
“What would be worthy?” Teddy says. “What kind of memorial would be fitting for those we have lost at Belmont? I wanted something that would serve as a reminder and as a symbol of the school, something that would honor those we have lost and celebrate those to come.”
Frank’s heart flutters. The longer Teddy talks, the stronger the feeling gets.
Nervousness, yes.
Remorse, no.
He’s known for a while about Teddy. How he lied to his wife, how he got a vasectomy behind her back and told her he was sterile. The closer Frank has gotten to the church, the more he has seen how morally bankrupt Teddy is.
Frank had tried.Godknows he tried, too. Frank went to Teddy’s house—twice—and asked that they pray. Almost implored him to do so.
Teddy refused.
“The Parents’ Collaborative has been instrumental to Belmont, and to this memorial,” Teddy says, smiling out at the crowd. “Please, let’s give them a round of applause to thank them for all their hard work.”
Frank claps along with everyone else. He doesn’t look at the audience, though. He looks at Teddy’s hands.
Those cuticles. He first noticed back when he was still teaching. Teddy’s hands weren’t always like that, not until he lied to his wife. That’s when Frank noticed the change. How ragged they looked, sometimes even bloody.
They’re still like that now. A symbol of the deeper rot inside him.
Guilt doesn’t go away. It stays with a person, burrowing itself deep into the soul, where it starts to grow. Almost like love, except it feels horrible instead of good.
Frank had been willing to let it go. To be patient, to wait until Teddy was finally ready to ask God for forgiveness. You can’t force that.
But then Missy called.
She’s been staying with her parents since Frank decided to become a minister. He understood her decision, because this has been a big change. A good change, the right change, but Missy had said she needed time to adjust. He understood that.
They check in a few times a week, usually when Frank calls to talk to his son. But a few days ago, she called him late at night. Despite what he’d told Teddy earlier, Missyhadspoken to Allison recently. A lie, yes, but it was for the greater good.
“I just got off the phone with Allison,” Missy said.
“How is she doing?” he asked.
“Not well,” she said. “She said she received a strange email from someone named Fallon Knight. She claimed to be a former student at Belmont and she accused Teddy of poisoning all those people at the school.”
“I don’t understand,” Frank said. “Fallon Knight is—”
