Chapter 8: Maya at the Door
She opened it on the third knock.
She had the look of someone who had slept badly and didn't care who knew it — hair pulled back, one of my old college sweatshirts, eyes that had done their crying and moved past it into something harder.
"Can I come in?" I said.
She stepped back from the door.
Her room was the same as it had always been.
Desk covered in notes and textbooks.
A corkboard above it pinned with acceptance letters — three universities, all of them real, all of them earned.
The top one, circled in red marker, was Hargrove University.
Her first choice.
Full four-year program.
Fifty-eight thousand dollars a year.
I sat on the edge of her desk chair.
She sat cross-legged on her bed.
"Paul thinks we can recover the money," I said.
"Not all of it, not immediately.
But through the fraud case and the civil claim, most of it."
"Most of it," she said.
"It may take time."
"My first payment is due in August."
"I know.
I'll cover it.
Whatever gap exists between now and the recovery, I will cover it personally.
You will not lose your place at Hargrove."
She looked at the corkboard.
"You can't promise that."
"I'm promising it anyway."
She was quiet for a moment.
Then: "Is she going to Paul's?"
"This afternoon."
"Good." She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve.
"I don't hate her."
"I know."
"I'm just—" She stopped.
"I worked for three years for those grades.
I turned down two other schools because Hargrove was the right one.
I did everything right and then I found out the money was just—" She opened her hand.
"Gone.
Like it didn't matter."
"It matters."
"She didn't think about me when she did it."
I didn't argue with that.
It was true.
"She thought she was fixing something," I said.
"She was wrong about almost everything — about the man, about the risk, about keeping it secret.
But she wasn't trying to hurt you."
"I know that too." Maya looked at me.
"That's almost what makes it worse.
She just didn't think about me at all."
I had no answer for that either.
She unfolded herself from the bed and walked to the corkboard.
She unpinned the Hargrove letter and held it for a moment, then pinned it back.
"I want to be there when you confront him," she said.
"That's not going to happen."
"Dad—"
"You're seventeen.
And it's not going to be that kind of confrontation.
It's going to be attorneys and statements and a process that takes months." I stood up.
"But when it's over — when he faces what he's done — I'll tell you everything."
She considered that.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay." She almost smiled.
Not quite.
"Don't let him get away with it."
"I won't," I said.
I was almost to the door when she said, "Dad."
I turned.
"Tell Mom—" She stopped.
Started again.
"Tell her I'll talk to her.
Just not yet."
May you like
"I will," I said.
I pulled the door closed gently behind me.
