Page 106 of Bloom

I wish that were true, but I’m not sure. Celebrities have come back from worse.

It’s announced that afternoon that Edward will take a “leave of absence” to deal with “addiction issues”. My guess is that they will wait to see if he can recover from the bad publicity, and it’s entirely possible that he will. But all that matters is that I will too.

Chapter 57

By the afternoon, there are reporters in my yard again, and Kristy warns that they’re at the restaurant too. I refuse to be photographed in my Pink Pelican uniform – it would eradicate any good done to my image by the interviews.

“I think I’m going to have to quit,” I tell James, looking out into the yard. They’ve moved back to the sidewalk after James informed them they were on private property, but they look pretty damn comfortable there too.

“I’m not sure what Brian will do without you,” he says, serious for a moment before he starts laughing. He ducks my swinging fist, grabs it and pulls me toward him. “We’ve only got five days left. Maybe we should both quit.”

“Are you just trying to live out your trapped-in-a-log-cabin scenario?” I tease.

His mouth curves on one side. “Maybe not the ‘foraging for food’ part. But yeah, the rest of it sounds good.”

The story is still on TV. Every network except Edward’s seems to be discussing it around the clock. It’s a running gag on the late night shows. One comedian does an entire skit dressed as Edward pretending to hang outside a high school and ask girls to prom in his gravelly voice.

Edward might have stood a chance at recovering from the whole thing, if he’d followed the same advice that was given to me – if he’d laid low, waited for it to die down. But instead he insists he is coming into work, and has to be removed from the building by security. And then he stands in front and announces to all the camera crews outside that I’m a liar and that he never left those voicemails – not the best argument to make when the entire country recognizes your voice.

I hope he did a better job of saving than my parents did, because his days on television are over.

**

It seems safe to conclude that my gamble paid off. But there’s one last hurdle to deal with: my father. No news has been released about his correspondent’s position, and in this case, no news probably is not good news.

I brace myself, when he calls, for his anger and his threats. And possibly worse.

“Eleanor, I saw your interview and heard the voicemails,” he says. His voice is stern, emotionless. A newscaster voice.

“Yes?” I say quietly. I’m not going to apologize. His behavior this summer has shown me who he is. And if he refuses to pay for college now he’ll just be confirming it. I’ll be okay I’ll be okay I’ll be okay. I’m not entirely sure I believe it, but I repeat it just the same.

“You should have told me,” he says, and his voice loses its certainty. There’s a tiny unevenness to it. “How could you not have told me how bad it was?” And on that last word his voice cracks entirely. It’s a sound I’ve never heard come from him.

For some reason this unexpected shift, him acting like a parent for the first time in months, or even years, makes my eyes sting. “I figured you knew,” I whisper.

“How could I have known? People who knew him far better than I are shocked. How could I have known?”

“I didn’t think you cared,” I tell him, and my own voice begins to break. “I thought all you cared about was the effect on you.”

He pauses. “No matter what else is going on in my life,” he finally says, “you’re still my daughter and I love you.”

The network, as it turns out, has given him his job back. This, more than anything else, probably explains his sudden change of attitude and the fact that he’s finally invited me (and James) to his wedding. He’s already sold the wedding photos to a tabloid, so I have a feeling this is going to be a part of his image-rehabilitation campaign, which I really want nothing to do with. Then again, by November an all-expenses paid trip to Grand Cayman with my boyfriend might be pretty appealing.

It feels as if the world is finally beginning to shift the right way, that all the pieces are falling in place. Of course, many of those pieces – my parents, for instance, are far less stable than I once believed. But others – namely James – are so much more. They make up for anything I’ve lost.

Chapter 58

“You’re going to chicken out,” James tells Ginny, saying what all of us think but aren’t brave enough to speak aloud.

She snorts. “You know a lot less than you think you do. I’m going upstairs to call him right now.”

Ginny decided to break up with Alex a week ago, but insisted she couldn’t do it until he was back in the US.

“You just can’t do that to someone,” she said, as if he was a soldier deployed to Afghanistan instead of a Dartmouth sophomore hanging out in Barcelona on his parents’ dime. I think we all assumed it was Step One of a strategy tentatively titled “Don’t Ever Break Up with Alex”.

We wait, expecting her to come downstairs sheepish and excuse-laden. Instead she comes down enraged.

“He’s an asshole,” she hisses.