That Summer by Jennifer Weiner (free e reader txt) 📗

gray suit and Daisy in a black wool jersey dress, already sweating beneath her arms and at the small of her back. A radiator clanking in the corner filled the room with steamy air and the smell of wet wool. Daisy sighed and fanned her face with one of the admissions brochures arranged on the coffee table, until she saw Hal frowning. Carefully, she set the brochure back down.

The dean’s door swung open. “Mr. Shoemaker? Mrs. Shoemaker?” Hal and Daisy got to their feet and went into an expansive office that must have been remodeled, or added on. Unlike the warren of small, dark rooms, this room was airy, with high ceilings. A bay window looked out over the quad; a skylight admitted the grainy afternoon light.

Dr. Baptiste, a handsome man in late middle age, with glowing light-brown skin and dark hair that had gone a striking, snowy white at the temples, sat behind his fortress of a desk. He’d been one of a handful of Black students to attend Emlen back in the 1970s, when, Beatrice had told her parents, he’d sported an epic Afro. He’d gone on to Harvard, gotten a PhD in education, and been at Emlen since the mid-1990s. During that time, Emlen had gone co-ed and had gone from being viewed as one of the less desirable of the old New England prep schools—a place to deposit a wayward son who’d been booted from Exeter or who’d flunked out of Choate—to, once again, one of the top prep schools in the country, not quite on par with Andover or Exeter but certainly moving in the right direction. Dr. Baptiste had restored much of the school’s lost luster and rebuilt its endowment, which was currently in the hundred-million-dollar neighborhood. He’d overseen three capital campaigns; the construction of a new arts wing, with a state-of-the-art theater, and a natatorium; and the renovations of the campus cathedral. Daisy assumed that these accomplishments had overcome any reservations the more old-school (translation: racist) alums might have had about his role.

Beatrice was waiting for them, sitting in one of the wingback chairs, dressed in a black-and-green plaid kilt, a green sweater, and a primly high-necked white blouse with a pie-crust collar. In spite of the cold, her legs were bare, the skin chapped-looking and goose-pimpled. Her daughter’s jaw had the same stubborn set that Hal’s did, but she smiled, very slightly, when Daisy hugged her.

“Hi, Mom.”

“We missed you,” Daisy whispered. Beatrice smelled like unfamiliar hair conditioner and cold New Hampshire spring. Daisy struggled to look stern as she took a seat, but it was hard to keep from smiling. Her daughter! Even in her handful of months away, she’d changed; the bones of her face shifting, childhood’s extra padding melting away to reveal the adult she was already on her way to becoming.

“Beatrice,” Hal said curtly.

“Hi, Dad.” Beatrice’s voice was raspy and low.

“Shall we get started?” The dean wore a blue sports coat, a tie in the school colors with a gold tie tack, and, on his feet, dark-brown wingtips, in defiance of the snow. A gold watch gleamed on his wrist, along with gold cuff links, a wedding band, and a heavy gold Emlen class ring. “Would anyone like anything? Coffee? Tea?”

“No thank you,” said Hal, and Daisy, who could have used a drink of water, said, “I’m fine.” She adjusted herself, sitting up very straight, wondering what it was about this room, or the dean, or Emlen itself, that made her feel so small, like she was Alice in Wonderland, like every chair would leave her feet dangling inches from the floor and every adult was a foot taller than she was. Maybe it was the visits she’d made as a little girl, on Parents’ Weekends and to watch her brothers graduate. Maybe when you first experience a place as a six-year-old, you become six again, every time you return.

The dean sat behind his desk, settling his elbows on the leather blotter. “I appreciate your willingness to come on such short notice.”

“We’re taking this very seriously,” Hal said.

“I’m glad to hear that,” said the dean. “It’s a serious matter.” He looked at Beatrice. “You understand that you’ve violated several of Emlen’s Core Practices?” Daisy could hear the capital letters in “Core” and “Practices.”

“I know.” Beatrice raised her chin. “I also know that Colin broke a few of them, too.”

“We’re not discussing Mr. Mackenzie,” said the dean.

“Why not?” Beatrice demanded. “I mean, is anyone going to talk about what he did? Like, ever?”

“Of course we are,” the dean said smoothly. “But that’s a matter for Mr. Mackenzie and his advisors and his family. Right now, we’re here to talk about you.”

“ ‘An Emlen student is to conduct herself with honor and integrity,’ ” Beatrice said. “That’s all I was trying to do.”

The dean sighed. “You understand, though, that there’s such a thing as due process? That your expression of honor and integrity cannot impugn the character of another student?”

Beatrice shrugged.

“And that we can’t just punish students on one another’s say-so? That we have to take our time, gather the facts, do our due diligence? That we can’t resort to vigilantism and vandalism?”

Beatrice crossed her arms against her chest, chin jutting, eyes narrowed, her brows—dark and emphatic like Hal’s—drawn down. “Tricia followed the procedures. She told our RA, she told the dorm leader, she told her advisory leader, and she went to the counseling center. But nothing happened. Because nothing was ever going to happen. Because Colin matters more to you—to Emlen—than Tricia does.”

The dean pulled off his glasses and massaged the indentions on either side of his nose. “You understand that the deliberations of the Honor Council have to remain confidential?”

Beatrice shrugged.

“Beatrice, answer the dean,” Hal snapped. Spots of color had risen in the middle of each of his cheeks.

“I understand,” Beatrice said in a robotic monotone. Daisy’s mouth felt dry, and her heart was beating very fast.

“You understand that we’d extend the same courtesies to you, had you been the one