“What possible interest could a private family matter be to you?”
“The child.”
“Colin Eames.”
The gentleman nodded. “Yes. The child’s …”
Celeste offered, “Status.”
“Excellent. Yes. The child’s status is of great potential interest to my trust.”
“Meaning what, exactly?” The dark gaze swiveled back to the woman next to Colin. “Do you intend to level some sort of scurrilous charge against Sheriff Eames?”
The female attorney made a process of lining up her pad and file and pen. “We were addressing the matter of missing evidentiary elements that would explain why we don’t wish this to go to court.”
“Answer my question, Counselor.”
She lifted her gaze. “Why ever would we want to level charges against a highly decorated officer? What could possibly have placed such a notion in your head?”
“You were the one who mentioned family court.”
Throughout the exchange, his father’s gaze never wavered. Hard and tight and fastened in unblinking coldness. On his son. For the first time ever, Colin was able to lookbeyondthe gaze. There was the sense of being placed at a mental distance, safe behind the wall of these adults lined upbeside him. That was the one element his search for abductive solutions made clear. He was not alone in this. They were here because they sought to protect him.
As if in reward for having arrived at this deduction, Celeste reached over and placed a hand on his.
The attorney seated across from them said, “Sheriff Eames’s wife died exactly three years ago yesterday. I could think of no more tragic a reason for my client having consumed more than might be considered either sound or reasonable.”
Colin withdrew his hand. The moment seemed frozen in time. His father’s attorney noticed Colin’s reaction. “I suppose that element was not included in whatever the boy said.”
“I’m sorry. Were you suggesting the child has reason to accuse the father of something?”
The attorney chose to ignore her question. “My client recognizes his consumption of alcohol reaches unhealthy levels at times. As a result, he is voluntarily entering supervised counseling, which will permit him to maintain his vital position on the force.” He opened a file and passed documents across the table. “I don’t have enough copies, so you’ll have to share. I mention this to emphasize how vital, how absolutely crucial Sheriff Eames considers the care and support he lends to Colin’s upbringing. …”
The attorney droned on. But there was a muffled vagueness to the words now. As if Colin was trying to understand them through a filter of running water.
He was back in that time again, a period he carefully kept locked away. Only now among all these people, the memories stabbed him. The hospital, the endless days, the fear, the loneliness. Her death. All of it. Colin felt like his entire world was being shaken apart, then reknit into a different form. Everything that had come before, it needed to be reexaminedin the light of being utterly alone. What his father’s lawyer said was a lie. Nothing about the past three years suggested his father had ever cared. Or supported. Or loved.
He opened his mouth. He wanted to ask if there was something in him that made his father sad. If he reminded his father of what they both had lost. If that was the reason why the only emotion Colin had ever witnessed from his father was the unbridled rage during his drunkenness.
Celeste gripped his hand more tightly, silencing him as firmly as if she had clamped his mouth shut.
The silver-haired gentleman broke into Colin’s thoughts with, “I think perhaps it’s time we moved to the primary reason for this meeting.”
His father’s attorney scanned the faces seated across from him. “What is going on here?”
“This meeting has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of Sheriff Eames’s behavior on or off the force,” the young woman seated next to Colin declared. “Unless you wish to include it yourself.”
“In family court,” the gentleman added. He motioned down the table to where Celeste was seated. “Where Dr. Talbot serves as official adviser.”
“To all the family courts in eastern North Carolina,” the woman attorney added. “On matters related to child welfare.”
“Again, that is not why we asked you here today,” the gentleman said. He turned to Arnold. “Dr. Weinbrandt has spent the entire morning making a thorough evaluation of Colin Eames. Arnold?”
Arnold Weinbrandt said, “Colin Eames is, quite simply, a genius. I do not mean his IQ is above the threshold. I am speaking about something else entirely. Young Eames shows a potential that appears only a few times in every generation.”
For once, his father turned his attention away as thelawyer seated opposite them said, “Where are we going with this?”
The silver-haired clinician replied, “I am here representing the board of Outer Banks Academy for the Gifted. The lady next to me, Mrs. Fitzgerald, runs the academy’s department known as Sojourn House. We want to offer Colin Eames a place. Effective immediately.”