Sweet Water(70)

“No!” I put my hand over my mouth.

“Guess where they kept their cash so their parents wouldn’t find it?”

“In the house,” I mutter.

Dad nods. “Campus security didn’t tell the boys that the maintenance man would be in to disinfect everything the police had missed once they reinstated the house for occupancy.”

“Shit.”

“Guess who found the large sums of money, which I did not confiscate, in the house? All seven of the envelopes were addressed to freshmen. Tush was the only sophomore pledge, but of course he didn’t receive an envelope. It didn’t take me long to piece together that they were the seven pledges mentioned in the paper.”

“Meat!” I scream. “He was blamed too. How do you know his parents weren’t the ones to pay them off?” I ask, but even as I say the words, I know I’m reaching for the moon.

“Meat was raised by a single mother, a flight attendant who was employed by US Airways before the hub pulled out of town. She didn’t make a hundred thousand a year, let alone enough to pay a hundred thousand per student,” Dad says.

“But Hanna said Meat had a good lawyer,” I try.

“Sure. One Mr. Ellsworth paid for.”

“That’s so sick.” Meat was in our wedding. He stood right next to Martin’s brother in the groomsmen lineup, partnered with Hanna, who’d already lost interest in him after she’d learned his nickname was just short for Demetrius. Martin and he had always been so close, even though they were two classes apart. This is probably why. They were bonded by blood.

I wipe my tears. “The nurse. The nurse . . .” I keep thinking back to her statement on Martin’s behalf and how it was so pivotal to the case.

“The nurse? You mean the nice lady who took another job six months after Tushar Patel died?”

I wobble a little. You’re kidding me. “Her too?”

“Sure. I bet she got a nice envelope. They probably asked her to stay on for a bit so no one would suspect anything.”

“Why would the university allow this to happen? The dean?”

“Because it didn’t look good for the university when it happened, and they wanted it to go away as quickly and cleanly as possible. And they wanted to keep one of their oldest and most notable Greek organizations on campus. A lot of the SAEs were legacy. They didn’t want to uproot the precious family tree.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Money does bad things to good people, Sarah.”

“Then where do you have yours hidden, Dad? Because not telling me about this was the worst thing you could have ever done to me!” I know he’s right, but I’m just so mad that he didn’t try hard enough to tell me. So angry at myself for being naive.

He loses his smile quickly, clears his throat. “Sarah, you hid the fact that you were dating Martin from me for almost a whole semester. By the time I’d gotten word, you were already lost to him.”

“You were punishing me for not telling you I was dating Martin? I can’t believe you’d do that!” I’m so upset, I’m dizzy. After Dad found out about Martin, things were never the same between us. It was because Dad rarely told me I couldn’t do something, but when he did, I listened. He’d made it clear he didn’t want me to date Martin, and I did it anyway.

“No, I wasn’t punishing you. Everything I’ve done has been for you.” His voice goes low. Emotional but angry.

“Then why didn’t you turn those boys in when you found that money?” I ask. I can’t fathom Dad letting this go.

“I did. I went to the dean, told him what I found in your husband’s room, and you know what he said?”

“What?” I’m so terrified for the answer, I’m shaking.

“He said I shouldn’t have been snooping in that frat house and he could fire me for it. I needed to forget what I saw or my job there was done.”

“No.” That’s why he didn’t speak up. It all makes sense now, why he couldn’t tell me.

“That’s so . . . that’s so . . .” Woozy, I sit down at the island with him. “You could’ve gotten another job! Why didn’t you at least tell me?”

My father looks so tired, and I wish he felt better so I could deliver these blows like I fully intend. “Because, my dear, the very next thing he said was that I had a daughter enrolled there, and it would be a pity to have her scholarship money yanked away for no good reason. If I’d told you, you would’ve blown the whistle, and your scholarship would’ve been damned. There was nothing I could do to stop what had already happened. It didn’t seem like a good decision for me to tell you.”

“How could you not tell me?” I’m still in shock.

“Sal tried to tell me these college relationships have a habit of falling apart on their own, but I never believed it.” It sounds like something Sal would say. Dad’s best friend is on his third wife. “He didn’t know my daughter. She doesn’t go into things with half a heart. Then I tried to tell you, if you remember, in the ornament shop, the day you were having second thoughts about the engagement.”

I close my eyes, and I do remember. That day, I couldn’t handle any more surprises, and I didn’t let him tell me, and then I never circled back to ask him what it was. But he should’ve circled back to me.