Surprise Me by Deena Goldstone

Author:Deena Goldstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-06-21T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

By the end of the academic year Daniel is in New Hampshire, the southwestern part, just over the Massachusetts state line, in a tiny town called Winnock, population 394. His stay in Iowa, at Grinnell College, lasted two semesters. He experienced it as a year of polite, well-mannered students overshadowed by Stefan’s constant, unrelieved anger, all of it directed toward him.

Stefan blamed Daniel for their flight from Colorado, convinced somehow that his father could have negotiated a better outcome than the one he did, that there was a way to keep Stefan out of jail and remain in Colorado Springs, close enough to Mitsuko Kita that he could have found a way to see her again.

During one of their endless arguments, Daniel finds the legal definition of stalking in one of the criminal law books he had Stefan bring home from Grinnell’s library for just that purpose—to scare some sense into his son: “ ‘Stalking involves severe intrusions on the victim’s personal privacy and autonomy, with an immediate and long-lasting impact on quality of life as well as risks to security and safety of the victim even in the absence of express threats of physical harm.’ ” Daniel reads that last part out again, but Stefan is pacing through the apartment—long, irate strides, head down, hands stuffed in his jeans pockets—and appears not to be listening.

“If someone ‘repeatedly follows, approaches, contacts, places under surveillance, or makes any form of communication with another person,’ then they’re stalking.” Daniel is shouting now. “And it’s a class five felony! A felony means jail time, Stefan! That’s what was waiting for you in Colorado if we had stayed!”

His son yells right back—“You’re crazy!”—and slams out of their apartment. Every fight is some variation on the same theme, until twelve months of unrelenting battle culminate in Stefan’s driving Daniel to Winnock to deposit his father with his sister, Alina.

In counterpoint to his son’s relentless demands—Stefan’s caretaking and anger two sides of the same filial imperative: that his father pay attention to him—Daniel’s daughter seems to need nothing from him. Or from the world around her, either.

When asked, Alina always maintains that she chose this remote town in New Hampshire, almost an hour northwest of Boston, for its beauty. But Daniel suspects that Winnock’s isolation is a key factor. Here Alina can go for weeks without seeing or speaking to anyone. And she is content, or at least she insists that she’s content. The arrival of her father is not welcome, that much is clear. She has no interest in him. She has no need to mend what was irrevocably broken back when she was five.

She takes him in because Stefan delivers him and she loves her brother and can see that he is at the end of his rope.

“Your turn,” is what Stefan says as he deposits Daniel on the gravel driveway of what looks like a small barn. “We’re going to kill each other if you don’t take him.” And Daniel didn’t dispute those words. In fact, he says little.

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