The Whole Golden World Read online

  Dedication

  To my parents, my teachers,

  my mentors throughout my teen years:

  Thank you for taking me seriously,

  and also for knowing when not to

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  PART 1

  Chapter 1 - June 6, 2012

  Chapter 2 - September 6, 2011

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  PART 2

  Chapter 18 - June 6, 2012

  Chapter 19 - December 19, 2011

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33 - June 6, 2012

  Chapter 34 - March 12, 2012

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46 - June 6, 2012

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  P. S.: Insights, Interviews & More . . .

  About the author

  About the book

  Read on

  Praise for the Work of Kristina Riggle

  By Kristina Riggle

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you so much to my ally and agent, Kristin Nelson, and her team, for all the support for all these years and books together. Thank you to Lucia Macro, my insightful and wonderful editor, for understanding this book and helping me make it sing. Thanks to the many others at HarperCollins who helped bring this book to the world, including but not limited to Nicole Fischer, Jennifer Hart, Pamela Jaffee, and Mumtaz Mustafa, for that gorgeous cover.

  For this book, I had to learn all about high school these days, an Elgar concerto, and the ins-and-outs of a particular type of court case. Thank you to all of my research sources for answering my questions with patience, thoughtfulness, and not a hint of embarrassment despite the occasionally awkward queries. I owe a debt of gratitude to the following (in no particular order): Larry Glazer, Carol Hendershot, Bill Castanier, Rachel Moulton, Katrina Kittle, Dan VanPernis, Kate Filoni, Scott Crooks, Marty the cellist, and as ever, my critique partner, Elizabeth Graham.

  Any errors are mine, or better yet, let’s assume it was poetic license.

  Thank you to my family, for taking my job seriously, even though I can work in my pajamas. Love you.

  PART 1

  1

  JUNE 6, 2012

  Dinah felt the turning away like the snap of a rubber band that’s been pulled too far, finally lashing back, leaving a welt.

  She had not expected Morgan to be happy. This morning she had hoped only that her children stay alive and fed, because at least this she could accomplish. Probably.

  Then Morgan turned away from her, walking to the left side of the courtroom to sit behind that man.

  In the low murmurs rippling in their wake, she heard the crowd registering what had just happened. Dinah reached for Joe’s hand—and found only cool air.

  Whether by design or accident, he’d moved his arm away just as she reached out. Dinah couldn’t imagine what Joe thought when Morgan had pared herself away from them and gone to sit elsewhere. It had apparently not occurred to him to join their daughter on that side of the room. Dinah had considered it, had instinctively made to follow her as she’d done all her life, sticking close to her children like an electron does to its nucleus, before realizing how that would be received by her daughter. Before realizing what it would be like to sit that close to the man whose sick appetites had detonated in the middle of their family.

  Joe had just kept moving, choosing the first row of the courtroom, right behind the prosecutor. Dinah stopped walking, feeling the equidistance of her daughter and husband immobilize her.

  People nudged past Dinah without a word. No “excuse me” or even a curt, “Could you move?” It was something she’d noticed in the last months when out in public. People didn’t talk to her. The river of people flowed around her like she was a fallen tree.

  Dinah pressed her lips together and forced herself to walk again, the heaviness of her step recalling the newborn baby days: when you didn’t think you could move one more step at 4:15 in the morning but you did anyway, to keep the baby in your arms from squalling at the cessation of motion. She joined Joe, sitting down more heavily than she’d meant to, as if someone had shoved her.

  Sitting as they were, Dinah would have to turn her head entirely to the side, almost over her shoulder, to see Morgan behind the defendant’s table. The table where the man would be sitting who was charged with criminal sexual conduct against her. “CSC III,” the cops had called it, in their snappy jargon.

  Dinah turned to look. How could she not? Was there ever a time in her life that she could not look at her beautiful girl? The buzzing overhead lights bounced off her coffee-dark hair, making it gleam. Morgan’s head was bent down, exposing the back of her pale, delicate neck. This posture made her look fragile and thin. It put Dinah in mind of the way Morgan often looked down at her cello as she practiced. At performances, Dinah ignored the other musicians, her attention always drawn to Morgan’s sway with the music, her arm sweeping across her cello as if coaxing out the sound.

  Morgan turned like she could feel her mother’s gaze. Dinah gasped at what she saw there: burning fury written in the narrowing of her eyes, in the forward jut of her chin. As if her parents had wronged her. Not the high school teacher who seduced her in a parked car, next to a highway overpass in his 4Runner.

  When Dinah flinched away from Morgan and stared at her own clenched hands, she began to picture herself as she must appear to everyone else: the failed mother, whose golden child turned out to be just another girl gone bad. Schadenfreude was already in full effect, Dinah knew, from the way the other mothers fell silent when she dared step into their presence, looking at her sideways from wary, skeptical eyes.

  Her own mother had exclaimed, “How could you let this happen?” when she first heard, as if Dinah had mistakenly let Morgan off her leash.

  Dinah had been outraged at the time and railed at her mother for the lack of support. But in the darkest hours of the night, Dinah continued to ask herself the very same question.

  The first thing that happened, when Rain saw her husband, was a leap of her heart in sadness and alarm for how he looked: haggard, frightened.

  This kept happening, this Pavlovian response to the sight or thought of him. No matter what mistakes he’d made, what wrong he’d committed, Rain found herself unable to pluck out her love for him like a sliver from her finger.

  He had come, with his lawyer, from some internal room in the recesses of the courthouse. Not from jail, not in a jumpsuit. Rain was grateful for that. There was, at least, that.

  She glanced around the room, wondering if his parents had come, but in
her darting look she did not find them.

  She was not surprised. His parents had turned against their own son. Called Rain to offer their support and railed against the “disgusting” betrayal he had committed. It was good, Rain supposed, that they had reached out to her. It was perhaps better than being abandoned, and her own family could not be counted on at times like this.

  Still, with her ingrained and impossible love for her husband, she died for him that everyone else had turned their backs.

  He had reached the defendant’s table. His eyes had been on the floor for his progress across the room. She saw in the raising of his chin and the brightening of his eyes a flicker of hope that this whole town had not forsaken him entirely. Some of them might remember who he’d been before last winter, when he’d made those crazy mistakes, for reasons unknown and unfathomable. Rain sat up straighter.

  She saw TJ smile sadly. But not at her, his wife. He smiled at that girl, seated just behind his lawyer.

  Her husband sat down without seeming to have noticed Rain. She saw his lawyer lean in urgently, whispering something in harsh desperation, perhaps telling him it’s a bad idea to smile at the teenage girl he’s said to have sexually assaulted.

  “All rise,” the skinny clerk ordered.

  A great shuffling of feet and jackets and handbags occurred all around her. Rain would have liked to rise. Rain believed in respect.

  But she remained seated, gripping the back of the seat in front of her.

  Look at me, Morgan pleaded silently. I came here for you. I’m not ruined like they all say. I’m just fine.

  He raised his head slowly, and she froze in midbreath, not daring to hope. He locked his eyes on hers, and his lips turned up in the saddest of tiny smiles. Before she could react, the lawyer yanked his arm and he turned away.

  “All rise,” ordered the clerk.

  Morgan stood as she was told. She clasped her hands in front of herself firmly, almost as if he were the one holding her hand, steadying her. Like that day in his classroom. She’d felt an electric charge that lit her up and killed her both at once and left her nearly panting for breath.

  She noticed he’d cut his hair shorter, which disappointed her. Already he looked less like himself. No doubt his lawyer had made him do it, that lady lawyer who probably thought shaggy hair made him look dangerous. Like she’d been some kind of helpless girl in a silent movie, tied to the railroad tracks while he cackled. That’s what no one understood. She was no victim. She was a grown woman trapped in a body too young for anyone to take her seriously.

  That quick, sad smile told her all she needed to know. Despite the courts saying it was a crime, despite her parents locking her down like she herself was a criminal, despite the gossip and vandals and spewing hate from random strangers . . . he loved her anyway. Against the odds and against all sense. She lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders, as if the orchestra conductor had just raised her baton.

  The judge cleared his throat and the air in the room seemed to freeze, as everyone waited for it all to begin.

  Thomas John Hill,” the judge read, and his lawyer nudged him. He’d forgotten to pay attention to his full name, so seldom was it ever used.

  The judge was talking, but TJ couldn’t hear a thing over a voice in his head chanting, What have you done?

  What have you done?

  What have you done?

  2

  SEPTEMBER 6, 2011

  Rain’s first thought, as the slanting light crept in through her blinds and splashed across her face: Oh, no. Not again.

  She could feel already it was over, in the sharp tightening pressure of her abdomen. A shard of hope still caused her to think but maybe not, maybe it’s not what I think . . .

  She remained in bed, lingered in the uncertainty, though her last optimism was drying up like morning dew.

  “Don’t stop! Believing!” TJ’s voice rang out, tuneless but with gusto, over the hiss of the shower. So Rain smiled, in spite of everything.

  She decided not to tell him if it was bad news, on his first day of a new school year. Not to dampen his enthusiasm. She slid out of bed, unable to wonder any longer, and shuffled down the stairs to the spare bathroom.

  In the midst of her sea-blue and sand-tan towels, the smell of sandalwood still lingering from last night’s incense stick, she held her breath and looked. In spite of her earlier resolve to be strong, she cursed out loud and hot tears washed down her face. Another cycle of failure. Another month not pregnant.

  Her supplies were in the master bathroom so she’d have to wait until TJ finished his shower to deal with the mechanics of her period. So she propped her elbows on her knees and sat there on the toilet, hearing TJ belt out the last lines of that corny Journey song louder than ever now that he’d shut the shower off.

  “Hellooooo, gorgeous.” TJ bent to peck Rain’s lips, and she tried to rally to meet him in his ebullient mood.

  “Hey, sexy,” she answered, but her voice was limp. He busied himself with breakfast at the kitchen counter behind her. “Want some oatmeal?” he called over his shoulder as he poured coffee.

  “Sure. Looking forward to today?”

  “You bet. The kids haven’t started hating me yet.”

  Rain half smiled into her coffee cup. No one hated TJ. He was probably one of the best-loved teachers in the whole place, in fact, always getting good reviews on those teacher rating websites, which most teachers claimed not to read, but Rain knew they all caved eventually. And this year he was teaching calculus to the upperclassmen, due to the unfortunate heart attack in August of Mr. Adamczyk, who’d been teaching there so long he seemed to smell of chalk dust whenever Rain had happened to see him, though the school had gone to markers and dry erase boards years ago. Though his colleague’s passing was sad, TJ was thrilled to have been offered the tougher class, a huge step up from having to monitor detention and teach the basics of x + 5 = 15 to freshmen who never got the swing of middle school.

  TJ flipped his tie over his shoulder as he poured the oatmeal and turned on the burner for the kettle. It would be the only day he would wear a tie, Rain knew. One of the last holdovers from his past track-and-field stardom was his superstition. On race day, so the story goes, he would only wear a particular pair of socks, something that earned him no end of teasing but which he regarded with utmost seriousness, along with his training regimen.

  Rain allowed herself to revel in his strong shoulders and back, obvious from the cut of his dress shirt. He turned to wink at her while the water boiled, and she let herself swoon a little and wonder how she’d won this guy.

  Then her guts twisted, and she sucked in a breath.

  TJ noticed her flinch. “Babe?”

  Rain shook her head and screwed her eyes up.

  TJ set his jaw and stared at the floor. The first few months he was consoling and sweet, plying her with chocolates, running to fill a hot-water bottle, promising it was only a small hitch, and soon enough she’d be big as a house and squeezing out a baby they would love, and cuddle, and rock, and read to. TJ would talk about how he’d teach his son to throw a football with a perfect spiral, just like his dad taught him, and when Rain teased him about his old-school gender stereotypes, he promised to teach his daughter, too.

  When Rain started peeing on ovulation tests and reading books and charting her fertility signs, he’d taken to saying “Sorry, honey” and giving her shoulder a light squeeze. At last there was that day she brought home the pamphlet from Dr. Gould’s, resulting in the worst fight of their marriage to date.

  That night, in a hormonal, menstrual stew, she’d tearfully bemoaned his waning support, to which he replied that he felt helpless to make her happy, and that he felt like a failure himself. He’d seemed to cave in just then, curling forward on the couch and resting his elbows on his knees.

  Rain had apologized for pressuring him and resolved to take her sadness to her journal, or give it up to the Universe, as Beverly was always saying.
/>   The distance between them now—just a few feet over their laminated kitchen floor—seemed too great for her to cross, heavy with fatigue and sadness as she was, churned up with cramps as she was. She looked up and saw that he was about to move toward her, when the kettle began hissing. He turned back to the oatmeal.

  The cramp began to loosen, and she turned in her chair to face her coffee again.

  TJ appeared at the table and handed her the oatmeal sprinkled with brown sugar in a smiley face pattern. She ate the nose out of it and tried to be amused.

  Her phone bleated out its ringtone and Rain groaned, knowing without looking it would have to be her mother. Angie did not believe in subjecting herself to the tyranny of the clock, which irritated the hell out of Rain and had a similar effect on every boss Angie had ever had. Which was why she’d had so many.

  “Hi, honey.” Angie started talking the moment she heard the ringing stop, not even waiting for Rain to speak. “Can you come take Dog to the vet? There’s something wrong with him I think. Also, all the chocolate is missing.”

  Rain propped her head in her hand. “Can’t Dad do it? Or Stone? I know Fawn’s got the baby . . . but why can’t you handle it?”