In Broken Places by Michèle Phoenix Page B

asked.
    “Be true to yourself.”
    “So helpful.”
    “I try.”
    “And ‘myself’ is . . . ?”
    “‘Yourself’ has a good heart. A warm heart. Something you didn’t inherit from our dad.”
    Deep breath. “Trey . . . She’s so—”
    “You know, there’s a chance—a very small chance—that the oldman got a couple things right in his life. The first was marrying Mom. No one else would have put up with him for so long.”
    “And the second?”
    “Giving his daughter to the best possible person for the job.”
    “You mean giving his illegitimate four-year-old daughter to his estranged thirty-five-year-old daughter.”
    “Hey, I never said this family didn’t put the fun in dysfunction !” He wandered to the kitchen and started opening cupboards. “And in his defense, it looks like he actually put some thought into things this time. I mean, it’s not like he just handed off his daughter and expected you to make do. She comes fully loaded with a condo, a college fund, a cuckoo clock, and a babysitting uncle.”
    “And a ’64 Impala.” I smiled at his incredulous look. “Convertible. Cherry red.”
    “He left you his car, too?”
    “Two of them, actually. I’m donating one, but the Impala’s for you. Custom-restored and kept in mothballs since Shayla was born.” I held up a second set of keys. “Congratulations, my friend. You’re the new owner of your very own chick magnet.”
    He shook his head. “A ’64 Chevy, huh? Too bad I don’t have a thing for fifty-year-old broads.” He took the keys and stared at them for a moment, considering the emotional strings he knew would be attached. Then he pocketed them and let his dimples reveal his conclusion. “You sure?”
    “I’m sure,” I answered.
    “About the condo, too?”
    “Yup.” I followed him toward the kitchen and took stock of the time and effort he’d need to invest to rid the space of my father’s presence. “So—you think you can do something with this mess?”
    He leaned against the counter and surveyed the small room.“I think I know just the right shade of Italian tile to make the cupboards pop.”

    From where I sat on the edge of the stage at the front of the auditorium, I could hear Italian, French, and a couple other languages I didn’t recognize. It was round two of the play auditions, and there were only a little over twenty students in attendance this time. I’d thanked the rest of them for their efforts and, squelching the part of me that wanted to throw myself at their feet and beg for their forgiveness, had informed them that there just weren’t parts that suited them in this year’s play. So the twenty-three pairs of eyes begging me for mercy on this cloudy afternoon were all the more nervous about the verdict to come, and their performance jitters had made them revert to their comfort languages to express their insecurities.
    The vulnerability of these young people had become increasingly evident in my first couple of weeks in Germany. At the beginning of my time here, they had shown few differences from the teenagers I’d taught back home. They had the same scattered study habits, the same discipline issues, and the same aversion to rules. All of those were familiar to me—and somehow comforting, too. But there were other facets to these students that I was only beginning to discern.
    A handful of them had asked if they could eat their sack lunches in my classroom every day, and I had allowed it, as the only alternatives were a crowded, noisy cafeteria and the bleachers in the gym. So Grace, Nicole, Liz, Sunny, and Fiona had become regular lunchtime companions. Instead of talking among themselves, though, they’d drawn me into their discussions, asking my opinionon topics as varied as morality, global warming, and Lindsay Lohan’s latest scandal. They wanted more from me than a good grade and a manageable homework load. They wanted my input and my guidance, and I found it disconcerting to be