Up in the middle of nowh.., p.8
Up in the Middle of Nowhere, page 8
She’d interviewed two lawyers with Nova present. It was an eye-opening exercise requiring a huge retainer that left them both shell-shocked. When they left the office carrying a thick stack of papers outlining the engagement agreement, Tessa chose tough love.
“When we get back from Tennessee, you are going to get a job and help pay some of these legal expenses.”
“Okay,” Nova said, her voice dull. The visit to the law firm killed the fight in her. She left the long meeting quieter and more reserved. Tessa narrowed the options to one attorney a few days later. For weeks, the engagement agreement and check for the retainer sat inside a stamped envelope ready to be mailed. Two days before she was required to mail it, Tessa received a call from an unknown number. Nova was accounted for, seated at the table eating breakfast, so instantly, she worried it was her dad.
“Hello?” she said breathlessly.
“Can I speak to Tessa Donahue?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Officer Nemmers. I’m an investigator with the Omaha Police Department who has been assigned to your case. Do you have a moment?”
She glanced over at Nova, who was watching videos on her phone.
“Of course.” She sat down on the stool next to Nova and waited.
“I wanted to talk to you about our Juvenile Diversion program. It’s for first offenders, and if it’s successfully completed, the charges can be removed from Nova’s permanent record.”
“Really?” The thrill of hope welled up in Tessa. She sat up, intimately understanding how pivotal of a moment this could be in Nova’s life.
“Nova is right here. Do you mind if I put this call on speakerphone so she can hear about it?”
“Not at all.”
Tessa covered the phone with her hand and bumped Nova’s arm to get her attention. “You need to listen to this call.”
Reluctantly, Nova pulled the headphones out of her ears and turned her attention to her mother’s phone. Tessa switched to speakerphone mode. “Nova, this is Officer Nemmers.”
“Hi, Nova. We’d like to offer you an opportunity to enter the diversion program. It takes six months to complete, requires weekly check-ins with the program supervisor at your high school, therapy sessions with your therapist, and…”
“But school’s already out for the summer,” Nova blurted, interrupting the officer.
She shot Nova a glare and made a zipping motion across her lips. “Please go on, Officer Nemmers.”
“Your time in the program will begin when school starts back in the fall. In addition to the meetings, you must complete fifty hours of community service and attend school every day it is in session unless you have an illness. You cannot skip a class, be marked tardy, or get suspended from school.” He paused and Tessa saw Nova lean closer, her eyes glued to the phone. “You also cannot be arrested or acquire any new charges, and you have to pass random drugs checks, but if you abide by all the program rules, your charges will be dropped.”
“Will they be sealed or show up in a background check?’ Tessa asked.
“No, actually, it puts them into a locked anonymous state where they cannot even be accessed by the system. It’s like it never happened.”
Tessa locked her eyes on Nova, who was hanging on every word. She did care.
“I will caution you that if any of the above criteria are unmet, you will be dropped from the program and the file that is sitting on my desk right now will be handed over to the court and you will need to appear in front of a judge.”
“Does this mean we wouldn’t need to engage an attorney? I mean, provided she completes the program?”
“Yes. The case would close with her successful completion of the program.”
“That’s an incredible offer! What do you think, Nova?” Tessa was nodding up and down enthusiastically, encouraging her to respond.
“For sure. I want to do it,” Nova answered quickly, and relief washed in.
Tessa mouthed the words ‘Thank him’.
“Thank you,” Nova added, and Tessa wildly gesticulated to encourage her to elaborate.
“…for this… chance.” Nova’s nervousness dumbed down her extensive vocabulary.
“Fantastic! We will get the paperwork drawn up, and you will meet with Mrs. Clifton to get enrolled. Once you’ve completed the program, she’ll file the paperwork with me, and the charges will be officially dropped.”
“Thank you, Officer Nemmers. This is an amazing second chance, and I know Nova won’t take it lightly.”
“That’s what we hope. Having a record makes life really difficult, and with the diversion program, we can give students who have made a mistake a second chance.”
Tessa hung up the phone. “Isn’t that awesome?”
“It is,” Nova agreed.
“You understand this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to clear your record, right?”
“I do,” Nova answered.
“You should use the time off this summer to get the community service knocked out. You won’t be able to half-ass it and skip classes anymore.”
“Jesus, Mom, I know.” Nova’s voice tightened, and the storm clouds started to gather in her eyes.
“Okay.” Tessa plucked the stamped envelope from its resting place by the dish with her keys. “We don’t have to send this then.”
Tessa was thrilled about Nova’s second chance. She hoped Nova saw what a pivotal moment this was in her life. She could take a right and work the program and earn her freedom, or she could go left and dig a bigger hole, making every opportunity as an adult dry up. The scariest part was it was up to Nova. Tessa couldn’t force her through the hoops. Nova would have to choose to jump through them on her own.
Chapter Eleven
The day before they left for Tennessee was spent running errands and paying bills. Late in the afternoon, Tessa dragged Nova to the grocery store. As she parked the car, wanting to get Nova on board, she enthused, “We’re going to cook most of our meals over the campfire. Won’t that be fun?”
“For who?” Nova asked with her usual snarky smirk.
“For both of us.” Tessa grinned. She was hopeful and ready to take on the challenge. Nova wasn’t as thrilled. “I researched some campfire recipes, and I know Papa taught you how to build a fire during your campouts together. If you don’t practice those survival skills, you’ll forget them. Use it or lose it, sister.” Tessa chuckled at her own joke.
“Step into the twenty-first century with me, Mom,” Nova teased, her eyes twinkling with sarcastic glee. She held out her palms and waved her fingers in the air. “It’s a magical place where you can make fire appear with the simple turn of a knob.”
Well-versed in her daughter’s sarcasm, Tessa let it go in one ear and out the other, determined not to let Nova’s cynicism spoil her excitement. She was looking forward to getting back to nature. Life, when left to its own devices, seemed to spin faster and faster toward burnout. The only way to combat the sensation of constant overwhelm was to take a deliberate step back, to slow down and get back to the basics, and Tessa couldn’t wait.
“Come on. Shake a leg,” Tessa cajoled, leading the way into the brightly lit grocery store. Nova raced ahead, her dirty shoelaces tethered to red Vans dragging on the ground. She was wearing black cutoffs and a gray vintage Eagles concert t-shirt that she’d customized. Carefully, she’d cut down the back of the shirt vertically and removed six inches of material, and then created a makeshift corset out of safety pins. The result was a form-fitting, edgy garment that had the potential to scar you.
“Your shoes are untied,” Tessa pointed out the obvious.
Nova waved her off and dawdled behind, enthralled by the Lofthouse cookies in pastel lavender and yellow that sat just beyond the nested shopping carts. Tessa stopped to yank a cart free and then wheeled it down the linoleum floors. She strolled down the produce aisle and added chopped pineapple, strawberries, and two oranges to her cart. Armed with a very thorough grocery list, she’d accounted for every item necessary to cook all of their meals for the first half of the trip. Tessa loved a list, and more than the list, she relished the feeling of checking something off the list. She’d read once that completing minor tasks gave your body a brief surge of dopamine, and she was addicted.
After watching an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show where one of the low-carb evangelists advised staying out of the middle aisles to avoid processed food, Tessa adopted the habit of cruising the perimeter of the grocery store when she shopped. She wheeled the squeaky cart to the meat counter that sat on the back wall of the store where a pimply teenager with an apron and a paper hat asked, “Have you been helped, ma’am?”
“Not yet.” She gave him a big smile. “Can I get a nice size sirloin?” She pointed at the one in the front of the case. “Maybe that one?” Tessa preferred to choose her own meat instead of subjecting her family to whatever was closest to the clerk. She did the same with bagged salad and dairy products, digging to the back of the display case in pursuit of perceived freshness.
“You got it.” With a gloved hand, he pulled it out, weighed it on the scale, printed the label, and wrapped it in white butcher’s paper before sliding it over the glass counter to Tessa.
“We’re having steak?” Nova asked, sidling up to Tessa after her brief love affair with the donuts at the bakery concluded. She was wearing the first glimmer of an actual smile. Steak was one of her favorite meals that a frugal Tessa considered a splurge. The penny-pinching ways she’d adopted to make ends meet when she was newly divorced stuck. Being fiscally responsible came with the territory when you were an accountant, and even though she made more money working at the firm, she couldn’t shake the habit. The years of self-control had accumulated the nest egg she was currently living on and gave her the luxury of waiting to find the perfect fit in her next firm when they returned from Tennessee.
“It’s been a while. I figured we’d cut it into chunks and then let it marinate in the cooler on the drive down so it’s ready to grill at the first treehouse,” Tessa explained. “I was also thinking we should do a S’mores cook-off.”
“What do you mean?”
“Apparently, traditional S’mores are a bore. Bloggers are creating all kinds of crazy combinations now—candied bacon, Snickers bars, or Samoa cookies instead of graham crackers. The sky's the limit! I say we try a different kind every night, and at the end of the trip, we can rank them.”
Nova’s eyes widened. “Who are you?”
“What do you mean? I know how to have fun, too.” Tessa laughed. “Besides, it’s a vacation. We’re going to eat what we want, when we want. Since we’re hiking, we’ll be burning it off anyway most days.”
Nova nodded, considering this new version of her mother. “What are the oranges for?”
“I found an orange brownie soufflé recipe online where you hollow out an orange, fill it with brownie batter, and roast it over the campfire.”
“That seems pretty ambitious,” Nova mused. “Can’t we just swing by a bakery?”
“Where’s the fun in that?’ Tessa asked. “Imagine how much better a warm brownie will taste when you’ve cooked it with your hot little hands.”
“You need to find better hobbies,” Nova joked.
“Maybe.” Tessa shrugged.
Witnessing this dramatic shift in Tessa’s thinking, Nova pressed her luck. “Can we get snacks for the car ride down?”
“What kind of snacks?” Tessa asked looking down at the contents of the cart. “I’ve already got some fruit here and a box of granola.”
“I’m talking junk, stuff with high fructose corn syrup and xanthan gum. Ingredients you can’t pronounce.” Nova’s lips quirked up at the corners. “You just said we’re going to eat what we want, when we want.”
Leave it to a teenager to take you literally and quote you back to yourself, she thought, but at least she was listening. Tessa heard Kristie’s voice in her head. “Loosen the reins.” She bit the inside of her cheek and made a concession.
“Okay, but let’s get all our snacks here. When you buy crap at convenience stores, you pay a premium for it.”
“Deal.” Nova raced off to the middle aisles to search for junk food before Tessa changed her mind. Turning down a different aisle, Tessa added more items to the cart. Bread and buns, a few tin foil containers to grill in, and graham crackers. Then she added a carton of eggs, a package of cheese, a sweet Vidalia onion, and bite-size yellow fingerling potatoes. Crossing the last item off her list, she pushed the cart down the snack aisle, looking for Nova. Two aisles over, she found her and rolled the cart closer, where Nova deposited a family-size bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos and Sweet Tart Ropes, a red straw-like candy that was filled with bright blue goo.
“Whoa. Aren’t you getting a little carried away?” Tessa asked after she watched Nova also add a bag of Munchos and a box of Hostess cupcakes.
“I might never get this chance again. I have to capitalize on it.”
Tessa simpered at her daughter’s accurate assessment. She wasn’t wrong. “So, let’s talk about our Great Smoky Mountains S’mores Bake-Off. I have a recipe for candied bacon S’mores, one where you use a peanut butter cup instead of the Hershey bar, and one using fudge stripe cookies instead of graham crackers. What do you think?”
“I’m down.” Nova grinned as more heaps of sugar were stacked inside the cart. It was a new record. Tessa’s usual sensible eating plan was toast in the sea of complex carbohydrates and artificial dyes that covered the bottom of the cart. Seeing Nova finally start to warm up to their trip, Tessa left the usual lectures about childhood obesity and diabetes at the door.
She’d had the same double standard most parents did when it came to what she ate and what she wanted Nova to consume. The kind of beliefs that had you binge eating ding dongs in the car on the way home or ice cream in the late night hours after your child went to bed. It was a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ philosophy Tessa employed, trying to be a good example in front of Nova. Surely, letting Nova eat junk to her heart’s content for one week wouldn’t undo all the hours she’d spent teaching healthy habits. Kristie was right; life was about balance.
They checked out their groceries and then drove home. Tessa scanned the front stoop with disappointment as she pulled into the garage. The Amazon packages she’d been stalking for days still hadn’t arrived and, knowing her luck, wouldn’t make it until after they’d left.
“Pack a swimming suit,” Tessa advised as she went through the plastic bags of groceries on the countertop. “We have a twelve-hour drive tomorrow to get to our hotel in Clarksville, so make sure you pack some entertainment. I figured we could alternate driving.”
Nova’s eyebrows raised at the prospect. “Not sure that’s a good idea,” she mumbled. “No offense, Mom, but you’re a control freak.”
“It will be fine,” Tessa insisted.
“We’ll see,” Nova responded with Tessa’s favorite parental procrastination catchphrase then disappeared up into her bedroom. A few minutes later, Tessa heard music faintly drifting down the stairs.
Getting back to her list, Tessa rejoiced when she heard the doorbell ring. She ran to the door on stocking-clad feet and let out a whoop of glee, seeing two cardboard boxes that had been delayed for days now resting on the stoop.
Inside one box was a Pudgy Pie maker, a nostalgic surprise she’d ordered for Nova. It was a rectangular cast-iron box that was held together by two long handles that screwed into the base. The pie maker was a throwback to when Nova was five and had gone camping with her grandfather in the woods and made campfire pies for the first time.
Little Nova was so enamored with the process of buttering the bread, adding her toppings, and then placing the black box into the red coals while it sizzled away. Late one night scrolling Pinterest, several pins for campfire pie iron recipes appeared, and Tessa couldn’t resist buying the maker, hoping to reenact a fond memory from Nova’s childhood.
In the past two weeks, Tessa had become an authority on pie iron flavors and options. Pizza flavored, eggs and bacon, even Boston cream pies made with flaky crescent roll dough were possible. She couldn’t wait to try it out.
Reading the directions, she realized the cast iron had to be seasoned before they could use it.
“Shoot.” Quickly, she spread a thin layer of vegetable oil onto the cast iron with a paper towel and preheated the oven. Then she slipped it inside on a cookie sheet and set the timer for one hour.
The other box had a teal deck of cards in it. It was another impulse purchase she hoped would help bridge the gap between them. It was a game called The AND.
Frustrated and desperate to connect with Nova during this trip, she’d Googled, “How to have meaningful conversations with your teenager.” Embarrassed that she’d had to turn to Google for answers that she was certain every other mother already innately knew, she fell down rabbit holes of well-meaning but unrelatable homeschool blogs. Eventually, she clicked on The Skin Deep website and learned The AND card game promised to provide a unique experience that allowed people to enjoy the power of human connection from anywhere in the world.
With a bit of trepidation, she clicked ‘add to cart’. Now holding the deck in her hands, she felt foolish, and she hid the pack of cards deep in her suitcase. She hoped the right moment would present itself where she could pull it out and Nova would be open-minded enough to play.
The next few hours were a flurry of activity for both Tessa and Nova. Tessa consulted her checklists and even went so far as to pour salt, pepper, and pizza seasoning into small Ziploc bags to use when she cooked. Tessa planned meticulously for all contingencies and thought through every meal they would cook together, making sure each ingredient was accounted for on her list.
“Nova, bring your suitcase to the door,” she called out, and a few minutes later, Nova appeared, dragging a suitcase on wheels behind her.
