“Showing her how your father behaves while Auggie was there so she’d have support when you did, but also it was made clear that Auggie is not a man who behaves that way?” Mr. Cisco finished for her.
Juno didn’t have anything to say then, because…wow.
Mr. Cisco figured out everything.
“Juno,” he said her name firmly, “I am confident that there will be a time when you’ll understand the intricacies of right and wrong. It might not make much sense to you now when I say that there are some things that are wrong that you’ll need to do in times that are right. And vice versa. It seems very complicated, and I have to admit, that will never change. It’ll always be complicated. You’ll learn to weigh the positives and negatives and make decisions on how to move forward. I suspect all people your age start learning that about now. In this instance, how you went about doing what you needed to do was wrong. But the reason you did it was right. Does that make sense to you?”
“Kind of,” she mumbled.
“What I’m saying is, it’s done, and maybe there were better ways to do it, but the bottom line is, it was done for a good reason. But you can’t change it. So put it behind you and move on.”
Well, she understood that.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he murmured.
“Does Auggie know I have a phone from you?” she asked.
That was the second part of the grossness.
And she didn’t know if that was a bigger, or smaller, part.
“Did he say something?” Mr. Cisco asked, instead of answering her question.
“No, but when my other phone rang, he looked at me funny and asked if I was telling the truth about Dad giving it to me.”
Mr. Cisco took his time answering that.
But eventually, he did.
“He put a few things together about you asking him to speak to your class during career day and he came to visit me about it.”
Slowly, she said, “So yes, he knows I have a phone from you.”
“Yes, he knows,” he admitted.
Okay…
No.
Nonononono.
“He can’t know that, Mr. Cisco.”
He sounded not sure when he asked, “Why can’t he know that?”
“Because if he knows about me and you, and he’s not telling Mom about me and you, that means he’s keeping things from Mom and he can’t do that. He can’t do it. He really can’t.”
“Juno, calm down for me, okay?” Mr. Cisco asked in that way adults did when they were getting freaked out about how you were acting.
“Dad kept things from Mom,” she told him.
He made a noise like, “Ah.” Then he said, “I told Auggie I’d get the phone back. So actually, this is on me. He doesn’t know you have it anymore, unless you told him.”
“But he did know.”
“Yes, he did.”
“And he definitely didn’t tell Mom. Or I’d know.”
“I don’t know about that, but probably.”
“And if Mom finds out—”
He cut her off, which was good. She was freaking out so much, her voice was getting louder.
“Juno, you trust me, yes?”
“Yes,” she pushed out through fast breaths.
“Now, I don’t want you to be mad at me when I say you’re too young for me to fully explain this, and maybe, and I hope this remains the case, you never need to know it at all. But if you trust me, I want you to trust when I tell you that what your father kept from your mother was something that she rightly could not find her way around. It was that big. If she finds out about this, first, it’s what you and I did, not Auggie. Second, I made promises to Auggie I broke about getting the phone back, so that’s on me. Third, Auggie made the decision not to tell her because he didn’t want her upset at you, which, if he’s put in the position to explain that to her, I think she’ll understand. And last, outside how we first met, which has not and won’t happen again, you were safe through all of this, so it is not even close to being big enough for her not to get around. Even if she is upset in the beginning, she’ll get past it. Do you believe me?”
She really liked that Auggie didn’t tell on her.
That was sweet.
And Mr. Cisco was right, Mom would get that.
So yeah, she believed him.
She didn’t tell him that.
“I know it was the women,” she blurted out.
“Sorry?”
“Dad,” she said to explain. “He likes women a lot. And he should like just one woman. Mom. And he didn’t. I know that.”
“Juno,” he whispered, and her name said that way both hurt and felt really good. “How do you know that?”
“I figured it out, ’cause it’s kinda the same for me. You know. With his women. Like, him knowing I’m, like…important or something.”
“Have you talked to your mom about that?”