Everything We Ever Wanted

Everything We Ever Wanted
Sara Shepard

How do you choose between your family and your history? Emotional and compelling storytelling from Sara Shepard, author of All the Things We Didn’t Say.A late-night phone call on a Sunday evening rarely brings good news. So when Sylvie, a recently-widowed mother of two, receives a call from the head teacher of the school she's on the board of, she knows it won't be something she wants to hear. The school was founded by her grandfather, and she's inherited everything he strived to build up - a reputation, a heritage, the school and the grand old family house. And with this inheritance comes responsibility.So when her son Scott is whispered to be involved in a scandal that led to the death of one of the boys he coaches at the school, it throws the family into chaos: Sylvie has to decide between her loyalty to the school that has been part of her family legacy for years and her son who she feels wants nothing to do with her. She starts spying on the dead boy's father, making an unlikely connection.Sara Shepard's compelling new novel tells how hard it can be to really, truly connect to people, how making quick, easy judgments can come back to haunt you, and how the life you always planned for - and always dreamed of - often doesn't always turn out the way you imagined at all…

Everything We Ever Wanted

Sara Shepard

For Joel

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#uae9f8202-8155-5d9c-8276-6a13bd11d896)

Title Page (#u0bf90e0c-997e-5efd-b20f-2929e38759ae)

Forward (#u17a18899-7c17-5d40-8247-2a4d1897f338)

PART ONE (#u807d9369-844d-51e4-9213-0f542db291ed)

1 (#u1dce34b0-6fac-5b0b-8511-f62821a6e08e)

2 (#u8e44049d-d9d8-5c8b-8b28-36e5f62ff186)

3 (#u18b20246-3e65-5e77-9198-ac196bf25968)

4 (#u41a0fe46-5544-5797-aafc-bed87ec90081)

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PART TWO (#litres_trial_promo)

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Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Novels by the same author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Forward (#ulink_79c9d732-4f5f-5b3f-bae2-77fda29bf44a)

The man introduced himself on the phone as Michael Tayson, the new Swithin headmaster. ‘We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet,’ he said.

‘Of course, of course,’ Sylvie said quickly, sitting up straighter. It was almost 9 p.m. on a Sunday night. A strangely intimate time, she thought, for a chat. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘We have a bit of a situation,’ Michael Tayson said.

For a moment, Sylvie wondered if she’d fallen through a pocket in time. Her sons, Charles and Scott, were still teenagers. They were upstairs in their rooms right now, doing their homework – or, in Scott’s case, not doing his homework. It was Jerome Cunningham, the old headmaster, on the phone instead. He hadn’t retired yet, the boys hadn’t graduated yet, and James…well, James was still here, too, upstairs behind his closed office door. He could walk downstairs and she could still talk to him.

‘One of our students passed away this morning,’ Michael Tayson went on. ‘We’re not sure how, but there are suspicions it might have been a suicide. His name was Christian Givens, a freshman. One of the scholarship boys.’

Sylvie murmured how terrible that was, how sorry she felt for his family. All her years on the board, they’d had a few deaths – some car accidents, a case of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Never a suicide, thank God. Was he looking for suggestions about memorial services?

The church clock down at the end of Sylvie’s drive bonged out the hour. ‘He was a wrestler,’ the man finally said. ‘Your son coached him.’

‘Oh,’ Sylvie whispered.

‘This is a delicate situation, obviously. We know how much you and your family…we know what you’ve done for us. But there might be questions. We’ll try as best we can to keep things out of the spotlight, but you have to understand it might not be possible.’ He took a breath. ‘Scott’s job is all right for now. The season’s finished. Next season, we’ll see. This might blow over.’

Sylvie stood up. ‘I’m sorry? What does this have to do with Scott?’

She heard a chair creaking and imagined that the man on the other end, a man she hadn’t yet met, was leaning back. Sylvie had been in the office the school reserved for the headmaster plenty of times, especially when Scott was a student. Jerome had never suspended Scott for anything, even though Sylvie assured him that he should treat Scott the same as any other student. She knew why he let Scott’s transgressions slide.