“No, it was someone from the town,” Jean says. “So you know the story will be everywhere by noon. I wanted to give you a heads-up, since you were so close to her. I’ve also called Woody Hull to see if he can use his influence with the police to get some information. They’re not telling me much.” Jean’s voice betrays her annoyance. She was Haywood Hull’s assistant when he was headmaster and he still treats her like a secretary even though she’s been headmistress for seventeen years. But Jean is a pragmatist; she uses the resources available to her. Woody Hull is rich—old-money-Boston-blueblood rich—and has endowed many a scholarship for a needy Haywood student. It was Jean who buttonholed him to get me a college scholarship even though it had been six years since I’d graduated from Haywood and I had nothing to show for those years but a five-year-old fatherless boy.
“How did Woody take the news?” I ask
“He was upset, of course, but honestly . . .” Jean lowers her voice even though I’m pretty sure she’s calling from home and there’s no one else there. “I’m not sure he totally got it. He’s been a little . . . vague lately. He asked if I’d called the parents—”
“Oh, Jean,” I cut in. “Did you? How horrible for you.”
Jean doesn’t reply for a moment and I know she’s holding back tears. “Yes, it was, but when I told Woody he said that he would send his condolences because he knew them.”
“The Zellers?”
“Of course he doesn’t know the Zellers. I think . . . I think he’s confused her with a girl who died when he was the headmaster here. I think he’s losing it.”
“Oh,” I say. “Crap.”
“Yes. So on top of everything else I’m going to have to keep Woody from making a fool of himself.” Jean heaves an exasperated sigh. “I’m convening an emergency faculty meeting at noon and an all-campus assembly at one. I thought you’d want to talk to Rudy before then . . . weren’t they . . . ?”
“They were friends,” I say. Not she was his girlfriend. Shit. If the students know, it will be all over their social media by now. I have to wake him up . . . and tell him that Lila is dead. How in the world will I do that and what will it do to him? I pause another second, then add, “I’m glad he spent the night here. The dorms were too loud after the cast party. Thanks for telling me, Jean. I’ve got to think about how best to handle this. I’ll be in by noon.”
I get off the phone before Jean can object or assign me any other duties. I know she’s annoyed. She expects me to have her back and I will; I owe her. But I have to think about Rudy first. I go to the refrigerator and open the door, thinking I’ll bring him a glass of orange juice to help wake him up, and see the new container of almond milk I’d bought for Lila.
I double over with cramps as if I’ve been punched in the gut. Lila is dead. Sweet, funny, earnest Lila Zeller from Manhasset, New York, with all her dreams of ending world hunger, bigotry, and war. She’s dead, hours after she fought with Rudy, who was at the Point last night.
I grip the refrigerator door and right myself, then pour the orange juice and put on a pot of coffee. I have to stop several times to run calming cold water over my hands. Lila is dead and Rudy was her . . . boyfriend? Do kids even use those terms these days? They don’t say dating; they say hooking up, but that seems crass. In fact, I don’t know for certain that they were having sex. I asked Rudy, told him he could talk to me, impressed upon him the importance of consent and the necessity of being safe . . . at which point he winced and shut me down. The couple of times Lila slept over here, she slept in the guest room. So maybe they weren’t even having sex. They were friends, of course, close friends, but they’d been drifting apart these last few weeks. They had an argument at the party and Rudy left, went for a walk out to the Point and called me to pick him up, which I did at three in the morning—no point fudging on the time; it’s in our cell phone records. No need either. That was hours before Lila would have gone jogging . . . It’s a tragedy, I’ll tell the police, my son is devastated. I’m devastated. But Rudy was here in his own bed since four A.M.
When I’ve run through it in my head three times and my hands are steady enough I pour the coffee and the orange juice. I put them on a tray with a napkin and add a granola bar. Except for the coffee, it looks like the breakfasts I made for Rudy when he was in grade school.
You spoil him, Harmon says.
You don’t know what he’s been through, I always think, but all I do is shrug. A mother’s prerogative. And implicit: You are not his father to tell me how to raise my son.
I am on the first step of the stairs when the doorbell rings, nearly causing me to drop the tray. No one uses the bell—or the front door, for that matter. I turn and see a uniformed police officer through the side panel. We make eye contact.
I put the tray down on the side table by the door—the place where we leave the mail, our keys, notes to one another, a potted African violet that Rudy gave me for Mother’s Day three years ago—a homely pocket of domestic routine that absurdly makes me want to cry out: Stop! Please don’t take this away from me. I’ve fought so hard to keep it.
I open the door and recognize the young police officer. Kevin Bantree, a local boy who came to Haywood on scholarship during my senior year when the school went coed. I remember him as a shy, awkward teenager, miserable at being thrust into a crowd of rich, spoiled girls.
What are you even doing here? Ashley Burton—a mean queen bee from Scarsdale—had asked him one day before class.
Hell if I know, he’d answered, his milky-white Irish skin turning red. The school made some deal with the town that the kid with the highest GPA would get a scholarship.
I’d been surprised when I moved back to Rock Harbor to see that Kevin had become a cop like his father, and his father before him. What had been the point of suffering through a year at Haywood?
Now all I wonder is what he’s doing here. “Kevin,” I say and then, when he blushes, correct myself. “I mean Officer Bantree. I know why you’re here. Jean Shire called me earlier. Come in. You must be on tenterhooks thinking how to break it to me.”
I am talking too fast, and he isn’t talking at all. I remember that about him, how quiet he was. It would be easy looking at him—the athletic build and wide-open, fresh-skinned face—to think he’s a dumb jock, just a small-town policeman, but it would be a mistake.
“I can’t believe it,” I say, unable to stop. “I’m always telling the girls to be careful of that path, but Lila was very headstrong. Do you know how it happened?”
“I can’t say, Ms. Henshaw. I’m here to ask you a few questions about Lila—”
“What about Lila?”
We both look up to see Rudy standing on the stairs. He is rumpled and bleary-eyed, his dark curly hair sticking up—is that a leaf sticking to a lock?—still in his jeans and sweatshirt from last night.
“Has something happened to Lila?” Rudy asks, his voice shaky.
“Honey, I think you’d better sit down.” I turn to Kevin. “I was just going upstairs to tell Rudy. Of course he knows Lila from Haywood—”