I have four missed calls, all from Dana. Between classes, I phone her back. I’m in the hall. Students rush by.
Dana picks up right away. Her voice is shrill: “Jo? I need to see you!”
My mouth’s full of bran muffin. I gulp it down. The bran’s mealy. I have to speak loudly on account of the noise. “What? Now? I’m at school.”
“Don’t you get breaks?”
I check my watch. “At two.” I have a free hour for grading.
“I’ll be there!”
She hangs up before I can dissuade her.
Last night I got no work done because of the vigil. Unmarked papers are like weeds, eager to spread. I need that hour to catch up. And yet. My throat’s gone gluey. Dana sounded panicky. I hope she hasn’t fucked up with those detectives.
I force down another dry gulp. The bell clangs. I toss the remnants of my muffin in a bin and head back to class.
I force myself to focus on Hamlet and his madness. Let’s hope Stan’s ghost isn’t inciting his offspring to seek vengeance.
At two, I’m on the school’s front porch, awaiting Dana. Her Mercedes pulls into the guest lot and parks crookedly, a bad sign. She stumbles out, designer clothes askew, an “it girl” on a bender. Even her hair looks awful.
I hurry down the wide stairs. “Dana?” I’m worried someone will see her this way, then I remember: poor Dana is allowed to be disheveled, distraught, and even drunk just past midday. Her husband—the love of her life—is missing.
She squints against the weak sun. “Jo?” Her face crumples. “Something’s happened.” She nods to her shiny car. “Let’s get out of here! Go someplace private.”
The way she says it takes me back to our senior year in high school. Dana’s parents gave her a little white Mazda. Not often, because Dana was mostly responsible, we’d skip our last class and drive to the beach or the mall. I recall the freedom of exiting the students’ parking lot: windows down, gravel crunching beneath our tires, music blaring.
I have no nostalgia for high school. My life started after leaving Glebes Bay. And yet, that buzz of escape . . . Feelings were stronger when we were young.
I rub under my glasses. “I can’t leave the school grounds.”
“Oh,” says Dana. Her forehead lifts. “What? Really?”
If I weren’t so worried, I’d laugh. Her surprise is comical. Dana forgets most people can’t do as they please. Money brings freedom.
She peers up at the red brick school covered in ivy. It looks good in the glossy brochures, respectable and substantial. Her voice cracks. “Where can we talk?”
“The art room’s empty.” I’m holding a stack of papers. The assignment: discuss the concept of savagery in Lord of the Flies. I’ve read three of the papers so far, each of them so abysmal I was tempted to write LOC across the top in big letters—“laugh or cry”—my own private acronym. I could scrawl LOC across my whole life, really.
We don’t speak as we head to the art room. “In here,” I tell Dana. I pull the door shut behind us.
There are tables instead of desks, arranged in a U. Dana stops to survey the walls lined with kids’ art, grades six through twelve. They represent a wide range of styles, subjects, and talent. Some of the older boys get quite dark. There’s a lot of red and black. Perhaps she’s scanning the signatures, searching for Owen’s.
I pull out two chairs.
“Is it the police?” I ask quietly when we’re both seated.
“No,” she says. “Although last night.” She gulps. “Did you know Shergold was at the vigil?”
I nod. “Yes. Cops also go to funerals, looking for anyone acting weird.”
Dana’s mouth tics into a quick, crooked smile. “Well, last night it was Chad acting weird. He told me Stan’s dead. I’m scared Shergold overheard him!”
“What?” I say. The fear that one of her kids saw or heard something flashes back into view.
“It’s what kids at school have been saying.” Her voice falters. “But the way he said it, it was like he knew. Or I’m just paranoid.”
“Jesus,” I say. “But he can’t know. Right?”
“No, of course not.” The words are reassuring. Her tone isn’t. She presses her palms to her temples. She must have forgotten about her injured eye because she flinches and drops her hands. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.”
The way she says it, without meeting my gaze, injects a nasty fizz into my belly. I feel bloated, like a shaken-up soda can.
With quivering hands, she reaches into her purse, withdraws a piece of crumpled paper, then smooths it out. She leans away from it like it might be coated in anthrax.
I take it from her. Thick red marker. Big block letters: i know.
I stare as if the letters might rearrange themselves. Like I’m pondering options for Scrabble.
“Is this a joke?” I say softly.
“I wondered that too.” Her cheeks are pinker, like sharing this has brought hope. “Maybe it’s some nutcase who heard about Stan on the news and wants to make trouble.”
I flip the note over. i know. I lean back in my chair and use both hands to grab fistfuls of hair. “Maybe.”
Her face falls. “You don’t believe that?”
“Do you?”
Her eyes return to the note. “I guess not,” she admits. “It’s too big a coincidence.”
I stay quiet.
“So . . .” She’s dead pale again. Pearls, small and tasteful, shine on her earlobes.
“Someone knows,” I say, “but what?”
The scrape of her chair brings me back to the art room, to the smells of dust and paint, to kids’ drawings glued on construction paper.
A tear trails down Dana’s good cheek. “What should we do?”
My eyes find a drawing of a boat on bright blue water. It’s cheerful, by one of the younger kids, with a red sail and a yellow sun up in the corner.
“Fuck.” It comes out breathless. “Who could have seen us?” I ask Dana.
“I don’t know!” She tilts her head back, as if to return her tears to their source. A silk scarf circles her neck, paler blue than her eyes. She mops her face with it. She’ll ruin it if she’s not careful.
“Think Dana,” I say. “Someone saw us!”
“The kids, I guess. But there’s no way they’d—” She looks at the note. “Maybe one of the neighbors?”
I consider. “Ryan Reeve?” I ask.
Dana frowns. “No.” She winces. “Maybe.”
“He wasn’t meeting you that night?”
“No!” She sounds irate. “Of course not!”
“Could someone else have been there? Was anyone staying in the guesthouse?”
“No.” She almost laughs. “I’d have thought of that.” She licks her lips. “Stan’s partner, Ralph Isles? The next morning, I saw his car parked out front. He said he stopped by. I . . . I figured he heard me and Stan fighting.”
Great. Another witness for the prosecution.
I know Ralph—or Dr. Isles, as he prefers to be known. His son, Emmett, is at Stanton House. The father’s pompous, and the son creeps me out: pale, neat, and blank faced. Emmett looks airbrushed.
I yank at my hair. “What does this note-writer want?”
“Money, I guess,” says Dana. “It’s blackmail.”
I nod. “Probably. Could it be something else?” It’s like I’m prompting her to review for some upcoming test.
She licks her lips. “I don’t know. Revenge?” She practically mouths this. “Like a poison-pen letter?”
I feel queasy. Money’s cut and dried. A business deal. Revenge is something else. The desire to make someone suffer. “Revenge for what?” I ask. “Why’d you say that?”
Dana bows her forehead to her fist. “I don’t know. It’s just— Why not ask for money right away, from the start?”
“To drag this out,” I say. “And raise the pressure. So we’ll get frantic.”
She looks up. The bruise framing her eye has purpled. It’s a horrible color, rusty around the edges. “Maybe you’re right.” She takes a long, deep breath. “It’s a game. An awful game.”
“Yes.”
Dana’s chin lifts. Her eyes narrow. I hold my breath. This is the Dana I know, steel beneath silk. “They won’t win,” she says. “I’ll find out who it is.” Her lips tighten.
I nod, relieved. Thank God she’s back and fighting. If she crumbles, it’s all over. “This person doesn’t know who they’re messing with,” I say.
Her eyes flare like gas jets. “It must be someone I know—someone we know.”
I tilt my head, considering. It’s hard to know what’s worse: some shadowy figure or someone so familiar we assume they’re harmless.
Dana shakes her head. She grabs the note and slips it into her lambskin Dior clutch. “It feels personal.” She snaps her purse shut.