Chapter 19

MISS CRENSHAW SUSPENDED UPPER-SCHOOL CLASSES during the week following the discovery of Cale’s body, announcing to a chapel full of pale and weepy girls that preparations for the play must move into full swing. Inwardly, I blessed her for providing this distraction, for I could not imagine holding class after such a shock. In any case, there was much to do before the big event. Drama and music rehearsals filled each day, along with scenery and costume adjustments. Soon the girls would crowd into the kitchen to prepare treats and plan every last detail for the reception to be held on the capitol building lawn after the play.

With so much to do, there was little time for any of us to contemplate the horror of Cale’s death or Eli’s betrayal.

After all my undignified sobbing in the infirmary, I turned numb. During the day I kept busy with the students, running lines and blocking scenes again and again. The repetition was soothing. I knew the girls were being pushed to the breaking point, but I didn’t care. For the first time, I was an efficient teacher—ruthless, even. The power I wielded over my students distracted me from truths I couldn’t face.

At night I listened for the tapping sound, but it never came. Strangely enough, I missed the steady noise that had been my companion during long nights of agonizing over Eli. If Ella had been trying to contact me, why was she silent now? Because Cale’s body had finally been found? I thought back to the night of the storm, cringing at the memory of shattering glass, and wondered who had stood below my window. A man? Or a phantom?

No funeral was held for Cale. According to Olivia, his parents drove up in their wagon and took the body away. He would be buried on their own land. A few words of commemoration were spoken at the following Sunday’s seminary chapel service, but only a fraction of the girls were in attendance. Perhaps the churches in town took more time to remember him. For so long he’d been the wild boy who left town when Ella died—a boy many had thought responsible for her death. I hoped someone took the time to eulogize him properly. But were there enough words to wipe the dark smear from his memory?

I knew the students whispered of Eli Sevenstar, but I didn’t listen for the details. Just hearing his name was like a knife in my heart. Olivia shared the tidbits of information she came across, conveying the specifics in a detached manner so as not to upset me. From her I learned that the sheriff and his men had searched the town and surrounding countryside but could find no trace of Eli. As far as they could determine, he’d packed a small bag and left the same day Cale’s body was discovered. He’d not taken the stage to Gibson Station, nor had he boarded the train. His parents claimed not to have seen him, and Larkin Bell knew nothing.

Eli had simply vanished.

If I’d had my way, I would have operated in my unfeeling manner until the end of term—pushing the girls through the spring play and then pushing them through final examinations. That way I’d be too busy to think overmuch … or feel. But Olivia wouldn’t allow it. True to form, she had to talk about everything, and I could no longer rely on Crenshaw to forestall our late-night visits.

“You still haven’t told me exactly what happened that night of the storm,” Olivia said one evening, after inviting herself to my room. “You were screaming in terror. Was it just the window shattering? Or was it more?”

I moaned pitifully.

“Willie?”

“The tapping came again that night. I hadn’t heard it for a while.”

“Ella’s tapping.” She glanced at the window, her expression thoughtful. “Are you certain it wasn’t just the storm?”

“Something hit my window, Olivia. A pebble was thrown, and it cracked the glass.”

She blinked. “Who? Did you see someone?”

I thought back, trying to remember the sequence of events. “I stood by the window, waiting for the lightning so I could see. In the first flash, I saw nothing. Not a soul near the school. But in the next flash …” I trailed off, my pulse thumping at the memory.

“You saw someone.” Olivia leaned in, her eyes gleaming.

I shook my head, recoiling from the memory. “I hardly know how to put this, but it didn’t seem like a person. It was a shadow, shaped like a man, but somehow not human.” I met her gaze. “I know it makes no sense. I’ve told myself the rain was playing tricks with my vision. But, really, it had nothing to do with my eyes. Some deeper sense, something in my blood, told me it wasn’t a man that stood below my window. And you know what? I think Mae saw it too.”

“You don’t think it was Eli?”

“I can’t imagine why Eli would be standing underneath my window on the very night that Cale’s body washed up on the bank of the river.”

“Cale …,” Olivia murmured. Then she gasped, and my heart pounded to see the color drain from her cheeks.

“What about him?”

“It was Cale,” she said in a whisper.

I flinched. “Oh my God.”

“We’ve had it all wrong,” she said. “The tapping on the window—it has been Cale all along!”

I considered this. “But the accidents in the school—that must have been Ella, right? She was angry with Fannie and Lucy, so her spirit turned vengeful.”

Olivia raised an eyebrow. “Did it? I confess that notion always troubled me. You never knew Ella. She was so good-natured. Flighty, yes, and far too starry-eyed about romance—I think she drove the boys quite mad at times. But she was not one to hold grudges.”

“Dr. Stewart said something similar once,” I murmured. “But that still doesn’t explain the hauntings in the school.”

“Actually, it’s starting to make sense to me.” She took a breath. “I must calm down, so I can explain.” She lowered her voice, speaking slowly. “You’ve been plagued by that tapping noise on your window for so long—perhaps that’s what drove the students from the room in the first place. With so much spirit activity, one would think we could have contacted Ella in her own room. But we couldn’t, and it’s because the spirit has always been Cale, and he couldn’t actually be in a girl’s room at the seminary—”

“Wait,” I broke in. “Can’t a ghost go wherever it wishes?”

She frowned. “I can’t say for certain, but according to my grandmother, revenants return to familiar places, and they often follow the same paths—the same rules, even—that they followed when alive. Cale never would have been allowed upstairs at the seminary; therefore, he could only communicate from the outside. Didn’t you say that Ella often left the school at night? What if Cale came to her window and threw pebbles, much like what happened the night of the storm? That would explain the tapping, wouldn’t it?”

“And the encounters downstairs?”

Olivia held up her hand. “Let me think a minute.” She frowned in concentration. “If we catalog all the accidents, you’ll see they occurred in places where male students had free access—the lower landing of the staircase, the first-floor water closet, the chapel …”

“And the parlor,” I said, shivering at the memory of ghostly hands on my neck.

“It all makes sense. Except …” She paused, her frown deepening. “Why would Cale hurt Lucy? They grew up together—I think they may have been cousins.”

A shiver snaked down my spine. “I know why,” I murmured. “Lucy told him Ella was meeting another boy at the river, but by that point the dalliance had been going on for months. Cale was furious.”

Olivia nodded. “He felt betrayed. The three of them were very close.”

“Lucy feared he’d hurt her for keeping the secret.”

“And so he did, but not in the way she expected.”

I sat still, considering her theory. “All along, the ghost has been trying to tell us that two people died that night?”

“And Eli was responsible.”

I cringed.

She patted my hand. “Once Eli is found, the revenant will be at peace. And so will we.” She sighed. “We were close to the truth on the night of that first séance, you know. You must have suspected something when you found that note in your room,” she said. “I wish you’d said more, but I suppose you had to be circumspect, considering your own feelings for Eli.”

“At that time, I suffered from jealousy rather than suspicion.”

Olivia was quiet for a moment, her eyes thoughtful. “What happened the night of the graduation planning meeting? Why do you think Eli went outside?”

“He said it was because he couldn’t stand to hear Fannie talk anymore. He seemed angry that no one acknowledged the anniversary of Ella’s death.” I glanced at Olivia. “But maybe it was guilt that forced him from the room?”

“Did he act like a guilty man?”

I said nothing, my skin prickling at the memory of how boldly I’d kissed Eli, and how he’d pulled me to him.

“Willie, you’re blushing!”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I put my hands to my cheeks, willing the flesh to cool.

“Of course,” she said gently.

“I’m afraid Fannie suspects something … about my feelings for Eli.”

Olivia’s eyes widened. “Why?”

“She looks at me knowingly whenever his name is mentioned.”

“Surely it doesn’t matter now. You don’t think she’d go to Crenshaw now that we know”—she faltered for a moment—“now that Eli is gone?”

“Oh, I could imagine her giving Crenshaw quite an earful.” I looked at her. “Olivia, why haven’t you lectured me on impropriety? How can you be so accepting of my feelings for Eli Sevenstar?”

Her expression sobered. “I don’t accept them. I could never condone a teacher having romantic feelings for a student. But that doesn’t mean I’m not sympathetic. I’m not blind, Willie. Those boys aren’t much younger than us, after all.”

“That’s true.”

Eli was older than me, but I couldn’t tell her that.

Olivia breathed a dramatic sigh. “So many teachers are doomed to spinsterhood. I look at Miss Crenshaw and wonder if I’ll share her fate. She seems content, but sometimes she must despair at the loneliness of her life, don’t you think?” She looked down. “Part of me is envious that you had a taste of love, even if it didn’t end well.”

“Didn’t end well? It’s not as though he spurned me for another. He is a liar and a …” I couldn’t say the word.

“I know, I know. But secret romances are so … soul-stirring, even when the hero turns out to be a villain.”

“I used to think so,” I said dully. “Now I am quite sick of secrets.”

Olivia merely nodded, smiling sadly.

How I wished I could unburden myself by telling her everything from the very beginning! But I couldn’t. Once I told her the entire truth, there’d be nothing left of the friend she knew, for that girl was a creature made up entirely of lies.