With Peter’s resignation, the faculty lounge transformed into an amphitheater where tidbits of information—the age of the girl, other affairs—were tossed into the ring to be salivated over and torn apart. I began isolating myself, eating lunch in my locked classroom, entering and leaving the school through a service door.
More and more, the one relief of my day was arriving home to Evangeline and Rufus. But George too was a source of comfort. Since halting the clearness committee, I’d seen more of him than I had in years. He’d stop by in the evenings with a quart of ice cream or a mini-cake from Safeway or both. Each time we dug into the caramel swirl or layers of gooey chocolate, I’d look at that belly of his and think it couldn’t be doing him any good.
While he enjoyed sharing a vice, it was more than that. He hoped to persuade me to reconvene the committee. But when I said no with firm conviction, he never raised it again. Freed of that tension, our conversations took on a more relaxed shape, and I remembered how close we’d once been.
One evening after Evangeline had gone to her room, he stretched his arms across the back of the sofa as if planning to stay awhile. He talked about the aging of our meeting, the loss of the young people, and questioned how our meeting could continue in the decades to come. I expressed regret that Daniel had quit years before.
George was quiet for a bit. “You know,” he said, “I don’t think any of my children will continue as Quakers. Not after they leave home. It’s not that they disapprove or are rebelling. Nothing like that. It’s just that silence doesn’t speak to them.
“Sometimes I wonder what is happening to their brains, the way our devices are making us all ADD. We’re like birds pecking at a feeder for the next fix of seed . . .”
George went on like this, the lilt and gravity of his ponderings familiar. Sounding, I realized, like my father. And I remembered then the times my father had not been silent, the times he opened his heart and mind to me. That night, I entered a room I’d forgotten was there. It’s hard to fully express the feeling it roused in me, being in my home with this man named George, this man who, though never having learned the lyrics or melody, was somehow singing a lost song from my childhood.
I DIDN’T USUALLY SEE GEORGE on the weekend and was surprised when he knocked at the door on a Saturday morning in early April. When he landed at the kitchen table and helped himself to the buttered toast I’d planned to eat, I suggested we take Rufus for a long walk.
A few minutes later, the dog was trotting down the trail before us, the alder and birch in tender leaf, bush roses starting to bud. We talked about his wife’s job as comptroller for the hospital and struggles with his kids—an adolescent crush, a disappointing SAT score. It’d been a long time since anyone had talked to me about their own concerns, particularly about their children. It was the most generous thing he could have done.
When we arrived home, I poured him a final cup of coffee, and he asked how I saw things going after the baby arrived. I told him I was feeling a little overwhelmed, that Evangeline desperately needed a woman in her life. I worried I’d made a mistake taking her in.
“I was certain God sent her to me for a reason. I’d just lost Daniel, and there she was. Alone and pregnant.”
“You knew about the baby?”
I nodded. “From the first days. But I still don’t know who the father is,” I said. “I don’t think she does either. She did know the boys though. She met them shortly before the murder.”
“And what about Lorrie? Does she know about the connection?”
“I think so. She and Evangeline got pretty close when I was in Pennsylvania.” I puffed out a laugh. “You should have seen them together, the way they would talk.”
“What happened to her?”
“To Lorrie?” I was being purposefully dense.
“Yes, Lorrie.” He lifted an eyebrow. “The woman in Evangeline’s life. Didn’t you just say she needs one?”
I fumbled with my coffee, took a sip. “Lorrie stopped coming by.”
“Stopped? Just like that?”
I nodded.
“Evangeline must miss her.”
I nodded again.
“And when you talked to Lorrie about why she’d abandoned Evangeline, what did she say?”
I swallowed, said I hadn’t had that conversation with her.
He regarded me awhile. “Well, you’re a persuasive man, Isaac. I’m sure when you do, she’ll reconsider. When the heart leads, way opens.”
He stood. “Amy put together a big lasagna for tonight, and the kids all have better things to do. You want to come over and help us eat it?”
I said I would and saw him out.
WHEN I ARRIVED BACK FROM GEORGE’S AROUND NINE THIRTY, Evangeline’s door was closed, her room dark. Though Rufus was sleeping in the kitchen, I thought nothing of it. She often left him out if I was getting home late, not wanting him to wake her on my return.
It wasn’t until ten the following morning that I finally knocked on her door. She could easily sleep till noon, but I hadn’t heard her even once during the night. When she didn’t respond, I cracked the door.
“Everything okay?”
Again, no answer, and I flipped on the light. Her bed was made, the floor empty of its usual clutter. On her pillow was a folded piece of paper, my name on the outside. My hands trembled as I opened it.
I don’t want to be anyone’s “mistake.” Evangeline.
I flipped it over thinking there might be more. Finding nothing, I stood there, unable to move for several minutes. Then I stormed to the kitchen, threw the note on the counter. I ransacked a drawer, yanked out an oven mitt in which I’d stashed a hundred dollars. The money was gone, another note in its place: I’m sorry. I’ll pay you back somehow. I promise.
I slumped onto a kitchen chair and stared at words written in a girl’s language I had yet to learn. Jolting upright, I tore the notes into bits and kicked over a chair. When that solved nothing, I sent another chair flying, then rampaged through the house, throwing open closets and drawers. Finding the girl’s once-cluttered medicine cabinet now bare, I slammed it shut, the mirror cracking down the middle. I opened and slammed it again. Then again. And again. I slammed it until glass broke free and sliced the air in arcs of fragmented light.
I slammed it until the last shard exploded in the bathroom sink.