Chapter Twelve

Daniel likes his job. He likes it a lot, probably too much.

He has never looked forward to the end of the semester so much in his entire life, not even when he was still a desperately homesick college freshman. There are only two weeks left to go, he reminds himself incessantly as he drags himself to class on Tuesday morning, trying to project a sense of normalcy he doesn’t feel.

“How’re everyone’s projects coming along?” He greets the anthro section with far more enthusiasm than he feels. It’s his turn to teach today. Colette sits next to him at the front of the classroom, but her brain is clearly elsewhere. Five students wrote emails that they’re not feeling up to coming to class.

Daniel’s question is answered with apathy. No one so much as shakes their head.

“Anyone do their recordings yet?”

A few hands rise.

“That’s great.” He wants to crawl into a hole and never come out. He plasters on a smile so it might seem like he still has some will to live left over. “Lamar, you were going to record a basketball practice, right?”

Lamar nods.

“Any interesting anthropological notes thus far?”

Lamar shrugs.

Daniel stares him down until Lamar rolls his eyes and says, “Well, the team makes a lot fewer gross jokes when they know they’re being recorded.”

“Awareness of observation.” Daniel nods. “Remember, Professor Ravel talked about the difficulties inherent in participant observation in one of our earlier sections. You can definitely work with that for your final essay.”

“Professor Rosenbaum?” A junior with pink highlights in her hair raises her hand. He nods to her to indicate she should go on. “Lily finished all her recordings, and she had half her essay written. Can she still…I mean, if she gets better, will she…” She trails off, shaking her head.

Abruptly, Daniel gives up the act.

He lets himself slump into his seat next to Colette and slides his laptop shut. The projector, which previously displayed his PowerPoint for the day, now displays nothing but a blank screen.

“Look,” he sighs. “I’m getting the sense there’s not a whole lot of point in me going over how to upload your recordings and essays to the website today, huh?”

Headshakes all around. Even from Colette.

“Et tu, Brute?” he mutters to her, but a few students hear it, and it gets a weak chuckle. “Okay. Setting up geographic markers and linking them to your results—Thursday. Be there or be square. How about today we just talk about everything that’s been going on?”

No one responds, but no one protests either.

“Natalie, to answer your question”—he addresses the pink-haired junior—“I don’t know. If and when Lily returns to class, she’s certainly more than welcome to hand in any work she does late. I’ll be accepting it whenever she’s ready to give it. But as it stands, I haven’t heard from her or her family or from the dean.”

“Was she really having an affair with Professor Lombardi?” asks a sophomore who hasn’t said a single word in class before now.

Daniel looks over to Colette. She shrugs helplessly.

“It’s possible,” he allows eventually.

“We can’t really speak to that,” Colette jumps in. “We know Professor Lombardi was involved with students in that way, but I think it would be inappropriate of us to speculate about Lily or him.”

The student nods, subsiding.

“Did Andrew do it?” Lamar asks.

“Again, we should probably not speculate,” Daniel cautions.

“He’s super creepy.” Natalie clearly doesn’t care about whether or not it’s appropriate to speculate; she’s made her decisions. “He was, like, stalking Lily. He used to wait outside her classes.”

Daniel and Colette exchange a glance. This is the first they’ve heard that Andrew even knew Lily.

“Creepiness,” Colette comments with something approaching solemnity, “is not in and of itself a crime.”

Two days ago, driving back to Rhinebeck in Stacy’s van in pitch-black darkness after obtaining probably illegal access to a crime scene, Stacy said, “He did it, right? I mean, that’s…that’s…he definitely did it.” Her voice was high and squeaky and anxious.

“I’m not sure that’s enough proof,” Daniel hedged.

“It is certainly damning,” Colette pointed out.

They didn’t say anything else on the subject.

It got so hauntingly quiet in the car that Daniel asked about Stacy’s husband’s bad knee so there’d be some noise. He knows a lot more about deteriorating cartilage among high school PE teachers than he ever wanted to now.

Weirdly, he dreamt of jogging through the woods and his knee giving way under him two nights in a row. It’s strange that it’s the part his subconscious got stuck on and not the stalker altar in Andrew’s room.

Libbey, a soft-spoken sophomore, raises her hand. Daniel nods to her, hoping it’s not about Andrew. “Can we…can we add some sort of tribute on the website for the class? Not about Professor Lombardi or Andrew or anything, just about Lily and that we love and support her.”

“And Gianna,” a senior jumps in. “We should give her a tribute too.”

Daniel glances over to him sharply. The senior hunches his shoulders, looking defiant. “News spreads.” Several other students nod.

Daniel really should have thought harder about taking that job in Albany. It’s not a huge city or a huge college, but at least the community is big enough that not everyone knows everyone else’s business. Then again, Albany didn’t offer him tenure.

“Gianna was never in this class,” Daniel points out. “We can consider adding special thanks to her family, given that their shop is one of the recordings featured on the site, but I imagine it would be very intrusive to mention anything else.”

They spend the rest of the class period drafting a message of support for Lily to be featured on the class homepage as well as a brief message of thanks to the d’Angelo family in the page header, centered on the recording Daniel made of the garage.

Probably, the moral thing would be to take the whole recording down, but Daniel doesn’t know how to begin explaining that to his students, so he does what he always does—he takes the coward’s way out.

At least he shows the class how to create and style text blocks on the website using HTML and CSS, so they can all pretend something educational came of this class session.

“Ten more days,” Colette tells him as they leave the building and she heads for her office.

“Ten more days,” he agrees.

He’s worried about her. She was holed up in her office all day yesterday working; he’s not sure she’s eaten since Sunday night’s pizza. He wouldn’t describe himself as dealing with the situation well, but he was also not as close with Mario as she was, nor is Andrew one of his students.

It must be rough.

“Hey,” he calls after her.

She turns.

“Are you flying home for Christmas?”

The last couple years, he’s spent the holiday cozied up in his apartment, first with Jeff, whose family definitely didn’t celebrate Christian holidays, and then alone. He set up an away message on his email and sometimes even turned off his phone and spent two or three days just watching TV and sleeping. He has no idea if Colette was there or not. Usually, she flew to France at the start of break and returned sometime in between, and he never knew for sure how long she’d be gone because he never asked.

He’s beginning to think that wasn’t as nice a time as he told himself it was but rather a symptom of him being less happy than he could have been.

“No.” Colette pushes her braids over her shoulders. “It’s too much this year.”

“We should do something together. Something festive.” It earns him a ghost of a smile.

“I’d like that,” she says, when he turns to head away, then adds, “thank you.”

“No problem.”

But she shakes her head. “Not about Christmas. About…being so understanding. You have every right to be angry with me.”

Caught up short, Daniel freezes. “I don’t know about that.”

The truth is, some part of him is still angry. Colette calling the police about Gianna—it took away his chance to talk to Tony about things himself, to smooth over his own suspicions before Tony found out. But Daniel’s made such a habit of analyzing his own every action to death that he’s well aware that even given more time, he wouldn’t have started the conversation. He would have waited for Tony to do it, and he’d have lied and hidden his own suspicions. Maybe he would have kept Tony for a few weeks longer, but he’d have hated himself so much for lying that it would have been even worse in the end.

Colette rests her hand on his shoulder.

Abruptly, Daniel finds himself blinking back tears. “I should have told you when the police first started suspecting you. Heck, I should have told the police myself. I could have protected you.”

He’s so startled by Colette’s laugh that he realizes he hasn’t heard it since this all started.

“I think,” she suggests, “we should both keep away from the investigation. It’s neither of our jobs.”

“You’re right.”

“Let me know about Christmas. I can cook.”

He gives her a look.

“I can bring alcohol,” she corrects herself.

“Will do.” They part ways, and Daniel feels, if not relieved, at least less heavy than he has for the last few days.

He’s barely settled in his office when the phone rings. He hasn’t dared put it on silent since Sunday on the off-chance Tony might call after all.

Not that he would.

Not that Daniel deserves that.

It’s Stacy.

“Daniel.” She sounds harried. Daniel misses when she was always cheerful and it pissed him off. “I need you to go to the film building.”

“Why?” The film building is clear on the other side of campus.

“The police are letting Mario’s family come pick up his things today, and I’m stuck in an all-day crisis meeting with the president’s office about restructuring the Title Nine office. I know it’s a huge favor, but I don’t want to ask Colette. She seemed so…well, you know.”

He swallows down the hollowness in his stomach. He knows what Colette’s been like, and he’s hardly been better, but he can still help Stacy. Maybe doing something worthwhile will help him feel less like a spare part. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. I’ll head over right away.”

“Thank you, Daniel. You’re such a sweetheart. I knew I could count on you. You can get a key from Buildings and Grounds.”

It makes Daniel smile a little. There’s the old Stacy from before all this happened, shining through for just a moment.

It’s cold enough out that he debates driving, but nothing on campus is farther than a fifteen-minute walk, and he doesn’t need to add climate concerns to his ever-growing list of reasons to feel guilty. He’s not entirely sure what to expect when he gets there, and the walk might help clear his head. Anyway, Buildings and Grounds is on the way to the film building.

Mario never talked much about his family. When he did, it was needling commentary about Italian-American stereotypes or living in the suburbs of New York City. Daniel took it all at face value; Mario was an educated man and would certainly know best about his own heritage.

Daniel’s own preconceptions probably had him assuming that no matter what Mario said, his family was still his family. Maybe what Mario had been saying all along was that he was completely alone.

There’s a silver SUV parked in front of the squat, blocky film studies building. It’s one of the only buildings on campus added in the ’80s, which explains why it’s so ugly and why it’s so far away from everything else. As Daniel approaches, a middle-aged woman and a man about Daniel’s age get out of the car. Both of them wear puffer jackets over jeans and boots. Gray streaks her dark hair; his is cut short and gelled into a style that was probably fashionable ten years ago.

“Professor Rosenbaum?” the woman asks. “Professor Abrams told us to…”

“Daniel, please.” Daniel holds out his hand to shake hers. “You must be Mario’s family.”

“Yes.” She has laugh lines around her eyes and mouth so much like the ones Mario was starting to get that Daniel’s heart aches. “I’m Stefania, this is my son Enzo. You…you knew Mario?”

For the second time today, Daniel plasters on a fake smile. “Yeah, we were friends. I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Lombardi.”

She waves him off. “Stefania, please.”

“Stefania, then. It’s been…a huge shock to everyone here, I can’t even imagine what you’re going through.” He indicates wordlessly toward the building, and they head to the entrance, out from the cold.

“You’re very kind,” Stefania tells him as they walk. “To be honest, huge shock captures it pretty well. We hadn’t seen Mario for…well, a few years now. I didn’t even know he was living so close.”

“Oh.” Daniel can’t really offer anything more intelligent. He should have asked Mario more.

He leads them up the staircase to the first corridor on the left. There’s that Far Side comic stuck to the door.

Mario’s brother snorts as he reads it.

Daniel unlocks the door and lets them inside.

The air is stale. No one’s cracked a window in the last few weeks, ever since it happened. It probably took a while for the police department techs to go through everything here, but Daniel doubts they’ve returned since. He wonders if they checked it over again after they found Andrew Clayfield’s fucked-up little shrine, to look for evidence this was the place he impregnated Gianna d’Angelo.

Probably.

The thought makes Daniel’s stomach turn.

As Stefania wanders through the office, inspecting the stacks of papers, the rows of books and DVDs, Enzo turns to Daniel.

“Did he, uh…did he ever mention us?”

“Not really.” Daniel carefully doesn’t add that what little Mario did mention wasn’t complementary. “I didn’t know you…weren’t on speaking terms.”

Enzo sighs. “Yeah, figures.”

“Can I ask what happened? I don’t mean to pry. It’s fine if—”

“We run a restaurant.” Enzo looks away to examine a bookshelf full of DVDs of artsy movies. “My parents and me. My dad always saw it as the family business, thought Mario would pick it up. He didn’t, and now I’m the business partner, and Mario and Dad never forgave each other for it.”

With a frown, Stefania glances over. “That’s a little oversimplified, kiddo.”

“I don’t think Daniel here needs to know the details.”

Daniel swallows hard. So that’s what Mario meant about Italian-American clichés and being stuck in the past. So that’s what he was thinking about when he talked about getting trapped in the suburbs. It’s not some mystical backstory explaining away his behavior toward his students; it neither exonerates nor sentences him. It’s just the kind of thing that families do to one another.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get the chance to reconnect,” he says, trying to convey how much he means it. “I know Mario missed you and wished his family could see the life he built here.”

“Oh yeah?” Enzo snorts. “And how do you know if he never talked about us?”

“Good point.” Daniel smiles with as much equanimity as he can muster. “I’m going to give you some space, but if you need anything, I’ll be right downstairs.”

He escapes to the staff kitchen to make a cup of tea and stare blankly at the wall for a hot second.

The thing is, he’s sure Mario missed his family and wanted to see them again. No matter how many dumb potshots Mario took about them, Daniel is completely convinced because of Gianna. Why else would he go for the girl whose life and family most mirrored his own? Why else would he choose someone so like him in her choice to go to college and leave the family business?

Why would he leave her when she chose family though? Was he totally unaware of what he was doing in going after her? Daniel wonders what it was like for Mario, those last few months, knowing he got a twenty-two-year-old woman pregnant, knowing she wanted to have the baby, knowing he could have the exact kind of family he left behind all over again. The conflict that must have set loose in him…

Then, Daniel remembers Lily.

The brief kindling of sympathy for Mario that had started up in his chest flickers and dies. Instead, he aches with the lost potential. If Mario had lived, he could have straightened things out. Broken it off with Lily. Worked it out with Gianna. Worked it out with his family. Daniel has no idea if that’s what Mario would have done, if that’s even what he would have wanted, but now he’ll never even have the chance.

Still, someone should reach out to Gianna, ask if she wants her kid to have two sets of grandparents. Someone who’s not the asshole who got her on the police’s radar. Someone who didn’t spend a good two weeks thinking she might have killed her baby’s dad.

Daniel has no idea who that someone would be.

He drinks his tea in silence and wonders if he should have offered Mario’s family something. It’s not as if he can offer them any closure, or their son back, but he’s pretty sure there are some Milano wafers somewhere in this kitchen. They hide in the recesses of most kitchen shelves at Lobell.

After what seems like an eternity in terms of how often Daniel changes his mind as to what would be the polite thing to do, Stefania and Enzo come down the stairs.

“Thank you for waiting.” Stefania is at least polite. It looks like Enzo’s anger is here to stay. Daniel wants to point out that it’s not his fault Mario is dead, or that Mario hadn’t spoken to his own brother in years, but he doesn’t think it would be worth it.

“No problem,” Daniel tells her. You’re going to be a grandma pretty soon, he wants to say. Your son seduced a student ten years younger than him, he wants to say. Twice.

One time, when they were twelve and fourteen and their parents were going through a rough patch, Meredith took Daniel to Tilden Park to get out of the house for a while. There was no one around. It was November and bad weather in California terms, which meant it was gray and drizzly but still above fifty degrees Fahrenheit. They climbed on top of a park bench and screamed as loud as they could, and afterward, Meredith asked him, “Don’t you feel better now?”

Daniel did, but he hasn’t done it again since then.

Maybe he should start.

“Hey.” He tries to be casual about it, as if it were only now occurring to him. “I know this is a really strange time and all, and I understand that if you weren’t part of Mario’s life this might be uncomfortable, but I think there are some people around here who might want to pay their respects or attend a funeral if you’re having one. Would it be okay if I took down your number and let you know about that?”

Someday, he’s going to have to reckon with how good he’s gotten at telling believable lies.

“Of course.” Stefania dictates her number slowly as Daniel types it into his phone. “We’ll have to come back with a van sometime soon to go through his apartment and sort out what to keep and what to sell. I’m sure he has friends or, or…well, I’m sure there are people here who might want his movie collection or his books.”

“That would be okay with you?” Daniel asks.

Enzo shrugs. “It’s not like he left a will.”

He wasn’t expecting to die young, Daniel thinks. His throat closes up suddenly. “Right. Well, I’ll talk to people. If you let me know when you’ll be here again, I’m sure we can work something out.”

It’s probably the last thing Mario would want, his colleagues and friends going through his things and divvying them up like some yard sale. Daniel will ask Colette. She might have the clearest idea of what Mario would want.

If she can stomach the thought of doing what he would want.

What a mess.

He says goodbye to Mario’s family and slowly walks up to his own office. There’s something bleak and heartbreaking about the thought that he was actually one of the people closest to Mario when he knew so little about the man. It shouldn’t fall to him to make these decisions for Mario—who gets what, who knows what.

Then again, it’s not like it will make a difference to Mario.

Still, the idea of a life so unfinished, so many loose ends, so many possible regrets…it’s haunting. It’s not a thought Daniel wants to dwell on. He can’t even think about what his own death would look like. The very notion makes him feel like a skittish horse backing away slowly.

He calls Meredith instead.

“Hi.” She sounds almost excited to hear from him. He remembers her at fourteen, makeup already on point because she didn’t do things by half even then, yelling her lungs out on a park bench to make him feel better.

“Hi,” he says.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry? I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“For being a shitty little brother. I should have been there for you more, and I shouldn’t have made you run interference with Mom and Dad.”

There’s a long pause on her end. Then, finally, “I don’t know if you know this about little brothers, but they kinda have to be shitty. It’s in the job description.”

He would pretend to be upset, but he can hear the emotion in her voice.

“I’m gonna try,” he promises. “To be there more. At least over the phone.”

“And I’m gonna ask about your life more, instead of pretending it’s in California waiting for you to come back.”

“About time too,” he tells her.

They both pretend he’s not getting choked up, and then they spend ten minutes talking about Emily’s upcoming ballet recital and whether or not their dad would be interested in a personal Alcatraz tour for his birthday in January.

“He’s been four times,” Daniel argues.

“Exactly. He’s been four times, so it stands to reason he enjoys it.”

He tells her he loves her when he hangs up.

He hasn’t done that in too long.

Christmas is too short notice, but maybe he should fly home for spring break. He shoots his mom a text to ask if that would be okay before he can second-guess himself, and then he locks himself in his office and lets himself cry for five minutes.

He can’t tell anymore if it’s from grief or relief.

Once it’s over and he’s stopped feeling like he’s going to burst at the seams, he checks his email. It’s a habit more than anything, and even as he opens his laptop, he realizes how absurd it is, but he doesn’t know what else he would be doing. He told Colette he’d drive home at four, and it’s only one thirty. He doesn’t want to try working on next semester’s syllabus with his brain feeling like melted garbage, and none of his students have handed in essays yet. All that’s left is his grant proposal, and he really doesn’t want to think about murder, fictional or otherwise, right now.

Email it is.

There’s one from Mari, which is a nice surprise.

 

Hi Daniel,

I just wanted to let you know it was great to see you this weekend. I’ve missed hanging out with you. Maybe I’ll see you in Cali one of these days! Emails aren’t the same.

Also, and this may be overstepping (if so, I apologize), but I liked your new boyfriend. You two seem really good together, and it was great to see you let loose with somebody, I almost forgot how good that looks on you.

Happy holidays!

Mari

 

Daniel shoves the email into his “to-answer” folder on autopilot.

If he visits his parents over spring break, he could take a day to go see Mari. He’s missed her too. It would be nice to have coffee and chat like they used to when they lived closer together.

There are a few more emails in Daniel’s inbox he should take care of, something that looks important from the college president about Title IX. He has more than enough work to bury himself in as an attempt to ignore Mari’s email and his own ever-circling thoughts.

He’s going to regret it for his entire life if he doesn’t at least try to talk to Tony.

Mind made up, he grabs his keys, shoots Colette a text asking her to grab a ride with Stacy, and heads for the parking lot.