Seven

I drove with Meaghan back to school on the Monday after the funeral, as she’d stayed with us on Sunday night. She was a bit more circumspect in her reaction to Chick’s death than her sister, whose only question to us as we put her cranky little ass back into her minivan was “Now do we get to keep the money?”

Crawford had slammed the door shut, but not before asking her which charity she’d like to donate it to, just to mess with her head. She had driven off in a purple rage, muttering undoubtedly about all the things she could do with five grand, starting with declaring her independence from the parental units in her life.

Crawford went back to work, investigating the untimely deaths of people he didn’t know, which was just the way he liked it. I returned to my slate of teaching, including the creative writing class, determining who had talent and who didn’t; I wasn’t expecting anything in the way of surprises, and that’s just the way I liked it.

I grabbed my messenger bag and made my way up to the fourth floor of my building, where I was met by Sister Mary and the woman she had brought by my office over a week earlier and about whom I had promptly forgotten. They were waiting by the door of the classroom, expectant looks on both their faces.

Mary was all piss and vinegar, just like always; the smell of her Jean Naté was particularly pungent today. “Alison, thank you for joining us,” she said, insinuating that I was late. I wasn’t. “This is Ms. Bannerman—”

The woman interjected, “Please. Call me Mary Lou.”

Mary didn’t seem to mind her interruption; God forbid I should jump in with any germane information, though. Her head might explode. “Mary Lou is the new student I told you about who would like to audit your creative writing class.”

“Audit?” I asked. That was the first I heard of that. It meant Mary Lou was using the creative writing course at St. Thomas as her own writing workshop. If she wanted to workshop her stuff with a bunch of kids, there was no one stopping her, but I wondered why a nattily turned-out woman who was closer to my age than that of the other students would choose our little university rather than a Gotham Writers’ Workshop class or even an online critique group.

She anticipated my question or saw the puzzled look on my face, because she had an answer for all of that. “My kids are in college, so I have a lot of free time on my hands, and my mother was a ‘Tommy.’” She smiled at some memory that she didn’t share. “I have a lot of fond memories of St. Thomas. The annual Visit with Santa in Memorial Hall, the Easter egg hunt on East Lawn … I love it here.”

This woman really knew her St. Thomas fun facts.

“And I’m writing a novel,” she proclaimed with so much joy it made my heart hurt.

“Great!” I returned in kind, noting that Mary was looking at me like if I made one false move—or didn’t respond in the way she thought was appropriate given the situation—she would devour me whole. “I’m thrilled that you’re in my class,” I said, channeling my inner Lee Strasberg. I motioned toward the classroom. “Please. Join us.”

Mary seemed satisfied by this incredible acting display and stomped off in her old-lady nun shoes, giving one backward glance that was both intimidating and hilarious at the same time. I stifled a giggle as I followed Mary Lou Bannerman, the next great American novelist, into the classroom. She took a seat right in the front row, just as I knew she would, and turned around to smile at the rest of the students, who wouldn’t have noticed if Chewbacca had entered, let alone a middle-aged dilettante who was the daughter of an alumna.

“Good morning, class,” I said. “This is Mrs. Bannerman—”

“Mary Lou,” she interjected.

“Mary Lou,” I said, “and she will be joining us for the semester. Let’s all give a warm welcome to Mary Lou.”

There was a mixture of “good morning, Mrs. Mary Lou,” and a bunch of other interesting non sequiturs, but that was as good as it was going to get. I got down to business.

Mary Lou was an apt pupil, just as I knew she would be; the older students usually are. I talked about our plan to generate a short story by the end of the following week, highlighting some of my favorites to give them guidance as they thought about their own. I asked a few students what they thought they would write about and got some interesting answers.

Mary Lou raised her hand. “So we will be doing novels at some point, right?” she asked.

“Well, we’ll start with short stories,” I said, “but if you find you have something there that can be turned into a longer work, feel free to keep going with your plot and characters.”

She jotted some notes down in a Vera Bradley notebook; her pen was a very expensive and very large Montblanc. She looked up at me expectantly.

“Would you like to share what you’ll be writing about?” I asked.

She nodded and turned toward the class. “I’ll be writing about my husband’s murder.”