It had taken nearly seven hours to drive from Washington through Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey to the town of Cornwall-on-Hudson.
It was not a trip Jean Sheridan enjoyed making—not so much because of the distance, but because Cornwall, the town in which she had grown up, was filled with painful memories.
She had promised herself that no matter how persuasively charming Jack Emerson, the chairman of their twentieth high school reunion committee, attempted to be, she would plead work, other commitments, health—anything to avoid being part of it.
She had no desire to celebrate her graduation twenty years ago from Stonecroft Academy, even though she was grateful for the education she’d received there. She didn’t even care about the “Distinguished Alumna” medal she’d be receiving, despite the fact that the scholarship to Stonecroft had been a stepping-stone to the scholarship to Bryn Mawr and then the doctorate at Princeton.
But now that a memorial for Alison had become part of the reunion schedule, it was impossible for her to refuse to attend.
Alison’s death still seemed so unreal that Jean almost expected the phone to ring and hear that familiar voice, the words clipped and rushed as though everything had to be said in the space of ten seconds: “Jeannie. You haven’t called lately. You’ve forgotten I’m alive. I hate you. No, I don’t. I love you. I’m in awe of you. You’re so damn smart. There’s a premiere in New York next week. Curt Ballard is one of my clients. An absolutely terrible actor, but so gorgeous nobody cares. And his latest girlfriend is coming, too. You’d faint if I even whispered her name. Anyhow, can you make it next Tuesday, cocktails at six, the film, then a private dinner for twenty or thirty or fifty?”
Alison always did manage to get that kind of message across in about ten seconds, Jean thought, and Alison was always shocked when ninety percent of the time Jean couldn’t drop everything and race to New York to join her.
Alison had been dead almost a month. Impossible as that was to believe, the fact that she might have been the victim of foul play was unbearable. But during her career she had made scores of enemies. No one got to head one of the largest talent agencies in the country without being hated. Besides, Alison’s rapier-like wit and biting sarcasm had been compared to the stinging utterances of the legendary Dorothy Parker. Was someone whom she had ridiculed or fired been angry enough to kill her? Jean wondered.
I like to think that she had a fainting spell after she dove into the pool. I don’t want to believe that anyone held her under the water, she thought.
She glanced at the shoulder bag beside her on the passenger seat, and her mind raced to the envelope inside it. What am I going to do? Who sent it to me and why? How could anyone have found out about Lily? Is she in trouble? Oh, God, what shall I do? What can I do?
These questions had caused her weeks of sleepless nights ever since she had received the report from the laboratory.
She was at the turnoff that led from Route 9W to Cornwall. And near Cornwall was West Point. Jean swallowed over the lump in her throat and tried to concentrate on the beauty of the October afternoon. The trees were breathtaking with their autumn colors of gold and orange and fiery red. Above them, the mountains, as always, were serenely calm. The Hudson River Highlands. I’d forgotten how beautiful it is here, she thought.
But of course that thought led inevitably to the memory of Sunday afternoons at West Point, sitting on the steps of the monument on an afternoon such as this. She had begun her first book there, a history of West Point.
It took ten years to finish, she thought, mainly because for a long time I simply couldn’t write about it.
Cadet Carroll Reed Thornton, Jr., from Maryland. Don’t think about Reed now, Jean warned herself.
The turn from Route 9W onto Walnut Street was still an automatic reaction rather than a considered decision. The Glen-Ridge House in Cornwall, named after one of the town’s large boardinghouses of the mid-nineteenth century, was the hotel chosen for the reunion. There had been ninety students in her graduating class. According to the latest update she’d received, forty-two of them were planning to attend, plus wives and husbands or significant others, and children.
She hadn’t had to make any of those extra reservations for herself.
It had been Jack Emerson’s decision to have the reunion in October rather than June. He’d done a poll of the class and determined that June was when their own kids were graduating from high school or grammar school, making it more difficult for them to get away.
In the mail she’d received her ID badge with her senior class picture on top and her name emblazoned under it. It had come with the schedule of events for the weekend: Friday night, opening cocktail party and buffet. Saturday, breakfast buffet, tour of West Point, the Army-Princeton football game, and then cocktail party and black-tie dinner. Sunday was supposed to have concluded the reunion with a brunch at Stonecroft, but after Alison’s death it had been decided to include a morning memorial service in her honor. She had been buried in the cemetery adjacent to the school, and the service would be at graveside.
In her will, Alison had left a large donation to the scholarship fund at Stonecroft, which was the primary reason for the hastily planned memorial ceremony.
Main Street doesn’t feel very different, Jean thought as she drove slowly through the town. It had been many years since she’d been here. The summer she graduated from Stonecroft, her father and mother had finally split, sold the house, and gone their separate ways. Her father was now managing a hotel in Maui. Her mother had moved back to Cleveland where she had been raised and had married her high school sweetheart. “My biggest mistake was not marrying Eric thirty years ago,” she’d gushed at the wedding.
And where does that leave me? That was the thought that ran through Jean’s mind at that moment. But the breakup had at least meant the merciful end of her life in Cornwall.
She resisted the impulse to detour to Mountain Road and drive past her old home. Maybe I will sometime over the weekend, she thought, but not now. Three minutes later she was pulling into the driveway of the Glen-Ridge House, and the doorman, a professionally warm smile creasing his face, was opening the door of the car and saying, “Welcome home.” Jean pushed the button for the trunk and watched as her garment bag and suitcase were scooped up.
“Go right to the check-in desk,” the doorman urged. “We’ll take care of the luggage.”
The hotel lobby was clubby and warm, with deep carpeting and comfortable groupings of chairs. The front desk was to the left, and diagonally across from it Jean could see that the bar was already filling with pre–cocktail party celebrants.
A banner over the front desk welcomed the Stonecroft reunion class.
“Welcome home, Ms. Sheridan,” said the clerk, a man in his sixties. His smile revealed glistening white teeth. His badly dyed hair exactly matched the finish on the cherrywood desk. As Jean gave him her credit card, she had the incongruous thought that he might have cut a chip from the desk to show his barber.
She wasn’t ready to deal with any of her old classmates yet and hoped she could get to the elevator without being stopped. She wanted to have at least a quiet half hour while she showered and changed, before she had to put on her badge with the picture of the frightened and heartbroken eighteen-year-old girl she had been, and join her former classmates at the cocktail party.
As she took the room key and turned, the clerk said, “Oh, Ms. Sheridan, I almost forgot. I have a fax for you.” He squinted at the name on the envelope. “Oh, sorry. I should be calling you Dr. Sheridan.”
Without replying, Jean ripped open the envelope. The fax was from her secretary at Georgetown: “Dr. Sheridan, sorry to bother you. This is probably a joke or mistake, but I thought you’d want to see it.” The “it” was a single sheet of paper that had been faxed to her office. It read, “Jean, I guess by now you’ve verified that I know Lily. Here’s my problem. Do I kiss her or kill her? Just a joke. I’ll be in touch.”
For a moment Jean felt unable either to move or think. Kill her? Kill her? But why? Why?
He had been standing in the bar, watching, waiting for her to come in. Over the years he’d seen her picture on her book jackets, and every time he did, it was a shock to see that Jeannie Sheridan had acquired such a classy look.
At Stonecroft she’d been one of the smart but quiet ones. She’d even been nice to him in an offhand sort of way. He’d started to really like her until Alison told him how they’d all made fun of him. He knew who “they” were: Laura and Catherine and Debra and Cindy and Gloria and Alison and Jean. They used to sit at the same table at lunchtime.
Weren’t they cute? he thought as the bile rose in his throat. Now Catherine and Debra and Cindy and Gloria and Alison were gone. He’d saved Laura for last. The funny part was that he still wasn’t sure about Jean. For some reason he wavered about killing her. He still remembered the time when he was a freshman and had tried out for the baseball team. He’d been cut right away and had started to cry, those baby tears that he never could hold back.
Crybaby. Crybaby.
He’d run off the field, and a little later Jeannie had caught up with him. “I didn’t make the cheerleader squad,” she said. “So what?”
He knew she had followed him because she felt sorry for him. That’s why something told him that she hadn’t been one of the ones who made fun of him for wanting to take Laura to the prom. But then she had hurt him in a different way
Laura had always been the prettiest girl in the class—golden blond, china blue eyes, great body, noticeable even in the Stonecroft skirt and blouse. She was always sure of her power over the guys. The words “come hither” had been meant for her to utter.
Alison had always been mean. As a writer for the school paper, her “Behind the Scenes” column was supposed to be about school activities, but she always managed to find a way to take a dig at someone, like in a review for the school play when she’d written, “To everyone’s surprise, Romeo, a.k.a. Joel Nieman, managed to remember most of his lines.” Back then the popular kids thought Alison was a riot. The nerds stayed away from her.
Nerds like me, he thought, savoring the memory of the look of terror on Alison’s face when she saw him coming toward her from the pool house.
Jean had been popular, but she hadn’t seemed like the other girls. She’d been elected to the student council, where she’d been so quiet you’d think she couldn’t talk, but anytime she opened her mouth, whether there or in class, she always had the right answer. Even then she’d been a history buff. What surprised him was how much prettier she was now. Her stringy light brown hair was darker and fuller, and cut like a cap around her face. She was slim, but not painfully thin anymore. Somewhere along the way she’d also learned how to dress. Her jacket and slacks were well cut. Wishing he could see the expression on her face, he watched as she shoved a fax into her shoulder bag.
“I am the owl, and I live in a tree.”
In his head he could hear Laura imitating him. “She has you down pat,” Alison had screeched that night twenty years ago. “And she told us you wet your pants, too.”
He could imagine them all making fun of him; he could hear their shrill gales of mocking laughter.
It had happened way back in the second grade when he was seven years old. He’d been in the school play. That was his line, the only thing he had to say. But he couldn’t get it out. He’d stuttered so much that all the kids on stage and even some of the parents began to snicker.
“I ammm th-th-the oooooowwwwwlllll, and, and I livvvvve in aaaaaa . . .”
He never did get the word “tree” out. That was when he burst out crying and ran off the stage holding the tree branch in his hand. His father had slapped him for being a sissy. His mother had said, “Leave him alone. He’s a dopey kid. What can you expect? Look at him. He’s wet his pants again.”
The memory of that shame mingled with the imagined laughter of the girls and swirled in his head as he watched Jean Sheridan get into the elevator. Why should I spare you? he thought. Maybe Laura first, then you. Then you can all have a good laugh at me, all of you together, in hell.
He heard his name being called and turned his head. Dick Gormley, the big baseball hero of their class, was standing beside him in the bar, staring at his ID. “Great to see you,” Dick said heartily.
You’re lying, he thought, and it’s not great to see you.
