by David Bell
Hoffman looks around, glances at the door. “Why don’t we go down the stairs? We can talk more privately in the parking lot.”
Rebecca looks back at the closed door and then out at Hoffman. It’s dark near the building, just a few streetlights brightening the parking lot below.
“We don’t have to get in my car,” Hoffman says. “But we can talk and not worry about anyone hearing. You know, little pitchers have big ears.”
Rebecca doesn’t know what Hoffman is talking about. Pitchers and ears?
Is that from a poem?
Hoffman starts down the steps without hearing Rebecca’s response. She feels she has no choice but to follow him. The wooden stairs squeak as they both go down, and when they reach the bottom, Hoffman moves out into the parking lot and stands near the halo cast by one of the streetlights. He rubs his hands together. He isn’t wearing gloves or a hat.
“Well,” he says, “I’m glad I found you at home.”
“How did you know where I live?”
“Oh, that. It’s in the university database. I have access to that. We all do.”
“Okay. I guess.”
“I wouldn’t have come over if I didn’t think this was important.”
“Is this about my thesis?” she asks. “Or is it about all the stuff going on? You know, the stuff about Madeline.”
Hoffman blows on his hands. “That’s it,” he says. “Madeline.” He shakes his head, his lips pursed tight. “Such a terrible loss. You indicated in my office that you knew her. Isn’t that right?”
“I knew her, yeah. We took a class together.”
“Well, I’m sorry for your loss. This is a shock to everyone in the department. She was a bright light. And so young. Alas, she’s now the townsman of a stiller town.”
Rebecca rarely knew what Hoffman was talking about, but she remembers that poem from high school. “A. E. Housman, right?”
Hoffman’s face brightens. “Wow, good for you. See, we’ll make a poet out of you yet.” He rubs his hands together again. “Since it’s so cold, I’ll try to cut to the chase. I know you saw something at my house a couple of years ago, something that you may feel inclined to talk to the police about.”
Something she doesn’t even understand moves Rebecca half a step back toward the apartment building.
It must also show on her face because Hoffman says, “You probably talked to them already, right? As I’m sure you’re aware, Gatewood is something of a backwater, the kind of place great ideas go to die. But it also means it’s a place where everybody knows everybody else. And it’s clear you’re involved in this because you were friends with Madeline and you were at my house that night when a certain unfortunate incident may or may not have taken place. It made me look bad, and it made my friend look bad.”
Hoffman takes a step toward her.
Rebecca tries not to but can’t help moving back again.
When Hoffman shifts forward, his head moves in front of the streetlight behind him, casting his face in shadow.
“What I want you to understand is that things aren’t always what they seem,” he says. “It’s easy to look at a situation and to see only one part of the picture. And when you’re young, like you are, you may not understand all the subtle nuances and complexities inherent in the situation. Are you following what I’m saying?”
“I only told the police what I saw. That’s it.”
“But see, that’s the problem. It’s like when I help a student with a story or a poem. I provide them with a detail or an idea for the plot, and then students think it’s something I’ve really experienced. When what I’m doing is brainstorming. The police get ahold of one sliver of information, and they’re simply not creative enough to understand it or where it came from. They’re not writers like us. From their limited perspective, they can see only trouble. And then they try to destroy someone’s life. A good man. Do you understand?”
“They weren’t interested at all in the underage drinking or the pot smoking, Dr. Hoffman. They didn’t even care.”
Hoffman laughs. But it isn’t a real laugh. It’s a sound that indicates contempt, like Rebecca is so small and insignificant she can’t possibly get anything right. “See, that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. That narrow focus on the simplest things. I don’t care what the police think of my parties. Let them come and try to do something to me about it.”
Rebecca takes another step back. And then another. “Like I said, I only told them what I saw with Madeline—”
“Madeline was a troubled girl. From a troubled home. Look at the way she behaved. Faking her disappearance, making the police do all that work. Scaring her mother. What kind of person does those things? Someone who isn’t right. Someone with problems.”
“I don’t know what you want me to do. I already talked to the police.”
“I want you to understand that it’s always dangerous to talk about things that are more complex than you understand. That people can get hurt when the wrong things are said. Even if you talk about one person, it can reflect poorly on another person as well. There’s a ripple effect. Do you know anything else about Madeline? Anything else about what she might have been doing back here in town?”
Hoffman looks taller than he is. He seems to be looking down on her, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am.”
“You didn’t see her since she’s been back? Outside of the thing at the library.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Good, good. It’s best that we keep some things to ourselves. And I really am looking forward to working with you on your thesis. You’ve dodged the bullet on working with Dr. Nye, I think. You know he was the last person to see Madeline before she disappeared two years ago. And I wouldn’t be surprised if his name came up with this recent unpleasantness. That’s really what I’m worried about. I was just talking to a friend of mine about this earlier, as we had some drinks. How does Dr. Nye’s behavior affect the students? Or others in the community? Would you want to work on a thesis with someone like that? I’ve had to jump in and help on other theses when he dropped the ball. I’ve had to clean up his messes behind his back. And try not to bruise his pride, which, I suspect, is fragile as glass. For all we know, Rebecca, we’re going to find out that Dr. Nye is the person we should all be concerned about. And afraid of. Not my friend.”
“I just want to get my thesis finished.”
“And you will. I think it’s going to be a good one, don’t you? And we all want to make sure you pass it and are able to graduate in May. Right?”
“I definitely want to.”
“Good.”
Hoffman takes two steps forward, closing the distance between them, and reaches out with his right hand, placing it on Rebecca’s shoulder. It feels heavy, like a weight. He’s about to say something else when Rebecca hears the door open behind and above her.
“Rebecca?”
She turns and looks.
It’s Mikaila, out on the landing in her T-shirt and shorts, her long hair lifted by the breeze.
“Are you coming back in?” she asks. “We want to finish that movie we were watching.”
“I’m coming,” Rebecca says. “I’m coming right now.”
She slips out from underneath Hoffman’s hand and backs toward the stairs.
“Thanks for coming by, Dr. Hoffman. I guess . . . in class . . . I’ll see you there.”
“Of course,” he says.
But he remains at the bottom of the steps, looking up, watching her disappear back into the apartment alongside Mikaila.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CONNOR
PRESENT
Diana calls that night and tells me Bowman is still tied up with Zach.
“Si
t tight,” she says. “It may be tomorrow morning before you get her undivided attention.”
After I hang up, I go into the kitchen and find the remains of my smashed door still scattered everywhere. I need to clean that mess up, but I go past it, impressed by the amount of force Zach was able to deliver with just one solid kick.
I take the rickety stairs down to the basement and cross the room to the door leading to the outside. The one lacking a dead bolt that everyone and their brother has been using as a portal to my world.
It smells musty down here. The air is cool. Around the edges of the room, boxes and boxes of old crap are stacked, waiting for someone to go through it and toss it out.
I give Zach credit—he didn’t need to smash this door down. He must have used a credit card or knife to get past the tiny lock. He even closed the door behind him when he came in.
I spend little time in the basement unless it’s to do laundry. I look around and see an old kitchen chair, one with a broken rung underneath. It’s been down here hoping to be fixed since before Emily and Jake died, so I take it over to the door and wedge it under the knob. It fits well and has a purpose again for the first time in years.
But I’m not sure the chair alone will keep anyone out. I look some more and find a cinder block. I’m not sure why it’s here. I think it came with the house. When I pick it up, my fingers sink into the cobwebs inside it like cotton candy. I place the cinder block on top of the chair, hoping to make it harder for anyone else to come in. And I make a mental note to call a locksmith.
I wipe the cobwebs off on my pant leg and turn to go. When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I stop. I see across the room some boxes that hold items from Jake’s room. Clothes. Books. Toys he played with when he was little.
Just like the broken chair, they’ve been down here for years, waiting for me to deal with them. And I haven’t wanted to. I couldn’t bring myself to take the job on, and I always told myself I was too busy with other things.
There’s a lot of crap from the past I haven’t dealt with.
Maybe it’s time.
I go through the house and make sure everything is locked before I head back to my office and pick up Madeline’s story again and start reading. I sit on the end of the leather couch we inherited from Emily’s parents when they moved into a smaller home. I flip on the lamp, which casts a soft glow over a small portion of the room. I almost feel at ease and try to imagine I’m back in the past, reading a student story in the comfort of my warm home. And maybe Emily and Jake are out in the kitchen, working on his homework.
But I know none of this is true.
I’m in a new reality.
And this is confirmed for me when I turn to the third page of Madeline’s story.
The protagonist is entering the campus where she used to go to school, a campus that looks a lot like Commonwealth’s. And when she walks through the gates on the east side of campus, she passes a brand-new alumni center, one named after a graduate of the university who went on to serve for decades on the state supreme court. He bequeathed the university a crap ton of money for the alumni center, and it was built so fast, everyone joked the university was acting like they were afraid the judge was going to change his mind in the great beyond.
It’s a state-of-the-art Georgian building, redbrick with huge columns.
I look up from the page.
A minor detail about the landscape. Something I might enjoy and then move on from in any other story.
Except . . .
The alumni center wasn’t built or named until after Madeline disappeared. It wasn’t here when she was a student.
Which means the story was written since she disappeared. And was left on my desk for me to discover.
Now.
It’s Madeline trying to tell me something. To tell everyone something.
I go back to reading, my eyes moving over the words as fast as they can.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
MADELINE
FALL, TWO AND A HALF YEARS EARLIER
Madeline sat in Troy’s facing the door. She’d splurged when she’d arrived, even though her budget was limited. If she was being honest with herself, she’d hoped Dr. Hoffman would be there first. And he would offer to buy her a coffee, maybe even a muffin or a scone.
But Hoffman was frequently late—to class, to conferences—so when she came into Troy’s and didn’t see him . . . and she smelled the rich roasted coffee. The scones fresh out of the oven. She broke down and ordered.
And while she waited at the small table, two bites of the scone already gone, she marveled at how much better the coffee tasted there than the cheap stuff she bought in a giant can at the grocery store. She bought the same brand her grandparents used to drink, and she worried she’d made a huge mistake by indulging in the good stuff at Troy’s. She might never be able to go back to drinking the crap in her apartment.
Hoffman showed up fifteen minutes late, his messenger bag slung over his shoulder. He waved to her, a smile affixed to his face, and he went and placed an order at the counter, chatting with the barista as if he had all the time in the world. When it was ready, he carried the drink over to the table and sat down across from Madeline.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” he said. “A couple of students came by. Freshmen. And they think they’re going to fail my class. Which they are. Anyway, they delayed me. But I’m here now.”
“That’s okay,” Madeline said because what could she say? Should she scold her sixty-year-old professor for being late? Reach across the table and slap his hand like the nuns who had taught her grandmother? She’d given Hoffman the beginning chapters of her thesis. She hoped he wasn’t going to bring the party up. Madeline wanted to forget about it, not have it linger in her life. Sophia was already pissed, and they were probably no longer friends. She didn’t need any other trouble, especially at school. “I’ve just been enjoying my coffee. I don’t let myself do this too much.”
“It’s tough on a student budget, isn’t it? Of course, they don’t pay the professors much more these days. We’re living in austere, draconian times.”
They made more small talk after that. Hoffman lamented the political climate in the country—and on campus. And he claimed he must have been born in the wrong time because he longed for an era when things on campus were looser and freer.
“No one is engaged these days,” he said. “Not the students. Not even the faculty.”
Madeline listened. She’d learned it was best to let him go on and on during a one-on-one meeting. At some point, sometimes after thirty minutes or so, he slowed down his verbal waterfall and let her say something.
And many times Hoffman even said something interesting. He once told her a story about driving across the country with a group of friends the summer he finished high school. He made the trip sound so romantic, so adventurous, and as Madeline listened, she became aware of how rarely she’d traveled, of how little of the world she’d seen. Somehow it seemed as though her professors had all done so much and traveled so far. Europe. Asia. Australia.
New York. California.
She’d never been farther than a trip to Florida with her grandparents when she was five. It rained a lot, and they never entered the gates of Disney World because her grandfather said it was too expensive. Instead, they camped in a state park, and Madeline climbed on a rusty jungle gym with some kids from Georgia whose parents watched them all play while pounding beers.
Madeline wanted to see more. To do more.
True to form, Hoffman ran out of steam. “So about the beginning of this thesis.”
“Thanks for reading it.”
He waved his hand over the table, a king dispensing favors. “Anything to help. I know Dr. Nye can be . . . distracted sometimes. He’s had a difficult time. And our department chair, Dr. White, asked me to assist in any way I can, so since I w
as already the second reader, I thought maybe I could take a more active role in the project. Let’s not tell Dr. Nye, since it isn’t really protocol for me to step in this way. We don’t want to step on any toes. But I may have a different set of literary insights than he would.”
“Any insights at all would be appreciated. You’re right. Dr. Nye has been . . . kind of distracted.”
Hoffman pulled the pages—handwritten—out of his bag and tossed them onto the table. He pointed to them. “I see this story building to some act of violence. You’re not there yet, but you seem to be moving in that direction. I guess I’m wondering why you wanted to tell a story like this in the first place.”
Madeline cleared her throat. Her coffee was almost finished. She was down to the bottom of the paper cup, and the liquid was lukewarm. “It’s not autobiographical. But it is loosely based on something that’s happening to a friend of mine.” She went for her eyebrow and couldn’t stop herself. She gave it a good tug, felt one of the little hairs pull free with that satisfying pop. If Hoffman knew Zach and Sophia, might he recognize them in the book? “She’s having trouble with her husband. Or at least I think she is. See, I don’t really know, but I’m imagining where it could go. Some of it’s real, and some of it isn’t.”
“That’s my point,” Hoffman said. “I think I can tell when you’re on sure footing with your details. And then other times, it feels like you’re grasping. For example, all the details about Lilly’s family life and childhood. Her father dying, her mother having a succession of men. The protagonist searching for a father figure elsewhere. Her grandfather. Her soccer coach. That all feels very real.” He drank his own coffee, scratched his nose. “I suppose those details are . . . autobiographical from your friend’s life.”
Madeline felt her face flush. She swallowed the lukewarm—practically cold—liquid in the bottom of her cup, hoping to obscure her face. “Yes. Autobiographical.”
“But the stuff about what’s going on in the marriage between the couple,” he said. “The way they interact. The kinds of things they fight about. It feels . . .”