Her Perfect Life

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  The useful thing about a taped interview—you can look at it again. Hear it again. In real-life conversation, someone says something, with a tone or an attitude maybe, but then it’s gone. Did you interpret it correctly? You’ll never know, because it’s vanished, leaving only your possibly incorrect decoding and potentially destructive conclusion. I leaned forward as the tape rolled on, listening for one specific exchange I wanted to hear—and watch—at real speed.

  “So, did you have siblings?” I’m still not sure why I asked again; maybe subconsciously I wanted to see if Lily would react again, maybe it was unworthy of me. But hey, it was only tape.

  “Not sure that matters for this, Greer.” Lily scratched her forehead and rolled her neck, fidgety movements she knew full well would land this section on the cutting room floor. “Let’s move on.”

  “Mumma?” Rowen touched her mother on the arm.

  “What, honey?” Lily made a slashing motion across her throat with one finger, signaling Wade to stop rolling. Too bad Wade and I had a standing secret deal that no one but me—not even Lily Atwood—could tell him when to cut the camera. He’d MacGyvered the red On light to do what he wanted.

  “We have Aunt Cassie,” Rowen said. “Don’t forget Aunt Cassie.”

  I waited. Cassie? Aunt Cassie? A sister—maybe?—Lily had never mentioned. I thought about that picture of the little girl with the border collie. The one Lily hadn’t wanted to talk about.

  “That’s right, sweetheart,” Lily said on the tape. If I’d closed my eyes and only heard her tone, I’d have thought it was a moment of loving approval. But I’d seen her face. She’d meant exactly the opposite. Lily then looked at the camera, dead center. “Shall we move on?”

  CHAPTER 9

  LILY

  Hands clenched on the steering wheel and ignoring two yellow lights, Lily finally made it to Graydon’s long gravel driveway. She buzzed down her window. No smell of smoke. No sirens, she thought, no orange flames leaping high in the distance. No people running to their cars in the adjacent parking lot. No racing ambulances spitting gravel and speeding ahead of her, no swirling blue lights slashing across the shoulder-high hedge of flowering yellow forsythia. No SWAT teams in black suits stalking the campus for an active shooter.

  She made the final curve up to the circular driveway, pulling closer.

  Her phone trilled. Greer.

  Beyond the soft rise of lawn and landscape, the imposing gray edifice of the weathered stone building stood there as always. Not on fire. A parade of white blouses and navy pleated skirts was spilling out the wide-open front doors.

  Two by two, some holding hands, the students trooped onto the wide entryway sidewalk where earlier Lily had waved goodbye to Rowen. No girls were running. No one was crying, from what she could tell. Two tall female figures stood sentinel on either side of the front doors, clipboards in hand. Their posture seemed attentive, but calm.

  Her phone trilled again. She clicked Accept. Kept her foot on the accelerator.

  “Lily?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry, Greer, I know I’m late, but—” Lily began. She tried to make her point as she focused on the bobbing navy and white. Where was Rowen? “Smith called to say—”

  “What’s wrong?” the voice interrupted through the tinny speakers. “Where are you?”

  Lily scanned the sea of lookalikes, focusing, squinting, trying to spot the penguin-beribboned ponytail or the outrageously chunky white tennis shoes Rowe insisted on. She pulled over to the side of the driveway.

  “Graydon.” The girls coming out now seemed older than Rowe, but who knew. “Listen, Greer, can you call the school? Or someone? See if you can find out what’s going on?”

  “On it. But while I do—”

  One thing about Greer. She’d act first, ask questions second.

  “Smith called, said there was a situation at Graydon,” Lily went on. “Then he hung up.” Still no Rowen. Had she already come out? Was she still inside? It looked like a fire drill—or an active-shooter drill? If it was a drill, Lily didn’t care what kind it was.

  “Answering machine at the school,” Greer reported.

  “Damn. Me, too. I’m sure it’s—” What was she sure of?

  “I’ll try the newsroom assignment desk,” Greer said.

  “Great. Let me know. I’m getting out of the car. No. Wait. They’re … leaving? Or something.” The girls seemed to be headed toward the octagonal bandstand in the middle of what they called “the Meadow,” an expanse of lawn used for commencements and concerts and festivals, and once, that Lily remembered at least, a memorial service. “I’m going to go see.”

  “Lily. Be careful.”

  Lily watched the last of the emerging students. Had to be a drill of some kind. If it were an emergency, wouldn’t they have reversed-911’ed the parents? Like they did on snow days? But there had been no call. “Careful of what? Hang on, I’m switching off the Bluetooth.”

  “Seriously? What if he’s there?” Greer persisted.

  “He?” Lily had the phone in her hand now, clenched.

  “Have you actually seen Rowen?”

  “Seen? Why? Why wouldn’t I have seen her? Greer? Do you—”

  “I’m at the assignment desk now, hang on.”

  Lily felt the tiny bits of gravel through the delicate soles of her black flats as she trotted toward the students. Seemed as if nothing was deeply wrong. Adults stationed strategically between the school and the bandstand seemed to be guiding the students to a planned destination. Some of the girls who’d clasped hands were swinging them now, playful and carefree in the morning sun. She still hadn’t seen Rowen, but maybe—was Rowen still inside? And that was the emergency? And they were getting the other girls away? From what? The back of her neck clenched, she could feel the tears in her eyes.

  But no one had called her. If something had happened to Rowen, someone would have called.

  “It’s nothing.” Greer was back. And her voice had taken an odd tone. “And kinda ridiculous, but it’s kinda our fault. Since we did that story—from Smith, remember?—about how schools aren’t fulfilling their fire drill requirements, Graydon’s doing one a month. A pop drill, they’re calling them. Like a pop quiz. Unscheduled, spur of the moment, only the headmistress knows. Et voilà. This morning’s situation.”

  “A fire drill.” Lily hadn’t realized how fast her heart was racing until she felt it slow. It looked so peaceful now, seeing it through this “no problem” lens. Some of the girls now ran free on the Meadow, apparently released from the drill routine, their skirts fluttering, ponytails and braids dancing, even a peal of laughter floating across the greensward. She didn’t want to be a frantic hovering parent, she told herself, no reason to race up there like some hysterical mom. The sun warmed on the top of her head, and she wished for sunglasses. Heard the caw of a faraway crow. Why would Smith call her about a fire drill? How would he have known about it? Maybe he was connected with the school department—he’d given them the lunch thing, the fire drills. Now this.

  For a moment, Lily inhabited a separate world—an observer, invisible to the students and the teachers. She felt her forehead furrow at her own question. Why would Smith call her about a fire drill?

  A squirrel scrabbled up a nearby tree, startling her. The row of elegant cedars screened the faculty parking lot from the driveway. Sort of.

  “You there?” Greer’s voice over the phone.

  “Why’d you say be careful?” Lily asked.

  “Because—why would Smith call you about that? Something that’s nothing?”

  “Exactly.” Lily stopped. “Oh. Because he knew I’d come here.”

  “Yeah,” Greer agreed.

  “Or to get everyone outside.” Lily started walking toward the school. She wasn’t leaving without seeing Rowen. Helicopter mom or not. “Including Rowen.”

  “Yeah.”

  Her footsteps crunched on the gravel now, determined. Ridiculous how she could laser focus on ta
king down some miscreant, but her brain turned to butter when it came to Rowen.

  “Greer? You said, ‘Pop drill’?”

  “Yeah, you know,” she replied. “Unannounced. The principal—”

  “Headmistress.” Lily strode ahead, squinted against the sun, watched the closed front door. Wondered who was still inside, and why. “Maryrose Glover?”

  “Yeah. Apparently, she sets them up personally. So they’re a surprise to everyone. Makes it feel more real.”

  “How’d Smith know, then?” Now Lily could see the weathered board of the arched oak main entrance, the wrought iron flowers—iron roses, sometimes they called the students that, too—garlanded around the door’s perimeter. The heavy black door latch, also rose-decorated, had supposedly been there for more than a hundred years. The inner locks were state of the art, though, Lily had been told when Rowen enrolled. Our tradition is unchanged, Headmistress Glover had explained. But our futures must be financially secure. “How’d he know about the drill?”

  Lily could almost hear her producer thinking. “Good question.”

  “And, listen, Greer?” One of the teachers at the end of the sidewalk bordering the Meadow was coming her way. Caralynn Treece, one of Rowen’s favorites. The one who’d told her she might grow up to be an artist, and the reason Lily’s fridge was covered with drawings of Valentina and ponies and rainbows. Lily had to talk faster. “Remember he told us yesterday he had a story for us? But he’d hit a ‘roadblock’?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Remember, Rowen wasn’t at school yesterday. I’d kept her out at the last minute for the taping. But how could he have known? Maybe he’d waited for us to arrive at Graydon, but we didn’t. So this happened today, because he needed her to be here.”

  The line was silent for a beat. “He or she,” Greer said.

  “Because he’d know I’d race here as fast as I could.”

  More silence.

  “That I wouldn’t be at the station. And I wouldn’t be home.”

  “Ms. Atwood?” Caralynn Treece had lifted a hand in greeting, then gestured back toward the girls congregating on the Meadow. “Were we expecting you? We’re in the midst of a fire drill, so—”

  “But that’s dumb, Lily,” Greer was saying. “It’s like the boy who cried wolf. The next time he tells you something, you’ll ignore it. He’s undermining his own credibility. Why would he do that?”

  “Is everything all right?” Caralynn tilted her head, concerned, the multicolored beads in her graying dreads clattering. She pulled an airy green cardigan closer around her.

  Lily, trying to look reassuring, put up a forefinger, stalling Caralynn. One second.

  “Right?” Greer’s voice persisted. “Like the boy who cried wolf.”

  “I hear you,” Lily said. “But in the end the wolf was there.”

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 10

  CASSIE

  Cassie felt the warm midmorning sun wrap her in its October glow as she hurried up the cobblestone walk to Wharton Hall, a classically imposing gray stone behemoth at the edge of the Green. Okay, so, like, she was wrong, she’d been wrong to worry that being a college freshman was going to suck. Berwick College was actually kind of great. Even when she had a meeting with a professor on a Saturday. Especially when.

  She missed her family, sure. Dumb scraggly Pooch, who snuffled and whuffled and nudged her bare skin with his cold nose and loved her unconditionally. Even Mumma, complaining about Cassie’s too-tight jeans and too-short crop tops—It’s the style, Mumma, she’d argue. But Mumma, too, did it from love. You’re a special girl, Mumma always told her. And little Lily, who spent every moment with her face in a book. She was a cutie, for a little kid. And so annoying/not annoying, how she copied Cassie’s every move. They were “nice,” and “predictable,” and now she’d outgrown them. Roots and wings, her mother had told her. Now, flying on her own, or trying to, she understood what that meant. Family mattered. But she’d see them at Christmas.

  And now she could wear her Docs, with no tights, and her coolest, shortest pleated plaid skirt, and no one could tell her to change. She adjusted her backpack strap, making sure it didn’t drag at the shoulder of her sapphire-blue cropped cardigan.

  “Hey, Cassie! On the way to Wharton, too? How’s it going?”

  She looked up at the woman’s lilty voice. A cascade of hair, plaid skirt, and cardigan, coming down the steps of Wharton Hall, walking toward her. Cassie thought she recognized her from—the dorm?

  “Great.” Cassie smiled, trying to make her expression welcoming. She could not remember this girl’s name. She kept walking. “Sorry, so late! Gotta go,” she said over her shoulder.

  Carillon bells chimed from the tower across campus, classical something, Handel or Haydn. But the chimes meant ten minutes until her session with Professor Shaw. Professor Zachary Shaw. She got a little chill, thinking of him, but dismissed it. So inappropriate. She was eighteen. He was a professor. End of story. But still.

  The sun vanished behind her as she entered the subdued lighting of Wharton’s mahogany-paneled hallway, lined with money-heavy oil paintings of benefactors and patrons, wire-rimmed glasses and high collars, the earliest painted with thick glossy strokes and matted in velvet and framed in elaborate carved wood, then down the hall to the almost photographic black and whites of the silver-framed newer graduates; two with close-cropped hair and iconic black turtlenecks, a current governor wearing obligatory pearls, a Pulitzer winner, a confident blonde in a lab coat and stethoscope necklace. Cassie would be a success, too. Her life was only beginning. It would be perfect. She’d make it so.

  She wrapped her fingers around the curved brass handle of Professor Shaw’s office and pulled open the heavy wooden door. Then let it close again. She resisted the urge to check her cheeks and lip gloss and bangs one last time. She looked fine, all good, no reason to push it.

  “You going in?” A guy reached for the same door, backpack slung over one shoulder, his flannel shirt open over a black tee. “Or are you just playing with the door?”

  She felt his eyes on her, noticing. She ignored it, or pretended to. He seemed older than her, however that mattered. That girl she’d seen outside walked by.

  “Whatever.” Cassie gestured for the guy to go ahead. “All yours. Do you have an appointment now? I thought I was the ten.”

  But he didn’t move toward the door. “You Professor Shaw’s student, too? I’m Jem Duggan. I haven’t noticed you before.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said, edging her voice with teasing sarcasm. She put a twinkle in her eyes, knowing the blue of her cardigan matched them exactly. “I’m Cassie Atwood. Maybe I was invisible before?”

  He raised an eyebrow, seemed to consider her sanity. “If you say so,” he said. With one smooth motion, he pulled the door open again and disappeared inside.

  Cassie felt her eyes go wide. He’d ignored her? “Nice to meet you, too,” she muttered. She had to admit it took her a beat to pull herself together, get her confidence back, stash the older guy, maybe a senior even, in her “never mind” drawer. Because now it was five minutes until time for her meeting. With Professor Zachary Shaw. Who taught biology, she thought with a silent giggle.

  Smoothing her skirt under her, she sat on the one straight-backed wooden chair in the hallway outside the office door. Plopped her backpack on the hardwood floor. The bio lab was down the hall, where she had classes Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was the weekend now, and the place rang hollow, no students sharing notes, no bells or buzzers, no latecomers’ footsteps racing, no buzz of gossip or peals of laughter. The numbered wood-and-glass classroom doors, as well as the more basic ones labeled Supplies and Utility, were all closed. The place even smelled empty.

  Except for the office behind her. She had to wonder, had to, what would happen after that door opened.

  Now if only that Jim or Jem or whoever would leave. Invisible, huh? She totally suspected—in fact, she totally knew from how he’
d looked at her and kind of everything—that she, Cassandra Blair Atwood, was not invisible to Professor Shaw.

  NOW

  CHAPTER 11

  LILY

  “Mumma!”

  Lily hadn’t understood how on edge she was, how close to tears, until she heard her daughter’s voice, Rowe’s perfect little voice, carrying across the manicured front lawn. The wolf had not arrived. Every nightmare vanished with Rowen’s voice—the chemical spill, the fire, the abduction, the horrifying, unthinkable, unimaginable disaster. Rowe was safe, smiling, holding hands with Headmistress Maryrose Glover, coming toward her. To Rowen, Mr. Smith did not exist.

  “Gotta go, Greer,” Lily said into her cell. “Rowe’s here, I see her, and all is fine.”

  “So what happened? I still don’t get why Smith called. A fire drill?”

  “I don’t get it either. But yeah, a fire drill. Now I need to deal with this.” Lily squinted toward the headmistress and her charge, but they telegraphed nothing but peaceful serenity.

  She clicked off her call, then raised a hand in greeting, trying to recompose her face to signal nothing was wrong.

  “Hello, Headmistress,” Lily said. “I’m just here to—”

  “Ms. Atwood? Hello. To what do we owe this visit? And—Ms. Treece?” Maryrose Glover, Graydon’s headmistress for as long as Lily could remember, spoke as she strode toward them, regal and elegantly postured, escorting the blithely carefree Rowe, who stopped to pick a feathery white dandelion from the otherwise pristine grass. The little girl puffed the weightless seedpods into the sunlit space ahead of her.

  “Fairy dust, Mumma!” Rowe detached her hand from the headmistress’s and dashed toward her. “Did you come to see me? Is it a special day? Hello, Ms. Treece!”