UnCatholic Conduct

by Stevie Mikayne

  Buck had keys to every office, she was sure of it. He was such a goddamned control freak that if he didn’t have them, he’d get them. Reminding herself not to let her personal feelings cloud her investigative progress, she made a quick mental list:

  Bex had been in her office, but not alone. She would never have access to keys after hours anyway.

  Jess would have a master key, but why would she snoop? She could just come to the door and ask for anything and Jil would give it to her. It wasn’t in her nature to do something underhanded. She was far too direct.

  The custodians—any of them—could have got into her office anytime they’d wanted. But why would they want to get in here? Who would know what they were looking for? She couldn’t imagine Brian snooping through her things. Marcel maybe, but whatever for?

  She found Jess in the hallway, monitoring students during break. Luckily, the bell went just as they saw each other. Jess beckoned Jil with a tilt of her head and Jil followed her around to the side door in an abandoned corridor. When she unlocked it and pushed through, Jil was surprised to find them standing in Jess’s office.

  “I didn’t realize there was a door here,” Jil said, making another mental note of things she hadn’t investigated properly. But why would you, the rational part of her mind argued. When would you ever need an alternate entrance to the principal’s office?

  “Neither did I,” Jess replied. “There was a bookshelf in front of it, and of course, no one ever uses this hallway. It’s a dead end since the new wing was added off the atrium. But when the fire inspector was here last week, he noticed the blocked entrance and asked that it be opened. I guess two doorways are better than one. It’s nice. Gives me a new view on the world. Hope you don’t mind. I wanted to try out this key.”

  “Who made it for you?”

  “Mary has all the keys in the front office. I guess when she looked, she found one labeled ‘Principal’ that was older than the others. Strange that I never knew it was here.”

  It was strange, entering Jessica’s office from the other side. The enormous bookshelf had been moved down several feet to allow access to the door, and now that Jil looked at it, she realized it would have been impossible to see the door from inside.

  “This is the old part of the building, then?” she asked.

  “Yes. It was constructed in the nineteen thirties, just before the war. The R building was added in the seventies when the school de-privatized, and later, when we started getting more flow than we could handle, they added the G building. Before that, there was a hallway of classrooms outside this office. They took those out to put in the new building, but that hallway was just left as an emergency exit, I guess.”

  Jil nodded.

  Jess sat at her desk, putting her whistle away in the top drawer. “So, are you feeling better?” She flipped open her laptop.

  Jil sank slowly into a chair at the meeting table. “A little.” She was too tired to try to keep professional distance. It was like fighting a polarized magnet, being drawn to metal.

  “Feel like talking about it?”

  “No.”

  Jess turned away a little. “Because I’m the principal or because I’m me?”

  “Because we agreed. You won’t ask, and I won’t tell.”

  Jess sighed. “I thought about what you said. It’s not fair and I agree. But since I already know, I guess it won’t hurt for you to tell me. Might make you feel better.”

  Jil hid a smile.

  “So is it girlfriend trouble?” said Jess, teasing a little.

  “No. Family trouble.”

  “Oh. Something serious?”

  Jil found it hard to meet her eyes. Bad enough that Jess had seen her looking such a mess in the staff room. She cleared her throat. “Terminal illness.”

  Jess reached over and squeezed Jil’s hand. “I’m so sorry.” Her eyes were mysteriously intense, like her emotions were so overwhelming, they had to come out through her irises.

  Jil squeezed back, then retracted her hand, half-afraid Jess could use the connection to read her mind.

  Jess sat back and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again, though for what, Jil wasn’t entirely sure. For touching her? For crossing that invisible line she could never quite place? She wondered again how much of a compromise Jess had to make to do this job.

  “It’s my foster mother,” she said, to fill the awkward silence.

  Jess started in surprise. “I didn’t know you were in foster care.”

  “It’s not something you put on a job application, I guess.” Jil attempted a smile, but felt hot tears pricking the back of her eyes. Anger. Sadness. Mostly sadness.

  “Do you—” Jess stopped herself.

  “What?”

  “Well, I was going to ask ‘Do you have anyone else?’ but that seemed too personal.”

  Jil shrugged. “I don’t care, Jess. I’m not cut out for a closeted life in any way, and keeping secrets from you only makes it worse.”

  If Jess read anything into her statement, she didn’t back away. In fact, she seemed to lean in closer. “Tell me, then.”

  Jil tucked her legs up. “I don’t have parents or siblings. I’m used to being alone. Elise came into the picture when I really thought I’d be bounced forever, and I really—I can’t imagine life without her.”

  Jess reached out again, laying her hand on Jil’s shoulder. “I’m so very sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

  Jil registered the heat of Jess’s hand, the closeness of her knee, almost pressing against her own. A faint scent of raspberries wafted from her hair. For a split second, Jil imagined cupping Jess’s head in her hand, and pressing her lips—

  “No,” she said, moving back in her chair, subtly taking herself out of reach. “But thank you.”

  “Why don’t you go home for the day?” Jess stood to let Jil out.

  Jil moved toward the door. “I don’t know what I’d do at home,” she protested.

  Jess shrugged. “Make some tea. Put on some nice music. Have a bubble bath.”

  Were her cheeks as pink as they felt? The last time she’d had a bubble bath, she’d closed her eyes and imagined Jess naked beside her…

  She swallowed quickly to mask whatever her face might betray, and smiled as Jess opened the door. “Thank you. But it’s probably better I keep busy. See you later.”

  *

  Back in her office, Jil heated up leftover spaghetti and sat down with a pile of tests. She’d promised her students that by Friday they’d be graded, which meant she’d stay until they were finished. No time for sitting in the staff room today. The way her mind was reeling, she would have spilled everything, like marbles cascading from their loose-netted bag, rolling across the staff room floor. She was lucky she hadn’t said anything confidential to Jess.

  She had managed to grade two tests when a rap sounded at her door. “Come in.” She realized, as her concentration was broken, that her spaghetti still sat in the microwave.

  “Hi, Miss.” Bex looked nervously around the door.

  “C’mon in. Close the door behind you, if you don’t mind. I’m grading tests.”

  “Oh.”

  Any other student would have asked if hers had been graded yet, but Bex didn’t even seem to register what she’d said.

  “What’s up?” Jil indicated the seat opposite her. A day of confessions, she thought. Bex might as well come clean too.

  “Not much.” Her chin quivered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Well…”

  “What’s going on, Bex? Is something bothering you?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Tell me. You can. Is it about Theo?”

  Bex shook her head.

  “Alyssa?”

  Bex’s shoulders stiffened. Tears streamed down her pale cheeks. “I miss her so much,” she choked. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.”

  At that,
Bex burst into tears—great, wrenching sobs that pulled Jil in like a tow rope. She put her arms around Bex and held her tightly as she cried and cried. Jil kept silent, waiting for Bex to speak.

  “She was finally going to tell her parents,” Bex sobbed. “But she couldn’t do it. It was killing her—the lying. But she was afraid.”

  Jil exhaled. “You guys were together?” she asked gently.

  “She didn’t want anyone to know. But she couldn’t keep it inside anymore.”

  “Is that why she killed herself?”

  “I don’t know,” Bex whispered. “I think there was something else. Something she wouldn’t even tell me.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. One day, she’d be fine. The next day, she’d be quiet and scared and not want to go out. I thought it had something to do with coming out, you know, like going back and forth between deciding whether she wanted to tell people or not.”

  “Did anyone know?”

  “Not really. I mean, my good friends knew, and they were pretty accepting and everything. Every once in a while we’d get a snide comment from someone. We were pretty discreet about it. It’s not like we flaunted it or anything. But still, it can be hard.”

  Jil had to clamp her mouth shut to prevent herself from telling this poor young girl how very well she understood.

  “How long had you guys been together for?”

  “Six months. I was her first…you know.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  Bex blushed a little. “Yeah.”

  “And was she yours?”

  “No. I was more, you know, comfortable with it. She wasn’t really sure how to handle it yet.”

  “And you think that had something to do with what she did?”

  Bex ground her teeth together tightly and pounded her fist against her leg. “I wish I knew. I keep going over it and over it in my mind, trying to figure it out. Why didn’t she come to me? Why did she just go and do it? I mean, God!”

  “Maybe she was afraid. Maybe something was bothering her and she thought sharing it would cause you problems.”

  Bex looked at her strangely. “I’ve kind of been thinking the same thing.” She leaned closer and looking over her shoulder.

  “Why?”

  Slowly, Bex reached into her pocket and uncrumpled a note. On the back, where the letter would have been folded and sealed, remnants of red wax remained. On the inside, in block letters, the warning WATCH YOUR BACK.

  A rap on the door startled them both. Operating on instinct, Jil pointed silently to the alcove. Bex crept into the space and crouched down, hidden behind the old armchair. Jil quickly clicked on a movie icon on her laptop.

  “Come in,” she called, looking intently at the screen as Buck Weekly barged through the door. “Hello, Buck.” She made a show of turning down the volume on her speakers. “What can I do for you?”

  “Oh, I thought perhaps you had a student in here.”

  “Nope. Just me and my video.”

  “Why haven’t you gone home?”

  “Busy prepping for tomorrow,” Jil lied. “I wanted to review this film before showing it to the class.”

  “Hmm,” Buck said. “I thought maybe you’d be finishing those report cards.”

  Jil pretended to be thoughtful. “You know, I’ve been giving that some thought. I’d really like this last test to be reflected on the students’ report cards. Given how many delays they’ve had during this term, I really don’t think I have enough information to grade them fairly without this test. I’m going to hold off doing the report cards until I’ve graded them all.”

  Buck’s face hardened. “I was really expecting them to be done this week.”

  Jil smiled politely. “Well, I understand, Buck. But I think this is what’s best for the students. It’s a difficult class, and I want to encourage them as much as possible.”

  “And when do you expect to have the grades?”

  “Oh, Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. I have one or two who still need to write the test.” Absolute crap. There hadn’t been a single student absent the day of the test.

  “When are they writing?”

  “Well, it’ll have to be Monday now.” Jil smiled again. “Was there anything in particular you needed?”

  “No,” Buck grumbled. “I just saw your light on and thought I’d stop in.”

  “Well, thanks,” Jil said, turning back to her video. “I’ll just get back to work then.”

  Buck said nothing, but the vigor with which the door closed behind him said it all.

  As soon as the room was clear, Bex crept out from behind the chair. She didn’t ask why Jil had thought to make her hide. They were operating purely on instinct, not logic. Because logically, they didn’t know anything for sure except that there were people in the school who made them both extremely uncomfortable.

  “Miss,” Bex whispered, in case there was anyone listening. “What should I do?”

  Jil shook her head. “Business as usual,” she said, borrowing Jess’s motto. “There’s nothing we can do until we have more proof. But I’ll work on it if you will.”

  “There’s something I just thought of.”

  “Which is?”

  Bex shuffled her feet. “Alyssa’s parents were pretty religious, and I think that was part of the reason she had so much trouble, you know, accepting herself. But she found this chat room online…like for kids to get together and talk about how to come out, and what to do when you went to a Catholic school, or had parents who didn’t believe in it…”

  “Did she spend a lot of time on it?”

  “Yeah. She said it helped. That she found a few good friends on it. There was this one girl on there she really connected with. I think she was a little older, like college age.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  Bex scowled. “Clarisse.”

  “You didn’t like her?”

  Bex shook her head. “It seems stupid now,” she muttered. “I shouldn’t have said anything to her about it. I should have just left her alone if Clarisse was helping her, but…”

  “You were jealous?” Jil asked gently.

  Bex looked at the floor. “She just spent so much time talking to her…I was okay with it at first, when I thought it was helping, but then Alyssa started, you know, pulling away, and…”

  “So you thought it stopped helping, or you thought maybe Clarisse was helping too much and taking her away from you?”

  “I don’t really know. We fought about it. And then we stopped spending time together almost completely. We didn’t break up as much as…kind of go our separate ways. And then she killed herself.”

  “Was there anyone else on there that she talked to?”

  “Some guy. I think he was a youth leader or something.”

  “Young? Old?”

  “Young. And good-looking too.”

  “Do you remember what this website was called?”

  Bex frowned. “Faith Connects or Connections in Faith or something.”

  Jil scribbled down the words.

  Bex stood and looked toward the door. “Do you think the coast is clear yet?”

  Jil peeked through the blinds on her window. “Go on,” she said, and Bex opened the door, ducking her head and hurrying into the atrium before anyone saw her.

  Just as Bex disappeared around the corner, Jil thought she saw a flash of white in the opposite doorway. When she turned to look, it had disappeared.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jil got out of the car and stared at the small white house for a few moments. The red door looked a little chipped, and one of the eaves troughs had come loose at the corner of the roof. She wondered if Jack the handyman still paid monthly visits to the home, of if he’d stopped since Elise no longer took in kids.

  She walked up the wide stone steps and rapped three times on the brass knocker.

  Silence followed, and she looked at her watch. She’d waited until the afternoon, knowing Elise got up l
ater these days. She peeked in the sidelight and tried the handle. It opened.

  “Elise?” she called, stepping inside. The house smelled of baked muffins and rose potpourri—exactly how it had smelled for the fifteen years since she’d moved in. But there was something else lurking under the homey odors. A sweet, pungent smoke. She shook her head, recognizing it.

  Elise stepped around a corner at the end of the hallway. She had a head of curly white hair, but smooth, tanned skin, and a spry gait. Recently, she’d turned sixty, a fact that Jil hadn’t forgotten.

  “I bought you some special brownies for your birthday,” she joked.

  Elise grinned sideways. “Can you smell it?”

  “Only if you ignore the fresh baked goods.”

  Elise’s eyes twinkled. “That’s what I use to distract visitors. Give them a cranberry muffin, and they forget what they’re sniffing. Staying for dinner?”

  Jil shrugged. “I should have called first, but…”

  “Nonsense. I’m not busy.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  Elise smiled wanly. “Alive.”

  “Did the doctor say anything more?”

  “Nope. Only that I’m allowed to smoke Mary Jane.”

  Jil grinned. Hearing “Mary Jane” in Elise’s faint Irish lilt was funny, even though her smoking it probably wasn’t.

  Elise slipped her arm through Jil’s. “Help me with the roast chicken. Tell me all about your new case.”

  “How do you know I’ve got a new case? Has Padraig been talking to you?”

  Elise ignored her. “I’ve been to the market this morning. Bought some fresh rosemary and thyme for the potatoes.”

  “You knew I was coming today! He told you, didn’t he? I wanted to drop by unannounced so you didn’t have time to make a fuss.”

  Elise just smiled. “Carrots?”

  “I’ll kill him, the asshole.”

  “He loves you,” Elise said softly. “And so do I.”

  Jil just shook her head. “What if I hadn’t shown up? Then you’d be eating my favorite dinner alone.”

  “Nah. We know you better than that.”

  “Will you let me make the lemon pie, at least? I haven’t brought anything for the table.”