“What’s that?”
“The first installment on your pay.”
As Ora enters the amount in the ledger, she watches from the corner of her eye as Savannah takes the check and holds it a few inches from her nose. Pleased to hear a startled gasp, she briskly folds the checkbook and returns it to her purse. “That’s half the fee. Yours unconditionally if you agree to take the assignment. You’ll receive the rest when you’ve completed the assignment.”
“What is it, exactly?”
“Are you accepting it?”
Silly question. No one in her position would turn down that amount of money or the promise of more.
Yet she feigns hesitation. “I don’t know. I’m really busy right now with my research, so . . .”
Ora just looks at her.
“Um . . . my pen? Can I . . . ?”
“Of course.” Ora hands it over.
Savannah returns it to the desk with more care than is necessary. She’s stalling, trying to figure what to do.
“I shouldn’t have said ‘unconditionally,’” Ora tells her, and she whirls around. “There is a catch.”
“What is it?” Savannah asks flatly, as if she knew it was too good to be true.
“I would appreciate your discretion regarding the assignment.”
Savannah looks around the empty lab and points at the mortarboard-wearing skeleton in the corner. “Who am I going to tell? Him?”
Her quip met with silence, she frowns. “Is this illegal? Because I won’t do anything illegal.”
“Nor would I,” Ora says haughtily. “What do you take me for? I’ve been the director of the Mundy’s Landing Historical Society for seventy-five years now.”
“Seventy-five years? Wow—how old are you?”
“A lady never asks. Nor does she tell,” Ora responds, masking her momentary confusion as she realizes the numbers don’t add up. Maybe it hasn’t been seventy-five years. But that isn’t the point. “I can assure you that this is a legitimate assignment, Miss Ivers. It’s simply confidential. There are people on the faculty here who would be intrigued by it.”
“Why didn’t you hire them?”
“If I wanted to, I would have, long ago.”
“Why now? And why me?”
It’s time.
And you’re an outsider.
“Because you’re a brilliant young scholar with a bright future. Now then, do we have an agreement?”
“Sure.” Savannah folds the check and puts it into her purse.
“Sure?”
“I’m sorry. Yes. We do.” She extends her hand as if to shake on the deal. Ora’s hands are otherwise occupied, lifting the skull in its protective case from the bag and gently setting it on the table.
Savannah gapes. “What is that?”
“If you don’t know, my dear, then you should probably reconsider your future, and I shall certainly reconsider my offer.”
“No, I mean, I know what it is . . . I just wonder why you have it.”
Ora never knew how the skull had come into her great-aunt’s possession back in the late 1940s. She has her suspicions. Aunt Etta certainly wasn’t above helping herself to precious artifacts in the name of historic preservation.
She once marched out of the Elsworth Ransom Library with a rare nineteenth-century classic first edition tucked under her arm. Ora was about ten at the time, and had borrowed her usual stack of Nancy Drew mysteries.
“Serves them right!” Aunt Etta had ranted as they walked several blocks toward Papa’s brick house in The Heights. “This book should have been properly preserved, away from light and air and human hands. It’s worth thousands of dollars, and they had it shelved in the main stacks where anyone could make off with it.”
Somebody had. Aunt Etta hadn’t bothered to check out the book with the librarian. But of course, she didn’t consider it a theft and didn’t intend to sell it. Infuriated that the library never even reported it missing, she later told Ora, “It just goes to show that the book is better off in my hands than in theirs.”
She tucked it away in a protective case. She bequeathed it to Ora when she passed away in 1956, along with the rest of her worldly possessions—including the skull.
“It’s part of my private collection—about three hundred and fifty years old,” Ora tells Savannah now, lest the skittish girl misinterpret it as fresh kill and flee into the night. “It was found by a team of Hadley students in 1947 during an archaeological dig out at Schaapskill Nature Preserve.”
“I’ve heard about that. It’s the site of the first settlement. The cannibals—that couple who were hung in front of their kids. The Mundys, right?”
Ora purses her lips. Even the more intellectual young people retain the most gruesome details.
“So the college donated this skull to the museum?” Savannah asks.
“I suppose they must have. It was before my time.”
“Really?”
“Why, yes. I was a girl when it was found, just like Jane herself.” Miffed, Ora wonders just how old Savannah Ivers thinks she is—then realizes she cannot, in this moment, remember her own age.
“Jane?”
“Jane Doe.” She indicates the skull.
“Oh, right.”
“Additional human remains were found at the site during the same excavation. They’re in the archives here on campus,” she tells Savannah. “Years ago, a professor friend attempted to find out if the other bones included more of Jane. His work was inconclusive, but forensics have made great strides since then. I’d like you to reexamine them, along with the skull.”
“I’m not authorized to go digging around in the archives and testing old bones. If you’d like to speak to a faculty member who can—”
“No. I would not.” Ora isn’t interested in playing by the rules, lest the Mundys—or the media—get wind of what she’s doing. “I just thought you might have access, but if you don’t . . .”
“I don’t. Not officially.”
Ora doesn’t press the point. When Savannah is drawn into the mystery, she’ll delve further of her own accord.
At last, the girl puts on a pair of glasses, along with blue gloves, trains an LED light on the skull.
“I can see that she was a teenager, probably fourteen to sixteen years old at TOD.”
Time of death. Yes. The Hadley team determined that years ago.
Testing Savannah’s skill set, Ora asks how she knows.
“Tooth emergence and cranial fusion. The hind molars haven’t emerged from the mandible, and there are ridge bumps along the coronal and sagittal sutures,” she adds, looking up, her eyes alive with interest.
Satisfied, Ora reaches into her purse again, takes out an envelope, and hands it to Savannah. “This is a complete list of the first group of settlers who landed here in 1665. I’ve crossed out most of the names by process of elimination, leaving only four young women. One of them was Jane.”
“You want me to figure out which one.”
“And whether her death was deliberate, or an accident.”
“Got it. But will the answer to whether someone was murdered change anything now, centuries later?”
Ora considers the question.
The truth may change nothing.
The truth may change everything.
“There’s really no way of knowing until we have the answer, is there?” she asks Savannah, who shrugs.
“I guess that makes sense.” She looks again at her watch. “I’m sorry, but I’m meeting someone for drinks at the Windmill, so I’d better get going.”
“The Windmill in Mundy’s Landing?”
“Is there another Windmill?”
“I’m sure there are many in the Hudson Valley,” Ora snaps. “Had I known you were coming to town, we could have met there.”
“Sorry, but I didn’t even know I had a date. I just met him this afternoon, and he texted me after you called.”
A last-minute date with a virtual stranger who can’t e
ven be bothered to pick up the telephone? Incapable of masking disapproval, Ora shakes her head, and then Savannah’s hand, taking her leave. She’s had her fill of this conversation, and of standing on achy old legs.
She hobbles out into the night. The sky is black and clear with pinprick stars and a sharp-edged moon, yet she senses a familiar fog creeping in as she begins the long, harrowing drive back to Mundy’s Landing.
The words with which she attempts to reassure herself make matters worse: It’s only in your mind.
This so-called hometown of Emerson’s is more off the beaten path than Roy thought. He never saw a gas station after he exited the highway, and rolled into this one on fumes. Standing at the pump filling his pickup, he checks his phone to see if Emerson answered his last message yet. He sent it while he was behind the wheel, keeping an eye out for cops along the highway as he typed. The last thing he needs today is another ticket.
Still no reply.
Frustrated, he shoves the phone back into the pocket of the ill-fitting cargo shorts he bought before leaving the Bronx. He stopped at a rest area on the road to change into them, along with newly purchased underwear and T-shirt. It’s cheap polyester, the first one he saw on the clearance rack. Red, the only color in his size, and he wasn’t about to browse around or pay more than five bucks.
The clothing he’d been wearing is sealed in the plastic shopping bag, tossed into the back of the pickup along with his duffel bag. His arms are coated in the pink lotion he’d bought, hoping it might soothe the itch. It hasn’t.
She’d said she was in a restaurant. Is it here in Mundy’s Landing?
This stretch of highway isn’t exactly brimming with fine dining establishments. He surveys the array of fast food signs surrounding the Mobil station, trying to imagine his fiancée eating a burger, a donut . . .
A Slurpee. He watches a group of teenage girls emerge from the 7-Eleven next door and wander across the parking lot carrying large cups. They aimlessly volley a small rock across the pavement, passing it from flip-flop to flip-flop.
The gas pump kicks off. Roy replaces the nozzle, screws the cap back on the tank, and waits for the receipt to print.
The girls pass, snatches of their gossipy conversation reaching his ears.
“. . . I don’t know why she’d ever . . .”
“. . . No way! He’s such a . . .”
“. . . and remember when they . . .”
“. . . she made me swear not to tell you guys but . . .”
Small towns. Ugh. He’s never liked them.
He lived in one during college. Less than two hours’ drive from New York City, New Paltz felt like a foreign land to a kid who’d lived in every borough. Public transportation was almost non-existent. The only two restaurants that delivered were Chinese and pizza, and both were lousy. Most people spent an inordinate amount of time indoors, and the ones who didn’t were outdoorsy types who enjoyed scaling cliffs or jumping off them.
Worse, small-town people spent an awful lot of time judging others and worrying about being judged themselves.
Roy lasted a couple of semesters, fell in love with a graduating senior, and followed her out to San Francisco. The romance didn’t last, no matter how hard Roy tried to make things work. But he stayed on the West Coast. He eventually went back to school, got a degree in education, found a job.
Roy doesn’t particularly like math, or high school kids. But he loves having summers off, and he’s been looking forward to spending this one with Emerson.
Spending all of them with Emerson.
Only Emerson is slipping from his grasp.
He’s been keeping an eye out for her since he left the highway, but he has no idea where she might be.
You never should have let her go in the first place.
But that’s what you’re supposed to do when someone you love wants to leave. His college girlfriend had a cheesy poster of a butterfly on her wall, with the saying, “If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.”
Roy let go.
Emerson got away.
But she is mine. We’re getting married. And I’m going to find her.
Emerson sets down her fork. She didn’t eat much of her salad, too intent on trying to make out the photos in the book Sullivan left behind. Even with the votive candle close to the page, it was hard to see much detail. Now she picks up her phone again and turns it on, hoping to use the glowing screen to illuminate the open page before her.
There are more texts from Roy.
Jaw clenched, she decides she might as well get this over with, and calls instead of texting back.
He answers immediately. “Where are you?”
“In Mundy’s Landing. I told you that.”
“No, you didn’t. You hung up on me.”
“I didn’t just hang up. I said I was in a restaurant.”
“Which restaurant?”
“What difference does it make? I don’t understand why you’re acting like this.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Because I’m traveling? I can’t even go to a teachers’ conference without—”
“How was the conference?” he cuts in.
“What?”
“The conference. How was it?”
“It was fine. Roy, this isn’t normal. You’re freaking me out, the way you’re . . .” She trails off, seeing the waiter stepping back outside with her check.
“You’re freaking me out,” Roy is saying.
“Listen, I need to go.”
“Just talk to me for a second, Emerson.”
“I can’t right now. Please. You need to let me go.”
“But—”
“I’m exhausted. We’ll talk in the morning.” She hangs up, turns off the phone again, and meets the waiter’s concerned gaze.
“Everything okay?”
She shrugs.
“Fiancé again?”
“How’d you guess?”
“Do you think he’ll show up here?”
“No! He’s in California.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” he says. “Sorry. It just sounded like . . . I mean, I wasn’t eavesdropping.”
“No, I know. It’s fine. He’s just possessive, like I said.” She pulls out a credit card and throws it into the check folder.
“Be right back,” he says, and disappears inside with it.
He’s in California . . .
Are you sure about that?
Roy’s been known to show up at her doorstep on nights when she’d planned to be alone, longed to be alone, had begged him to leave her alone. When she asks why he’s there, he gives her the same answer every time: “Because I’m concerned about you.”
“Well, I’m fine, Roy. You don’t need to worry.”
Somehow, he always manages to talk his way inside. Once he’s there, he asks too many questions, and she’ll catch him staring at her wearing a strange expression.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because I love you.”
It isn’t just love, nor just concern.
It’s something else, something that set off a warning within. Not urgent, but more like the faint, intermittent ping of a dying smoke alarm battery. You should do something about it, but it can wait until later, so you procrastinate and hope you won’t regret it.
Roy would never hurt her.
Of course he wouldn’t. He’s her fiancé.
Still . . .
With a trembling hand, Emerson reaches toward the silverware alongside her plate. Grabbing the knife she’d used to cut the chicken in her salad, she wipes it quickly on her napkin and shoves it into her purse.
Roy sits in his truck, still parked at the gas pump. He’d been about to leave when Emerson finally called him back.
Seeing her number pop up,
he thought everything was going to be okay, but . . .
But it isn’t.
She hung up on him, and now her phone is ringing straight into voice mail again.
His head is spinning. He can barely think straight, and he’s fading fast.
Coffee. He needs coffee, and something in his stomach . . .
Looking around, rubbing his forearms, he spots a Dunkin’ Donuts. The parking lot is empty, but it’s open twenty-four hours.
And there’s a Holiday Inn right across the street—not the Ritz, but a step up from last night. He’ll head over there with his food, grab a room, eat, freshen up, and then get back down to business with Emerson.
At the drive-through, he finds a handwritten Out of Order sign taped to the menu board.
He curses, slapping the steering wheel, hard. Nothing has gone right today. Nothing.
He pulls into a spot by the door and goes inside. The place is as deserted as the parking lot. A moon-faced young woman is standing behind the register. Her hair is the color of scrambled eggs, and her name tag reads Twyla.
He orders a couple of donuts and a cup of coffee.
“No problem,” she says in the chipper server cadence he’s noted in his cross-country travels. Low, drawn-out no, high-pitched emphasis on prob. “Cream and sugar?”
“Please.”
“You got it.” Low, drawn-out you, high-pitched emphasis on got. “Anything else?”
“No, thanks.”
She rings it up, smiling hard, and Roy hands over a five, wondering why the hell she’s so chipper.
“And heeeeere you go, sir.” She hands over his change, probably expecting him to throw it into the plastic cup marked Tips beside the register.
Roy doesn’t believe in tipping at fast food places. Everyone wants a handout these days. He pockets the money, yet Twyla remains cheerful, telling him she just put on a fresh pot of coffee if he can wait a few minutes.
“We always get a huge rush after the late movie lets out over at the Regal.”
He wants to ask her how many people constitute a “huge rush” around here—five? A dozen?
She bustles around, snapping open a small pastry bag and setting it aside on the counter, apparently waiting until the last possible moment to pluck his donuts from the case, thus ensuring optimal freshness. She takes a hot cup from a stack and places it near the bag, with a plastic lid alongside. Busy, busy.
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