She Was the Quiet One

by Michele Campbell

  Cuddy: That’s right.

  Kriscunas: Was it some other Zachary?

  Cuddy: I have no idea. All I can tell you is, I wasn’t romantically involved, as you put it, with either of the Enright girls. You have bad information. Whoever told you to talk to me was lying, or mistaken. And I’m late for class, so if you’ll excuse me.

  [SOUND OF CHAIR SCRAPING]

  Howard: Hold on, Mr. Cuddy. You’re not being straight with us.

  Cuddy: I resent that.

  Howard: Well, that’s the impression you’re giving. Sit down for a minute. Tell us about your relationship with the sisters. Help us square it with what other witnesses have said, or else it looks like you’re hiding something.

  Kriscunas: Detective Howard is right, Zach. We’ve talked to a number of people at this point. We have a picture of your relationship with the Enright twins that’s more than what you’re describing. When witnesses aren’t fully honest, we have to ask ourselves why.

  Cuddy: Maybe I was minimizing, but when you say romantically involved, that’s a crock. Rose was in my bio class. We were friendly, that’s all. I wouldn’t even say we were close friends. Bel and I had a brief—call it a hookup—months ago. One time, after a dance, and I’ve had nothing to do with her since. Okay? I’m serious, you’re wasting your time with me. Looking in the wrong place.

  Kriscunas: Where should we be looking instead? You tell us.

  Cuddy: For starters, Darcy Madden, Tessa Romano, Brandon Flynn. Those three have been threatening the Enright girls for months, and they have a history of actual physical attacks.

  Kriscunas: Darcy and Tessa we know. Who’s this—Braden, you said?

  Cuddy: Brandon. Brandon Flynn. Darcy’s boyfriend. A rich kid, but a real thug. He wrestles and plays rugby. Enormous guy, maybe six-two, two-fifty. He was livid when Darcy got expelled.

  Kriscunas: He blamed Rose Enright for it?

  Cuddy: Yes, because Rose testified before the Disciplinary Committee. But they were mad at Bel, too. All three of those delinquents hated Bel because she got off with no punishment. They thought she cut a deal behind their backs.

  Kriscunas: You think they were capable of violence?

  Cuddy: Not just capable. They’ve been violent all along. Look what Darcy and Tessa did to Skyler Stone. It was practically a rape. And Brandon physically attacked Rose on a bus a few months back. I saw it. He pushed her, he tripped her. There were tons of witnesses.

  Kriscunas: When was this?

  Cuddy: On the Odell bus to Connecticut and New York for Thanksgiving break.

  Kriscunas: You say there were other witnesses?

  Cuddy: Dozens.

  Kriscunas: Names?

  Cuddy: Emma Kim was there, and saw everything. The thing is, this incident on the bus wasn’t the only time they attacked Rose. About a month ago, I took a shortcut to the library, and came across Brandon and Tessa Romano confronting Rose on the path. They had her cornered. Nobody was around. If I hadn’t come along, they were going to hurt her, it seemed obvious.

  Kriscunas: We need the details on that incident. Exactly when and where it occurred, what you observed.

  Cuddy: Sure.

  Howard: Wait a minute. Tessa is banned from campus, as I understand.

  Cuddy: You think she listens? She comes here whenever she feels like it. These three have no shame, no limits. Leave me alone. Go talk to them.

  34

  Max started barking in the front hall, and Sarah heard Heath’s key in the door. It was evening, and the kids had just gone down. For the past three nights, Sarah had slept on an air mattress on the floor of their room, nursing them through an awful virus. She sat on the edge of Harper’s bed, and reached out to put her hand on the little girl’s forehead. The air in the room felt close and oppressive, and carried the faint tang of vomit. But Harper’s temperature was back to normal, and Scottie’s would be soon, too. Sarah hated it when her kids were sick. And yet, it had been a relief to sink into motherhood, to hide from her husband and the breakdown of her marriage. The moment was coming when she’d have to face the truth, and she dreaded it. What she feared most was her own weakness. Sarah had to keep reminding herself about that photograph, or she would love her husband again the second she saw him, like she always did.

  Heath’s shadow fell across the floor. She looked up to see him standing in the doorway.

  “How are they doing?” he asked.

  “Shh.”

  “Oh, sorry, babe,” he whispered. “Come to the kitchen when you’re done. I have great news.”

  She knew she shouldn’t listen to his good news. She shouldn’t listen to a word he said until she confronted him, and got an answer to the enormous question hanging over their heads. There was still room for doubt. The image was blurry. It was impossible to tell where the photo was taken, or who the girl was. It might be Bel, it might not. But Sarah believed that the man in the photo was Heath. She knew his body too well not to recognize it in a photograph, no matter how dark or blurry. When you lived with someone for more than a decade, you just knew. And pictures didn’t lie.

  But force of habit brought her to her feet, to follow her husband down the hall and hear his good news, like any normal day. In the kitchen, Heath stood at the counter, his back to her. He turned around, and she saw a bottle of champagne in his hands.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “We’re celebrating.”

  “Heath, the kids have been throwing up for three days. I’m hardly in the mood to celebrate.”

  “Poor sweetheart. I wish you’d let me help more.”

  He had offered to help. But she chased him away. She couldn’t bear to watch him with their children, when he was probably having an affair with a girl who was little more than a child herself. Probably. In her heart, Sarah hoped desperately for some other explanation. But she didn’t expect one.

  “I know you’re tired, but please toast with me,” he said with a smile, and popped the cork.

  He arced the perfect spray of champagne into two glasses and handed one to Sarah, smooth as always. Heath was an expert at romance, quick with an endearment, always ready with the perfect quote. He knew when to put on romantic music, or to bring her flowers for no reason. He’d won her heart that way so many times. But this problem was too big to be solved with a bottle of champagne and a winning smile.

  “What are we toasting?” she asked.

  The temptation to pretend things were normal was almost irresistible. If only she could delete the photo and forget she’d ever received it. But she wouldn’t be able to live with herself. She couldn’t stand here, gazing into her husband’s beautiful eyes, not knowing the truth.

  “Skyler Stone’s parents settled the lawsuit,” he said. “Odell will pay a modest sum to the charity of Skyler’s choice, and institute my proposed anti-bullying curriculum. My project is what broke the deadlock.”

  “We’re toasting to you, then. To Heath Donovan, savior of Odell Academy,” Sarah said, a harsh edge in her voice.

  Heath looked at her with concern. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m tired. I told you.”

  “Drink up,” he said. “A little bubbly’ll lift your spirits.”

  He clinked his glass against hers, flashing a movie-star grin. Sarah sat down numbly in a chair, and downed the champagne in three long sips. She put the glass down and looked searchingly at him. She was going to ask him about the picture. She really was. She was working up to it.

  “The school got off easy,” Heath said. “The Stones were never able to prove that the Snapchat was shared. I think those sneaky kids wiped their phones. Without that, the case is just a couple of girls hitting another girl with a slipper. Hardly worth a big payout.”

  “The trustees must be happy,” Sarah said.

  He poured more champagne into her glass.

  “Thrilled. They’ve asked me to head up a new anti-bullying task force. Sarah, this is an enormous opportunity for me. They’ve asked me to
expand my role significantly, and take the lead in helping the school change its image. I have a plan to parlay our anti-bullying stance into favorable press. By the time I’m done, Odell will be the poster child for kindness and enlightenment. But that’s not all. Wait till you hear this.”

  He paused for a second, expecting her to squeal with excitement, and beg him to tell. It scared her how much she wanted to.

  “Simon is retiring, effective at the end of the school year,” he announced triumphantly.

  Simon Barlow had been the headmaster of Odell even before Heath and Sarah were students there. He was a former Oxford don, with a charming British accent and wise, sad eyes, who wrote famous books of essays on poetry and the arts. He gave witty speeches, and hosted sophisticated dinner parties for donors, along with his husband, Michael Lazarus, who was head of the theatre department. It was true that Simon was not known as a crack administrator. When things got messy or difficult at Odell, he tended to duck and delegate. But he gave Odell its intellectual panache. Sarah couldn’t imagine the school without him. It would be a loss.

  “Why? He’s not sixty-five for another two years.”

  “It’s part of the deal,” Heath explained. “Skyler’s parents blame Simon for allowing a climate to develop where the attack could happen. His retirement was floated by the board as a concession, and they jumped at it.”

  How convenient for Heath if Simon took the fall for this. Sarah wondered whose idea it had been, really. She’d always viewed her husband as an open book. He was outgoing, warm, emotional—too emotional, sometimes. She assumed she knew what he was thinking, where he went, what he did. After seeing that photo, she was no longer sure. If Heath could lie to her about his fidelity, his very love for her and their children, then he could lie about anything. He was certainly capable of scheming to take over the school, while pretending it was the trustees’ idea.

  “Why only Simon?” she asked. “We were running the dorm, after all.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We were the ones in charge of Moreland Hall when the slipper attack happened. Shouldn’t we offer to resign, too?”

  “Simon’s not resigning. That would be too big an admission of fault. The trustees would never go for it. He’s retiring to pursue other interests.”

  “But I’m saying, why let him take the fall alone?” Sarah insisted.

  She didn’t have the guts to confront the real problem, so instead, she nagged at him about this. If she were braver, she would ask about the photo.

  “Moreland was a problem for years,” Heath said, “and Simon let it fester. He’s the wrong man to set a moral example, don’t you see? We’re the ones who turned the tide, you and me, our wholesome all-American family. Nobody blames us, and if you want proof of that, here’s the real headline, Sarah. I’m in the running to become the new headmaster.”

  The thought of Heath as headmaster was starting to seem wrong, dangerous even. “You? Headmaster?”

  His face changed instantly, his eyes darkening and his chin jutting out. “How can you say that? I’d be great at it. You know I would.”

  “Your skill set is not the problem.”

  “You’re going to support me in this, right? It’s within reach, I can feel it, and I want it so much. You know I’m not happy teaching.”

  “Heath, you can’t be headmaster. Not now, anyway. There’s a problem,” Sarah said flatly.

  Once the words were out, she knew that she had to press on. She had to find out the truth about his relationship with Bel. A man conducting a sexual relationship with a student must not under any circumstances become headmaster of this school. Sarah had an obligation to protect the students, even at the expense of her own husband’s career.

  If the photo was real.

  “You think I’m too young, too inexperienced? But they want a fresh face. Someone with vision and vigor. A wholesome family. The chairman compared me to John Kennedy.”

  “That has nothing to do with it. I need to ask you something. Wait here.”

  Sarah hurried to the kids’ bedroom and grabbed her phone from the dresser. She pulled up the photo of Heath and the girl (woman?), naked and locked in an embrace, then ran back to the kitchen, and held it up in front of his face.

  “What’s this?” she demanded.

  She watched his eyes focus on the screen. She saw the emotions flit across his face: recognition, fear, then pure panic. But then he stepped back and became guarded.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “It’s impossible to see. Are you suggesting this has something to do with me?”

  “That’s you in the picture. You and … someone else, having sex.”

  “Are you crazy? That’s not me. Where did you get this?”

  “It was sent to me anonymously. Along with an e-mail that said you’re sleeping with a student. Bel Enright, to be specific.”

  “So that’s supposed to be a picture of me and Bel Enright having sex?”

  “Yes.”

  He huffed in disbelief. “Bullshit. Let me see that again,” he said, and reached for the phone.

  She held it behind her back, half expecting him to take it from her by force. But he didn’t. Instead, he sat down heavily in a kitchen chair, looking up at her imploringly.

  “Sarah, how can you think that I would ever cheat on you? We’ve been together since we were kids. There’s only you. There’s never been anyone else. We have two beautiful children together. Does that mean nothing to you?”

  Of course, it did. It meant everything. Their love, their life, their family. They’d both wanted children, badly. And it hadn’t been easy. Harper had had terrible colic and didn’t sleep through the night until she was two. Scottie was a preemie and had developmental delays. But instead of driving them apart, their babies had brought them together. He was such a devoted father. She never would have believed that Heath could betray her—until they moved into Moreland this past September. Before then, everything had been good between them. All she wanted was for it to be good again.

  “The idea that you would buy into some anonymous e-mail,” he said, shaking his head, his aqua eyes sparkling with unshed tears, “some phony photo—after everything we’ve meant to each other—I don’t know what to say. I’m devastated.”

  He looked so forlorn that Sarah began to question her own eyes. God, how she wanted to believe him, to believe that he would never look at another woman. That he would never touch a girl whose care was entrusted to him. She stared at the photo again for several seconds. The image was muddy, grainy, underexposed. The girl’s face was not visible; neither was Heath’s. Maybe he was telling the truth. But—the broad expanse of his back, the curve of his buttocks, the curl of his hair against his neck. She knew them.

  “I think it’s you. Look,” she said in despair, handing him the phone.

  If Heath would just say out loud that it was him in the picture, then she would know what to do. If not, then, she was utterly confused. She couldn’t take drastic measures that might hurt him, or his reputation, or even destroy his career, or harm their marriage, unless she was sure.

  Heath rotated the phone to make the image larger. He expanded and contracted various parts of the frame with the pinch of his fingers, frowning in concentration.

  “Look at the guy’s ear. That’s not my ear at all,” he said, finally, showing her the screen, which had been manipulated to display an image of an ear, massively enlarged.

  She glanced from the screen to Heath’s ear. It was impossible to tell. Sarah worried that he might be manipulating her, and yet, he seemed so genuinely hurt that she was tempted to believe him. In times of trouble, we fall back on old habits, and Sarah had been in the habit of trusting Heath for her entire adult life. She started to believe him again, and to doubt her own eyes. Your eyes could deceive you, right?

  “I want to believe you,” she said finally. “But I just don’t know.”

  “It wasn’t me, I swear it. Somebody is trying to undermine
my candidacy. They photoshopped this to discredit me.”

  “Who would do such a thing?”

  “Somebody who views me as a threat, obviously. There are plenty of those. I’m in the running to become headmaster. Some people want that job for themselves. Others don’t want me to get it because they’re worried I’ll clean house. And they’re right. There’s a lot of dead wood around Odell, a lot of policies that need changing. People are afraid of me coming in and shaking things up.”

  The panic in his eyes seemed genuine. It was true that he had enemies. Was she really going to ruin his career, destroy their marriage, risk his very life (given how he reacted to failure), over an anonymous e-mail and a blurry photo? What if that wasn’t him?

  “I want to believe you. But I don’t understand why, if someone wanted to discredit you, they would send this to me, instead of going public?”

  “Because they know the picture’s fake, and that it won’t stand up to scrutiny. If they go public, they’ll be exposed. This way, they send it to you, betting that you’ll confront me, and that I’ll take myself out of the running to be headmaster in order to avoid embarrassment. You’re playing right into their hands.”

  “I see that. But—”

  “How can you do this to us, Sarah?” he said. “Don’t you love me? Don’t you trust me? I can’t go on if you don’t, baby. If you abandon me—Well, I don’t know what I would do.”

  Heath tossed the phone on the table. He walked over to the cabinet, took out the barely touched bottle of Scotch they’d gotten for Christmas two years ago, and filled his champagne glass to the brim. As she watched him down the Scotch in one long gulp, Sarah flashed back to the worst moment of her life. It was in their New York apartment, shortly after Heath’s dishonesty had been exposed. She’d forced him to admit the truth to her, and they had a terrible fight. He started drinking heavily—something he never did—just like now. She went out for a walk to clear her head. When she came back, it was dark in the apartment, and the bedroom door was ajar. She called his name; no answer. She walked into the bedroom, and saw him facedown on the bed, his arm hanging limply off the edge. She flipped on the light. There was an empty bottle of pills on the floor. She ran to him. He was pale white, cold, and lifeless. She dialed nine-one-one. They told her if she’d found him five minutes later, he wouldn’t’ve made it.