by John Manning
Now she was finally free to fulfill what she revealed had been her dream all along: the foundation of Wilbourne Collge. She sold the big house on the Upper West Side, and built a house for herself in Lebanon—the house that eventually became the dean’s residence. Her only concern now was the school.
The town of Lebanon never knew quite what to make of the wealthy benefactress suddenly in their midst. The ladies of the town tried to befriend her, and while Sarah was always polite, she kept her distance. No one, for example, was ever invited into her house; she gave no luncheons or parties of her own, except for whatever functions the school might host. The only people who usually saw Mrs. Wilbourne were the students and faculty of the college. Curious townspeople who tried to glean information about her and what went on in her house made no headway with her servants, who were always brought up from Manhattan, never hired locally. In the place of actual information, gossip and rumor tried to fill the gaps. Mrs. Wilbourne, some whispered, had taken a lover: a groundsman from the school perhaps, or—horror of horrors!—one of the unmarried lady faculty members.
The fact that Sarah, still a youthful, pretty woman in her early thirties, never remarried caused many eyebrows to rise. At a lunch raising money for the Ladies’ Christian Charities, one guest asked her about it. With a slight smile, Mrs. Wilbourne replied, “The college is my husband, and the only husband I need.” But around town, stories of guests from “the big city” were common—strange-looking men and women who arrived in Lebanon on the train or by coach, dressed all in black, their eyes always averted from the locals. Still, the gossip never reached a boiling point, for after all, Sarah Wilbourne’s money had helped the town, and not only by founding the college. She built the town library, funded a new city hall building on the square, and always wrote substantial checks for whatever charity approached her.
But no one knew what really went on in her big house on campus. No one ever really knew Sarah Wilbourne, and that was how she preferred to keep things.
One clipping found among Kathryn Lang’s notes was most curious, however. A visitor to the college in 1904 had congratulated her on the occasion of Wilbourne’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Describing the event in Collier’s magazine, the writer reported a strange smile on Mrs. Wilbourne’s face after he commented on the generation of “good, Christian girls” the school had turned out. “It was almost,” the writer observed, “as though she were laughing at the suggestion—as though there had been another motivation for building that college.”
Kathryn Lang had underlined that observation and highlighted it in yellow, probably just a few days before she died.
Sheriff Miles Holland had also read it with a keen interest.
No one knew that Sarah Wilbourne had been impressed with Lebanon for reasons that had nothing to do with its pristine location and access to the railroad. No one had made the connection between Sarah Wilbourne and those long-ago city fathers who’d been driven out of Boston with threats of burning at the stake.
When Sarah Wilbourne died, she left her mansion to the college as a residence for the dean. She also left specific and stringent instructions on the hiring requirements for any future dean—having handpicked the ones who served during her lifetime. Her plans for the college stretched well into the future. She died quite contented, knowing she had succeeded far beyond what she—and the others—possibly could have hoped.
40
The news of Sheriff Miles Holland’s death unnerved Ginny.
She had liked Miles. Liked him a great deal. And, unlike the lazy state police, he had been aggressively looking into the disappearance of Bonnie Warner—not to mention those of Joelle Bartlett and Tish Lewis. Ginny had been horrified to learn that two more girls had gone missing from the campus, and that the administration had kept the news from the faculty and students. But Dean Gregory had announced the dire truth yesterday, confirming reports that had been circulating on the Internet. Increased security had been added all around the school, but already some parents had insisted that their daughters return home now.
Ginny sat at her desk in her office, reading again the report in the newspaper about the sheriff’s death. His neck broken. Bruises on his body as if he’d been dropped from a great height. State cops speculated he had been climbing a tree, maybe to see something. But that made no sense. His body was discovered in the middle of the road, far away from any tree,
“What the hell is going on here?” Ginny whispered to herself.
That’s when the words of Bernadette deSalis came back to her.
It’s absurd, Ginny told herself again. It’s impossible. A delusional girl, made more so by a fanatic mother.
Even the sightings of other female divinities seemed proof of that. Bernadette must have been read about the goddess traditions, despite her insistence that she had not. She had read about goddesses like Ishtar and the others—and worked them into her delusions. Father Ortiz believed she was telling the truth, of course, but it was the job of a priest to believe. It was the job of an historian to doubt. To play the skeptic.
Ginny was trying.
Trying very hard to dismiss everything the girl had told her.
But if what Bernadette said was true…
Ginny shivered.
She would definitely interview her again. This was certainly a case for the book. But at the moment, the deSalis family was distraught about the health of yet another child, a teenaged son who’d suffered an apparent heart attack and who was still languishing in the hospital up in Senandaga. Ginny would check in with Father Ortiz sometime tomorrow, and see when it might be good for her to come back and finish talking with Bernadette.
Her phone rang. It was Dean Gregory’s secretary, asking her to hold the line for him. Ginny had been dreading this call.
“Ginny!” came the Dean’s voice, trying to sound warm and friendly. “How are you?”
“As well as I can be,” she replied coldly, “knowing you deliberately withheld information about two missing students.”
“Now, Ginny, it was done to prevent panic. Look at what’s happening now, with all these girls packing up and leaving before the semester is over.”
“Can you blame them?”
Gregory scoffed. “Look outside. Do you not see all the added security?”
There were indeed security guards, big burly men in green uniforms, stationed all over the campus. Many of them were armed. “How can students learn in this kind of pressure, this kind of anxiety?” Ginny asked the dean. “I hope you’ll allow the girls who leave to take incompletes, and not fail their courses.”
The dean sighed. “All of that is being discussed.”
“I just think it’s only fair—”
“Ginny, I didn’t call to debate this issue. I called to find out what you had decided about our conversation the other day.”
She gave him a small laugh. “You mean whether to scrap my curriculum and submit to the censorship of the board of trustees?”
“I see you are still being stubborn. Let’s talk on Monday, shall we, in my office?” Gregory’s voice was so damn smug. “First thing in the morning? Bright and early?”
He had threatened her last time; Ginny felt a dose of his own medicine might be a good thing. “With all the negative publicity being given to your administration over the news of the missing girls,” she said evenly, “I think it would be very unfortunate timing for a well-known teacher to start a fuss about academic freedom.” She let the words sink in. Gregory was silent; he had no comeback. Ginny didn’t think he would.
“Yes,” she told him, “I’ll see you Monday morning. Bright and early.”
He hung up on her.
Ginny laughed.
41
“Look at them down there!” Malika shrilled, staring out the window at the security guards posted at various intervals between Bentley Hall and the next dorm. “I feel like I’m in Nazi Germany.”
Sue was growing impatient with her roommate’s critiques of the se
curity presence, but did her best to ignore her. Her mind was worrying about too many other things—plus she had a geology mid-term to study for.
“This is overkill,” Malika continued, and Sue cringed at her poor choice of words. “I mean, everywhere you look there are guards packing weapons. What happens if one of these guys cracks—if he thinks some deliveryman is the kidnapper and starts shooting?”
Sue couldn’t take any more. She slammed her book shut. “Oh, come on, Malika. Three girls are missing. What did you expect the administration to do?”
Malika glared at her. “For one, not to lie to us! Telling us Joelle and Tish had just left school!”
“They were trying to prevent a campus panic.”
“So instead they install a fascist state in our midst!”
“Fascist state! Good God, Malika, that’s such bogus rhetoric!”
“Bogus?” Malika’s eyes were ready to pop out of her head. “You’ve read the new regulations. We can’t leave the dorms after five in the afternoon except to go to class. No visitors, period. And we can only go into town on weekends.”
“Seems perfectly reasonable to me, given we’re faced with an enemy we can’t predict and know nothing about.”
“Jesus Christ, Sue. You sound like George Fucking Bush, curtailing liberties in the guise of the so-called ‘war on terror.’”
“President Bush was just trying to protect us!” Sue shouted—surprising herself since she’d never been a fan of Bush, and had listened with deep suspicion whenever her grandfather had praised him.
Malika sneered. “What’s gotten into you?”
Sue looked away from her. “Maybe these girls going missing has opened my eyes. I’m just tired of limousine liberals like you spouting off against the people in authority who are just doing what is best for us.”
Malika seemed not to believe her ears. “Did you just call me a limousine liberal?”
Sue stood to face her. “Yes, I did. I’m tired of people like you coming to this country and taking advantage of all our freedoms and then bad-mouthing our government.”
Malika was speechless. She turned away, then spotted something on Sue’s desk. A book. She grabbed it, turned back to Sue, and held it in front of her face.
It was Joyce Davenport’s Smear.
“This is where you’ve been getting all that bullshit,” she charged. “You’ve been reading this and it’s warped your mind.”
“No,” Sue said, snatching the book away from Malika. “I don’t agree with everything she writes. But yeah, okay, maybe some of it makes sense.”
Yet even as she spoke the words, Sue realized she didn’t really believe what she was saying. In fact, she was as pissed as Malika about the administration withholding information from them, and then slapping down the rigid rules about leaving campus. It had greatly affected her relationship with Billy—at a time when she was already worried about whether they’d hit a snag. But for some reason, she wanted to provoke Malika, to play the devil’s advocate, to get her riled up and pissed off…
“You are not the same girl who came here two months ago,” Malika grumbled, turning away from her again.
Sue didn’t answer. She was saved from having to try to think of a comeback by a knock at the door. “Come in,” Malika shouted.
It was her pudgy friend Sandy. “Malika,” Sandy said, rushing into the room, eating an ice-cream sandwich, “some of the girls want to organize a protest against the administration and they wondered if you—”
“Why does it always have to be me?” Malika shouted at her. “It’s always Malika they come running to when they want to get something done! Can’t anybody on this fucking campus ever do something for themselves?”
Sandy looked surprised. “Well, it’s just that you’re so good at it…”
“Jesus!” Malika shrieked. “Look at how you’re dripping that goddamn ice cream all over my bed! And my sweater laying right here—” Malika snatched it up. “Chocolate all over it! Damn you, Sandy!”
The girl looked crestfallen. Sue knew she idolized Malika. “I’m sorry,” she said in a little voice.
“You shouldn’t be eating that anyway! I thought you were going on a diet! Do you want to stay fat all your life? Is that what you want, Sandy?”
Her friend just looked at her, then burst into tears and ran out of the room.
“Jesus,” Malika grumbled to herself.
Sue said nothing, pretending to be reading her geology book.
Malika sat down on the edge of her bed. “That was rotten of me,” she said, to herself more than Sue. “I shouldn’t have taken out my anger on her.”
Sue remained silent. She didn’t like how she was feeling. She didn’t like that she had to suppress a smile that was forming on her lips.
“I’m going to go apologize,” Malika said.
“Why should you?” Sue found herself saying. “She came in here trying to get you involved in one more thing when you’re already so busy. And these fat girls can be so inconsiderate, the way she slobbered all over your sweater. It’s almost as if they’re jealous of pretty girls like you and me, always trying to ruin things for us. Don’t you think?”
Malika stared over at her. Sue smiled.
“I don’t know you anymore,” Malika finally said, and got up and left the room.
I don’t know myself, Sue thought.
She stood and went to the mirror. I still look the same, she thought. But I don’t feel the same.
The fight with Malika had left her invigorated, thrilled. She felt high. She knew her challenge to Malika had made her roommate quick to snap at Sandy. And now Sandy was likely to snap at someone else.
I caused it, Sue thought, grinning at herself in the mirror. I set the conflict into motion…
Suddenly, she felt sick. Without warning, she started to cry.
The feeling of exaltation was replaced with shame.
“I don’t feel that way,” she said, remembering her words about “fat girls.” She’d never thought of herself as pretty. She cried harder remembering how she’d called Malika a “limousine liberal.” What good was name-calling? It was just a cruel tactic—one used for shock and attention.
Yes, indeed, Sue thought, looking over at the book on her bed. Just like Joyce Davenport.
“Why am I acting like this?” Sue asked out loud.
I’m scared, so I’m acting strange, she told herself. I’m scared about three girls who have gone missing. Three girls I connect myself to, in one way or another. I told Joelle and Tish I’d seen the face at the window. And Bonnie—I’d dreamed of her the night she was attacked.
And then there was Heidi. Billy’s ex. I had been thinking terrible things about her, filled with jealous and rage toward her—and then she collapsed.
Just like Lori Powers—who skied into a tree after an argument with me—and Melissa Hardwick—who died after I vowed to “do something to her.”
I wished both girls dead.
I killed them.
“No,” Sue said. “That’s crazy.”
And Mike deSalis…Sue hadn’t wanted to go see him at the diner. She was wishing all the way over there that he’d be gone. She kept stalling Billy, teasing him, forcing him to window-shop—all in the hope that Mike would be gone by the time they got there.
And then Mike, too, collapsed…
“I’m thinking crazy,” Sue said out loud again.
But she’d just been acting and talking crazy, too, saying those things to Malika.
It’s like all I wanted to do was stir up trouble…
“I’ve got to concentrate,” she said, opening her textbook again. But within minutes she glanced up from the page and was looking over at her laptop. She chewed on her lower lip. Her e-mail screen was open, but there was nothing new. Nothing from Billy. Nothing more from Joyce.
Ever since the day with Mike, Billy had been distant. Sue was worried that maybe she did something wrong that day. Should I have stuck around at the emergency room? S
hould I have ridden with Billy up to the hospital in Senandaga?
Or did Billy just decide to dump me for no good reason at all? He had certainly moved on from Heidi to me without an apparent second thought.
She found herself getting angry with Billy for not communicating with her, for not answering her e-mails. He can’t treat me that way, she thought. I won’t stand for it!
But she calmed herself. How quick she was to get angry lately.
“It’s not like me,” she said, slamming her textbook shut once again. She didn’t think she’d get any studying done tonight.
Reaching across her bed for her cell phone, she hoped in vain that there would be a text message for her. Sometimes she didn’t hear the beep. But there was nothing new. She hit the speed-dial button where Billy’s number was stored, and it rang a few times before his voice mail picked up. She flipped the phone shut.
Stop this craziness, she told herself. If he wanted to see me or talk to me he’d call. Let it go and forget about him.