“I wish I knew what to say, Mrs. Daniels.”
“I wish you did, too,” Liz said quietly. “Well, at least now you can make arrangements to cover his classes.”
Marjorie was staring into the hall as Liz took her leave.
Liz wound down the halls, searching for the set of doors she’d come through, but she had gotten twisted around. There was a shortcut through the gym and Liz took it, coming out by the pool. The sight made her turn her head, seized by a surge of yearning. Reid had never looked back after his near-drowning in toddlerhood, and it was both children’s favorite treat to come swim at the school. Ally also loved exploring the ornamental gardens, although she maintained that she preferred the naturalistic borders of Roots: its swaying meadow of wildflowers from which flower shops and event planners might one day purchase stock.
What were Reid and Ally doing now? Was being in Paul’s comparatively rarefied care a bonus, or were they unhappy every day? Liz hoped fervently for the former. Please, let Paul be doing something that the kids would characterize as fun. And let him have come up with something to tell them, an explanation that made sense. The idea that Reid and Ally thought Liz wanted this—was okay being apart from them—turned her clutch of longing into a chokehold.
Shouts and jeers, boys trading insults amidst laughter, came from behind a locker room door. Liz swerved in the other direction, hunting an exit. Filtered sunlight shone down the hall, and the yellow bars glinted off a glass case along one wall. Liz paused. Inside the case were a few faded green pennants with gold lettering on them and twin trophies from back-to-back years. There was a row of newspaper articles, the usual rah-rah stuff about local boys, coach honored, money raised for new this or that. One story on faded paper was tacked up front and center, its headline blaring.
EASTERN AG SLATED TO TAKE DIVISION
Which division? Liz wondered wryly. Twenty?
Next to the piece was a slightly blurred photograph that erased all traces of wryness.
In addition to the older man beaming in the shot, probably the coach, there were two boys, arms slung around each other’s bulked-up shoulders, grins as wide as their pads.
One of them was Paul.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The helmet and uniform in Paul’s closet at home. Even the ticker-tape of games that had been scrolling along one of the last pages Paul had open on his computer. Liz had assumed he had been looking at course rosters, but what if the football schedule had been his focus?
Why had she never heard about Paul’s football career?
Marjorie had worked at the college back when this photo was taken. The last time, it seemed, that Eastern Ag had had a winning season.
A couple of boys, wet from the shower, ran past her, sneakers drumming.
Liz quickly outpaced them.
The secretary was already gone for the day, the department door locked. These were the last meandering days of summer, and Marjorie had been good to come in to get things ready for Paul, but working long hours went above and beyond even that call.
A click of heels sounded along the adjacent hall, and Liz ran. Marjorie hadn’t quite reached the exit yet. Liz called out, and the secretary turned, frowning as she headed back. The two of them met in the middle.
“I feel terrible about what’s happened,” Marjorie said.
It seemed a strange way to put it, as if Marjorie were somehow responsible.
“I hadn’t realized that Paul played football,” Liz said in reply.
Marjorie’s back sagged, and she suddenly looked every one of her seven decades. “I hadn’t realized that you didn’t realize that.”
Now it was Liz’s turn to frown. “What do you mean?”
Marjorie checked her wristwatch. “Do you have a few minutes? The library should be open.”
Liz felt her brow pucker again.
The secretary turned, leading the way.
It was Eastern Ag’s oldest building, a noble stack of bricks. Marjorie pushed one of the heavy doors open, twisting a filigreed knob. The air inside was cool to the point of chilliness, and a deep hush lay over the space. Dust twirled in the sun shafts beneath a skylight, and shelves of books soared. Not even the dimly glowing bank of computers could detract from the sense that by walking through the doors, you had entered a bygone age.
Marjorie strode past the front desk, and a curving stone staircase. A couple of sharp turns brought them to a less majestic section of the library: vinyl tiles on a narrow flight of steps. Liz raised her eyebrows doubtfully, but Marjorie was already descending at a good clip. She waited for Liz at the bottom, then led the way between a narrow length of stacks. Marjorie came to a stop by a shelf that held a row of green volumes with letters stamped on them in gold.
Yearbooks.
After some study and running of fingers over dates, Marjorie pulled one out. The cover looked muted, a little less bright, compared to those from more recent years. Marjorie paged through the volume to the athletic team photos in back, then held the book out flat for Liz to see.
Liz was unprepared for the fury that settled over her as soon as she glimpsed Paul’s face. Like a young buck he was, head-tossed and proud. Liz reached for the glossy sheet with his image on it. The edge of paper sliced the tip of her thumb and Liz sucked in a sharp, hissing breath. She had no idea why Marjorie had brought her down here. The list of names beneath the team photo didn’t mean anything to her, aside from Paul’s. The candid shots were equally lacking in information, besides the fact that Paul had been captured several times in concert with a teammate named Michael Brady.
Marjorie turned the page.
The next one was filled entirely with a photo of Michael Brady.
In Memoriam read the words underneath.
Liz looked up, then down again.
Michael Brady had been a good-looking boy; a unique brand of fiery vigor had been preserved in the shot. The photo caught him leaping toward an opposing player, the look on his face like one you might see on a lion about to tear apart a gazelle.
“What a tragedy,” Liz murmured. “He couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or -two.”
“He would’ve turned twenty that year,” Marjorie said.
Liz shook her head. “Paul’s teammate?”
“Paul’s best friend.”
“Oh no.” Liz set the yearbook back on its shelf. “Best friends? Paul never mentioned him. He didn’t even really tell me that he’d played football.”
Marjorie peered at her. “He was the quarterback. You never knew that?”
Liz looked down. “You know, it’s funny. As much a part of Paul’s life as Eastern Ag is, he hates to talk about his connection to the school. I used to ask him sometimes how he could work here, yet not enjoy reminiscing, talking about the glory days. I never got a good answer.”
Paul would change the subject to the here and now, something he was teaching, or doing in the department.
“He stayed because of Michael Brady,” Marjorie said. “Because Michael never got to leave.”
The skin on Liz’s arms prickled. “What happened to him?”
Marjorie frowned, wrinkles appearing like canyons on her brow. “There was a car accident on Wicket Road. That’s a mean road—curvy as the devil’s tongue. Trees hang over it like beasts. Paul was driving, and he had been drinking some, according to the police.”
“He had?” Liz could hardly imagine it. A carefree, irresponsible Paul who didn’t always maintain his hold on the righteous position? Was this what Matthew’s note referred to, the drunk-driving accident that had killed Paul’s best friend? Liz shivered again. The sun was lost down here, and it was cold in the basement.
The secretary seemed to be following her thoughts. “Michael didn’t die in the crash.”
Liz turned to her.
“He survived the accident. He might’ve survived indefinitely, or at least for many years.”
Liz nodded, although she wasn’t sure how to parse the meaning. “Well, that�
��s better than what I was thinking,” she began.
“It’s worse than what you were thinking,” Marjorie said sharply. “Michael was paralyzed. Completely. He couldn’t even blink. His eyes ran and ran with tears. They gave him a drug to stop the flow, but that caused terrible dryness. Eventually he had to be blindfolded.”
Liz flinched at the image.
“And that was the least of the horrors he had to endure,” Marjorie went on. “Or would have had to endure if he had lived.”
“What happened?”
The secretary took a breath. “Someone put him out of his misery. Michael was smothered to death the day before he was to be moved to a rehab unit.”
“Oh my God. Oh no.” What a cascade of tragedy to descend on boys so young, kids really, just ready for the prime of their lives.
Marjorie’s mouth compressed. “The team lost its star player that year and also its coach.”
“Why the coach?”
Marjorie reached out and took Liz’s hand in her own papery one. “This is why I felt the need to tell you this now.”
Liz stared down at their entangled grips.
“It was Coach Allgood who supplied mercy, to the extent that that’s what it was. I suppose he felt responsible in some way.” The secretary gripped Liz’s hand harder. “Coach killed Michael Brady. He went to prison for it. And Mrs. Daniels, he was just released. His sentence ended on August twenty-second.”
Liz looked up and realized that Marjorie had also put it together.
August twenty-second was the day they had left on vacation.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Do you have a little more time?” Marjorie asked. “There’s something else I think you should see. The end of the story, so to speak.”
But Liz had the feeling it would only be the beginning.
They climbed the stairs, Liz feeling the secretary’s laborious step in her own tread, and went outside through the grand set of doors. The library lawn was lush, with a scattering of fallen leaves upon it. Students as bright as the leaves dotted the ground, plugged in to various degrees. Some hunched over laptops; others texted on phones; a few seemed to be doing nothing except enjoying the placid scene, until you noticed the tiny cones in their ears.
“Two hundred people and they’re all completely alone,” Marjorie observed.
It was true. The expected sound track when this many people were gathered in one place was damped. You heard more clicking and beeps than hellos or shouts of traded laughter.
A trio of boys came pushing and clobbering out of the library. They veered around Liz and Marjorie without so much as a glance. Liz wondered when she had crossed that valley, making the switch from college guys sizing her up to picturing Reid as one of them.
Reid. Ally.
Marjorie approached what looked like a solid barricade of trees, showing no intention of stopping. A small path became apparent at the last moment, threading its way through the woods. The sundappled column of greenery ended, and they came out in a shallow cup of meadow at the bottom of a hill.
How had Liz never discovered this part of campus? Ally would’ve loved it here, she thought with a pang. The grasses were wild and tangled, dotted all over with merrybells, Dutchman’s breeches, and azure bluets. A veritable song of color of the sort that Liz and Jill had labored to duplicate at Roots. The perfection of blooms, the intensity of their tints, distracted Liz’s eye for a moment.
Marjorie had come to a stop several yards ahead. A mixture of bluegrass and rye had been planted there, and mowed in a carefully kempt circle. The sight, amidst all this wildness, was like finding a gemstone in a bed of gravel. The secretary stood in the center of the greenery, her body arched over, and her head lowered. Liz crept closer, leaving the meadow behind to enter the emerald sphere.
In the middle of the green circle, a half-moon shaped piece of granite had been placed. Michael Brady’s name had been carved into the stone. There was also a football helmet that matched the one in Paul’s closet. It had been camouflaged momentarily by the intense green of the grass, but this too looked to be oft-tended, its dome polished to a high shine.
Liz looked at Marjorie.
“Paul tended this memorial,” the secretary explained. “Every year, week in and week out, since Michael Brady died.”
For the first time since Paul had done what he did, drilling down and scooping everything inside her out, Liz felt a flicker of pity. The guilt Paul must have borne for what in the end was a terrible, tragic accident.
Riotous color blurred before her eyes. Liz wiped away a screen of tears.
The secretary spoke again. “Paul was driving Michael’s car.”
There was a shimmer of anger in the statement.
“I don’t think anyone knows why they switched. If they hadn’t, then perhaps they wouldn’t have crashed. Or else …” Marjorie trailed off before mustering breath. “Perhaps Paul would’ve wound up in the condition poor Michael did.”
It took a second for the horror of the alternative to unspool. Marjorie delivered a brief pat to Liz’s shoulder, signaling goodbye. Liz watched her retreat into the woods.
The silence out here was pressing, intense. Through a barrier of trees lay a shaded grove in which older stones, gray and ivory rectangles, thrust themselves out of the ground like a ring of teeth. The faculty cemetery, where a few of Eastern Ag’s somewhat illustrious members had been laid to rest.
Liz drifted in its direction, her footfalls quiet upon the soil. She slipped through a stand of knotty trees, making her way to the open maw of stones. Much of their lettering had been rubbed off, although some dates were still visible, along with names, even an epitaph or two. A few of these headstones dated back to the eighteen hundreds, sway-backed, leaning over.
Liz crouched and read the carving on one.
To life’s unending cry, I say
There is no end but comes too soon
When ruin falls
The rest comes down
We wish we could but weep again
A scrim of tears blocked her vision.
The cemetery felt unnaturally hushed. Liz squinted to try and catch a glimpse between rutted trunks, but she couldn’t make out even a sliver of light, so closely crowded were the branches and undergrowth. The woods seemed to reach out, beckoning, their twigs like forked fingers. Liz stepped forward, curious to see the effect of so much darkness. It would be like entering a cave, or a mouth.
A hand settled around her wrist.
“Marjorie?” she cried out.
No one answered.
Liz sucked in her breath and whirled.
It wasn’t a hand on her, but the soft and tender edge of a leaf. Liz should’ve been the last person to mistake plant life for a human touch, and she would’ve laughed at herself if she hadn’t been so rattled. She drew air into her chest and turned away from the awful reach of the forest, which more than a century’s worth of Ag students hadn’t been able to tame, or even penetrate.
The word Liz had applied to Matthew and Mary’s farm—sinister—arose in her mind like smoke. The harshness of the note Paul’s father had written. But this place was spooked, too. Paul had concealed the fact that he’d played football from her for a reason. He had brought about his best friend’s paralysis, caused Michael Brady’s football career and ultimately his life to be snuffed out, in one moment of abandon. As far as Liz could tell, that night in the car had been the last time her husband had ever been carefree.
Of the cast of characters back then, the first was missing and the second was dead.
Which meant that Liz had better track down the third.
CHAPTER THIRTY
A text from Tim arrived as she hurried to her car.
that site u found is sealed like a grave. i know an IT guy i can call
A late summer wind was kicking up again. Humped mountains of clouds had gathered in the sky, and leaves slapped against one another, fleshy and thick.
Liz drove back to the house who
se emptiness now cast such a pall.
Only it wasn’t empty.
Liz caught a glimpse of the gate, swung partway open, and heard voices coming from the gardens. She nearly wept when she spotted Lia squatting beside the high-bush blues, and Jill checking on a cage of predatory mites, one of Paul’s experimental pest-management strategies.
Liz headed over to both women, gladness pumping in her heart. The ground was a welcome cushion as she walked, a medley of earthworms and topsoil and newly deposited compost. Lia looked up as she drew near.
“Liz. Hi.”
Would Jill detect any awkwardness in Lia’s greeting? It wasn’t really fair to blame the girl for how little help she had been. Paul kept his own counsel with Liz, with his students, with everyone.
“Thanks for getting on top of this.” Liz gestured to the raised beds, now clear of weeds.
Jill began walking over, pulling off her pair of gloves. “We’re not on top of it yet. At this rate, we’ll be at it till after dark.”
“It’ll go faster with all of us working,” Liz said. Then she added, “Andy?”
Taking care of her son since his injury had cut into the hours Jill was able to put in at Roots. It was one of the reasons Lia’s assistance had been welcome.
Jill’s face bloomed. “At a party. With lots of reminders to take things slow, and instructions for the chaperones. But he’s going to try.”
“Oh, Jill.” Liz felt a terrible burst. Happiness streaked with envy, like dirt through a dish of food. “That is just great.”
Jill was watching her carefully. “But what about you? What have you been up to?”
Liz looked over her shoulder at the house, recalling the task with which she’d left the students, and also the one Marjorie had inadvertently assigned her. Where had the old football coach gone after he left prison?
“Give me a few,” she said. “Then I’ll come back to help and I’ll tell you.”
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