The Sixes

by Kate White

  “ ’Night, Tony,” she said after she’d paid her bill and rounded the corner of the dining room. He was standing at the host’s podium with the reservation book, just to the right of the bar. “The zabaglione was divine.”

  “For you, I use my finest marsala.”

  “I could tell—thank you.”

  There were three people at the bar—a middle-aged couple and a solo guy with wavy, dark brown hair, his back directly to her. As she said good-bye to Tony, the guy at the bar turned his head in her direction. She saw recognition in his eyes and didn’t understand why. Then she realized: it was Duncan Shaw. He’d shaved off his mustache and beard in the three days since she’d last seen him.

  Instinctively she dropped her mouth open in shock—at seeing him there, and at the change in his appearance. She watched his brown eyes flick to the left, just over her shoulder, checking to see who she’d been eating with. A second later his eyes betrayed his realization that she was alone—and that she’d lied to him about having plans. Damn, she thought. I am totally busted.

  He smiled ever so slightly. Unsurprising, she thought. He’s not the sensitive type who’s going to seem wounded.

  “Oh, hello,” Phoebe said, flustered. She noticed that in front of him were a half-filled pasta bowl and a nearly empty glass of wine. “What—what happened to your friends?”

  “They wanted to drive to Bethlehem for dinner, and I realized I wasn’t up for that big of a night.”

  “Look, I feel incredibly awkward,” she said, moving a little closer out of Tony’s earshot. “I don’t want you to think I lied to you.”

  He smiled again, a little fuller this time so that it made the skin around his eyes crinkle. Though she guessed he was in his mid-forties, his skin was very smooth, perhaps from having had the beard. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m going to have another glass of wine and see if that will take the sting out.” The words could have played sarcastically, but his tone didn’t let them.

  “But it wasn’t a lie—really. I had planned to stay in and work, but at the last minute, I ran out to grab a bite.”

  “No need to explain.” Not quite as friendly this time. She wondered if he was one of those dark-eyed guys who sometimes got moody or sullen.

  “By the way, I like your new look,” she told him, at a loss as to what else to say. But she meant it. She noticed for the first time—without the beard and mustache—that his nose had an appealing beak. More pirate than professor, she thought.

  His smile returned. “Thanks. The beard was just an experiment, and it ran its course. Though I haven’t stopped jumping each time I look in the mirror.”

  The bartender sauntered over to them.

  “Can I top off your wine for you?” he asked Duncan.

  “That’d be great,” Duncan said.

  “How ’bout you, ma’am? Can I get you something?”

  For a split second she thought Duncan would urge her to accept the offer, and to her surprise she realized she’d tell him yes. But Duncan said nothing, his silence nearly palpable. Of course, she realized. She’d made a bit of a fool of him, and he had no desire to have her stay now.

  “Um, no, thank you,” Phoebe said. She turned back to Duncan. “Well, I’d better get back. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

  “You too,” he said.

  What a dope I am, she thought as she made her way back up Bridge Street. I should have stayed in, eaten the damn salad. Well, at least this would discourage Duncan Shaw from asking her out again. He seemed nice but this wasn’t the time or place for her to become involved.

  She cut back through the campus. As she hurried along the path, she wondered if there would still be a crowd near Curry Hall, holding vigil for the missing girl. But everyone had dispersed. As she reached the quad, however, she found a cluster of students gathered around a tree. She realized that they were tacking up a white flyer of some kind. Scanning the quad, she saw that all the other trees were already plastered with them. She cut across to one of the maples to read the flyer.

  The headline read “Missing” above a photo of Lily Mack. She was pretty, with blond hair falling far below her shoulders and a small cleft in her chin. With a start Phoebe realized that she recognized the girl. She wasn’t in either of Phoebe’s classes, but Phoebe had walked with her in the rain recently, and shared an umbrella.

  And the girl had told her a secret.

  2

  L OWERING HER EYES, Phoebe tried to summon the few minutes she’d spent with the girl. It had been about two weeks ago, just before eight one morning. Phoebe had stopped by the cafeteria, something she rarely did in the morning—the sweet, cloying aroma of pancakes and French toast was too reminiscent of boarding school—but she’d run out of coffee at home and was desperate for caffeine.

  After leaving the student union building, she saw that it had started to pour. Luckily she had an umbrella in her bag, and she stopped under the overhang to pop it open.

  As she peered through the streams of rain, trying to estimate how much damage her Tod’s loafers were going to endure, she noticed a girl standing a few feet away from her, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a cotton sweater. Though she was strikingly pretty, Phoebe saw something tentative, sad even, in her eyes and wondered if she was a high school student touring the school, unsure of what to do. It seemed mean to ignore her.

  “Do you need help?” Phoebe called out.

  “No—thank you,” the girl replied. “I was just wondering if I should wait out the rain. But I’ve got a class.”

  “I’m headed to Arthur,” Phoebe said. “If you’re going anywhere near there, you’re welcome to share my umbrella.”

  “Oh, wow, thank you,” the girl replied. “I’m headed to Arthur, too.”

  The girl ducked under the umbrella, and after Phoebe shouted, “One, two, three,” they began a dash along walkways already flooded with puddles.

  Before they’d run very far, the girl glanced over at Phoebe and called over the sound of the rain, “I really like your books.”

  So that’s it, Phoebe thought: she was waiting for me. The phrase “No good deed goes unpunished” flashed in her mind.

  “Thanks,” Phoebe said. She hoped the blunt reply would discourage further conversation.

  “Are you going to be teaching next term, too?” the girl asked.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Phoebe said. “That’s still up in the air.”

  “I really wanted to take your writing class, but both sections were already closed by the time I heard you were subbing for Dr. Mason.”

  “Sorry. The department head decided to keep the classes small.” Phoebe knew she should be nicer to the girl. “Are you thinking about writing professionally one day?” she added.

  “Yes, I think so. Nonfiction like you. I like to explore things.”

  “Why don’t you send me an e-mail,” Phoebe said. “When I know if I’m staying or not, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks. I’d really appreciate that.”

  Phoebe refocused on the walk and dodged a puddle. Despite the umbrella, she could feel that the back of her jacket was nearly soaked. At least Arthur Hall was now in sight. Students and faculty were scampering up the steps, eager to escape the downpour.

  “Can I ask you one question?” the girl asked hurriedly.

  Phoebe had no doubt about what was coming next. It was bound to be a variation on, “What’s Angelina really like?”

  “Sure,” Phoebe replied without enthusiasm. All she wanted was to get settled in her classroom before twenty sopping wet students came tramping through the door.

  “Is it really possible to start over? After you . . . you know . . . you’ve made a mess of things?”

  Phoebe’s body stiffened instinctively. She couldn’t believe the girl was shooting this kind of question at her.

  “You’ll have to ask me in a year,” Phoebe said bluntly. “I won’t know until then, will I?”

  They mounted the steps to Arthur, and Phoebe c
ollapsed her umbrella, shaking the water out.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you,” the girl said, flustered. Phoebe could see that her cheeks had quickly colored. “It’s me. I—I’ve made kind of a mess of things.”

  “Oh, I see,” Phoebe said, softening her voice. She felt a pinch of guilt for misunderstanding and being so curt.

  “In your book Second Acts, you talk about people reinventing themselves,” the girl said. “And I wondered, can they really do that?”

  “I was writing specifically about celebrities, of course,” Phoebe said. “And yes, some of them definitely do.”

  “I mean anyone. Regular people. After something bad has happened, after you’ve . . . you know . . . you’ve screwed up. Can you really escape?”

  Phoebe took a small breath, gathering her thoughts. She didn’t want to blow the girl off, but she also needed to get moving.

  “Yes, I do think you can start over. But you have to do the work, as they say. That means figuring out what steps you must take to fix things. You’ve also got to be willing to look back at the mess and understand how it happened so you don’t repeat the same mistakes.”

  The girl glanced away briefly, and when she looked back, Phoebe saw that her face was pinched.

  “Thank you,” the girl said. “I appreciate your advice.”

  “You’re welcome,” Phoebe said. She wondered if she should probe, but by now the stream of people headed into Arthur had been reduced to a trickle, a sign that classes were about to start. “Well, good luck.”

  The girl smiled wanly and started to move away. Then she stopped and turned back.

  “Don’t tell anyone what I said, okay?” she said quietly. “It’s a secret.”

  “Of course not,” Phoebe said. “And please send me that e-mail?”

  The girl said she would and hurried into the building ahead of Phoebe.

  Now Phoebe’s stomach knotted as she passed tree after tree stapled with the flyer. Near the western edge of campus she saw that someone had scrawled something on one of the flyers. She approached to take a closer look. The letter G—or what looked like the letter G—had been written crudely in heavy black marker right across Lily’s face. Phoebe pulled the flyer down and stuffed it in her purse.

  When she arrived at her house, three blocks west of campus on Hunter Street, she made a cup of tea and replayed the brief conversation with Lily in her head once again, making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. What was the mess Lily had made? she wondered. Was it linked to her disappearance? Should Phoebe have done more to help the girl that day?

  And why had someone scrawled across Lily’s photo with a marker? Was there someone on campus who hated her?

  Phoebe picked up her phone and called Glenda. A babysitter answered and said that Dr. Johns and her husband were attending a campus event. Phoebe left a message, asking that Glenda call her when she returned.

  With mug in hand, she circled through the contiguous rooms of her tiny house—a rectangular living room that ran across the front of the house and, in the back, side by side, a kitchen and a small dining room, which Phoebe used for her office, turning the table into a makeshift desk. When she’d first looked for a place to stay in Lyle, she’d had something far more charming in mind—perhaps a house in the country—but this was one of the only decent rentals available, and in the end she’d been grateful for its location just a few blocks from campus. Being isolated in some rural area would have made her exile harder to adjust to.

  At one point in her circling, Phoebe stopped in her office and surveyed the table. Toward the front was a stack of papers, articles, and blogs her students had written—that she was in the process of grading.

  At the back of the table was a thick folder of magazine clippings and articles, all about celebrities, which she was periodically going through, hoping one of them would spark an idea for her next book. On top of the folder she had laid an antique porcelain pen. It had been a gift from her mother when she first became a writer, constantly writing poems as a teenager. Phoebe had always thought of it as a talisman, something that made the words flow—but it had proved absolutely futile lately.

  At 11:30 she gave up waiting for Glenda. She dressed for bed and flicked off the lights in her bedroom, except for the night-light by the door. As she slid in between the soft cotton sheets she’d lugged with her from New York City, she could hear the muted chirping of crickets outside, the last of the year, and from far off, the mournful whistle of a train. Where was it headed? she wondered sadly. She felt so far from anything that had mattered to her, and at the same time she knew she couldn’t go back to Manhattan yet. She needed to save her money. And she needed to figure out why things had gone so wrong for her.

  For a dangerous moment she felt the tug of something from long ago, something dark and threatening. I’m just thinking too much about the missing girl, she told herself. She squeezed her eyes closed and forced herself to think of her classes on Monday.

  At eight the next morning, just as Phoebe was making coffee, Glenda phoned.

  “You up, Fee?” Glenda asked. There were voices and clanging kitchen sounds in the background.

  “Yeah. I was just going to try you again.”

  “Sorry I didn’t call last night. I was on the phone half the night—dealing with this whole situation. You heard about the missing girl?”

  “Yes, that’s why I called you. When I saw the flyers last night, I realized I’d had a conversation with her about two weeks ago.”

  “You’re kidding. What did she say?”

  “Nothing super revealing, but it might be relevant. She seemed to be looking for answers.”

  There was a rattling sound on the other end of the phone, as if someone had hurried by Glenda with a tray full of glasses.

  “Look, I’m hosting a breakfast for a local group and they’re just about to walk in the door. Can you come over in an hour? There’s something I want to talk to you about anyway.”

  “Okay, will do.”

  For the next hour Phoebe thumbed through a stack of mail she’d been ignoring that week. At exactly nine, she walked the several blocks to the college president’s residence, directly across the street from the campus. Though a bit run-down in places, it was still a grand, impressive house, apparently built for some captain of industry before the college was even founded. There wasn’t a ton of rooms inside, but they were all spacious, decorated with a mix of antiques owned by the college and random pieces left behind by former presidents who had come and gone, a few with their tails between their legs.

  For Glenda it was like living a fantasy. She had grown up in the projects in Brooklyn, and though she and her husband Mark had lived in a series of nice apartments and homes as she moved up through academia, this one topped them all. As Glenda had once told Phoebe, “It’s even better than my black Barbie Dream House.”

  The housekeeper answered the door. Over her shoulder, Phoebe could see that there were a few stragglers from the breakfast still in the living room.

  “Dr. Johns is expecting you,” the woman said. “She asked that you wait in the conservatory for a few moments.” She led Phoebe down there.

  It was Phoebe’s favorite room in the house. The windows were floor to ceiling, and the space was filled with lush ferns and miniature orange trees. She settled in one of the slightly worn black wicker armchairs. A coffee service had been set up on a table nearby, and Phoebe poured a cup for herself. Outside leaves from the maple and oak trees in the yard slipped from the branches and drifted silently to the ground.

  Ten minutes later Glenda rushed in, dressed in a peach-colored wool pants suit that flattered her soft brown skin. Phoebe flashed a smile at her. They had met in boarding school, two scholarship students—both daughters of single mothers—thrust together as roommates. They had forged a friendship from day one. Though Phoebe had watched the gradual evolution of Glenda’s kick-ass work skills and career, she still found herself in awe of the woman her friend had become.
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  “Sorry, Fee,” Glenda said, flopping her five-eleven frame into another armchair. “It was like herding cats to get them out. You want anything to eat?”

  “I’m fine with coffee, thanks. Any news about Lily?”

  “Unfortunately, no—though we’ve pieced together some details about her whereabouts Thursday night. How much do you know about her disappearance?”

  “Nothing, really.”

  Glenda let out a long sigh. “She was last seen on campus at about eight Thursday night,” she said. “She told her roommate she was going to the library, and people recall seeing her there. But at some point she headed off campus. The cops discovered that she ended up at one of those bars I despise at the bottom of Bridge Street—Cat Tails. The bartender says she had two beers and paid the tab at around ten. Two people reported seeing her leave the bar and turn up Bridge Street—but she never made it back to the dorm.”

  “Why did the roommate wait so damn long to report it?”

  “Lily has a friend named Blair Usher with an off-campus apartment over on Ash Street. When Lily left for the library, she told her roommate she might be staying there that night—she sometimes did that, apparently. The roommate was out of the dorm most of Friday, and when she returned to the room, there was no sign Lily had ever come back home. That’s when the roommate started to get concerned. At dinner that night in the cafeteria, she went looking for Blair and found out that Lily hadn’t stayed with her Thursday night after all.”

  “A girl last seen leaving a bar alone,” Phoebe said soberly. “That’s a story that doesn’t usually end well.”

  “I know. And her cell phone has not been used since that night, so it’s not looking great.” Glenda let out a breath. “So, tell me about your conversation with her.”

  Phoebe related what Lily had said about making a mess of things and wanting to start over—or escape. When Phoebe finished, Glenda leaned back in her chair, folding her arms against her chest. Her eyes danced around as she mulled over what she’d heard.