Smiling, Farr stood. “Then I’ve fulfilled my obligations—as provost, father, and friend. Should you and Taylor defy the odds, nothing would please me more.”
Darrow nodded. “I know that.”
Farr looked relieved. “Then go with God, my son. And do go over those budget figures I prepared.”
When Farr left, Darrow gazed at the door, lost in thought. Then he picked up the phone and called Mike Riley in Boston.
“I’m coming to town,” he told the accountant. “Can you make time to see me?”
“Always. You still grappling with this embezzlement?”
“Yes. Durbin came to see me today, to assert his innocence. It was fairly pathetic. He tried to blame some unnamed person on the investment committee, as I’d guessed he might. So I challenged his suggestion with several questions, none of which he could answer.”
“Did you expect him to?”
“Of course not. But I thought you might be able to do better.”
Riley chuckled. “Still not quite convinced he did it, are you?”
“Not quite yet. I’ll put all my questions in an e-mail. If I give you a couple of days, can you look over all the documents and tell me what you think?”
“Sure. What brings you back to Boston, by the way?”
“The hope of better meals.”
“You might try San Francisco,” Riley said, and got off.
Pensive, Darrow placed another call. “This is nice,” Taylor said cheerfully. “I woke up this morning, and there was nothing to look forward to but my thesis. What made you think to call?”
“I’ve been bonding with your dad,” Darrow informed her. “I told him. He seems to be feeling a little tender, even threatened. Like he’s become the odd man out.”
Taylor was quiet. “Do you find that a little curious?” she inquired coolly.
Against his will, Darrow heard Farr say, She has a tendency toward melancholy. And then heard Taylor telling him, I worry about losing myself, or giving any man too much power over me. In a casual tone, he answered, “I think he means well. But Lionel’s a complicated person. As are we all, I suppose.”
“Him most of all,” Taylor responded in the same voice. “Don’t worry, I’ll tread lightly with him. In the end, we’re all he has.”
21
O
N WEDNESDAY EVENING, DARROW SPOKE TO A HUNDRED alumni at a hotel ballroom in Columbus. “Almost everyone,” he told them, “had a professor who influenced the course of your life, like Lionel Farr did mine. That’s why you’re here; it’s why I’m here. So my first mission as president of Caldwell is to earn your trust. My second mission—which I hope becomes yours—will be to ensure that Caldwell has the resources to build state-of-the-art facilities, endow chairs for the most gifted teachers, and fund scholarships for any deserving student who entrusts us with her future.
“Next year I’ll be back with a blueprint for this endeavor. If you’ll give me your help, together we’ll build a Caldwell College that offers the next generation of alumni even more than it gave us.”
The crowd’s applause was warm, its questions respectful. But, as at several recent events, the good feeling was punctured by an aggressive businessman who asserted that his trust was contingent on the prosecution of Clark Durbin. Deflecting the question, Darrow guessed that these challenges—similar in wording—reflected a pressure campaign orchestrated from within the board of trustees. Whoever it was, they meant for Darrow to yield Durbin on their timetable.
Afterward, Darrow mingled with the group, connecting stories with names and faces and, he hoped, lodging each detail in his memory bank. Then a bleached blonde about his age approached him with a smile at once bright and tentative, as though worried she would evoke no response. “Mark, I’m Laurie,” she said. “Laurie Shilts. Would you have recognized me?”
Fifteen years and twenty pounds added up to “maybe not”—at least if Darrow had not asked alumni relations to ensure that Laurie was coming. But the blue-green eyes were still those of the sad and angry girl with a dull bruise on her face, telling him at the fateful party about breaking up with Joe Betts. Kissing her on the cheek, he said, “With those eyes? Always.”
She drew back, examining him with the proprietary expression of a fond old friend. “Imagine this—you as the president of Caldwell.”
Darrow grinned. “ ‘The Decline of the West,’ ” he said lightly. “Can I buy you a drink? Meet me at the bar in fifteen minutes, and we’ll review the last fifteen years.”
Laurie’s smile contained a dollop of flirtation. “Better late than never,” she said.
IT WAS A half hour before Darrow entered the bar, delayed by several pledges of increased support for Caldwell. By the time he sat with Laurie at a small but unsteady wooden table, she had a glass of white wine in front of her, and a flush to her cheeks that suggested this was not her first. Signaling the waitress, Darrow ordered a glass of cabernet.
Laurie summoned a smile of knowing sadness. “So how are you, Mark?”
He could not miss the allusion to Lee. “I’m okay. As I guess you know, I lost my wife.”
She touched his hand. “I do know. And I’m sorry.”
Darrow shrugged. “A lot’s happened to all of us since we left Caldwell.”
Laurie sipped her wine, pensive now. “A lot happened before we left.”
“I remember,” Darrow said quietly. “What I don’t have a clue about is the rest of your life.”
With a faintly rueful laugh, Laurie said, “Oh, that.”
“That. So start anywhere you like—job, married or single, kids, where you live, hobbies, criminal record, bizarre quirks you’re concealing from your neighbors.”
In truth, Laurie’s alumni file had already told him much of this. Leaning forward, she said, “Let’s skip the fetishes and the conditions of my parole. My ex-husband was—and is—a drunk. So I’m a single mom with a twelve-year-old daughter.”
“Twelve?”
“I started making mistakes early.” Quickly, Laurie amended this: “Or continued making them. Not Chloe—her dad, the deadbeat. It’s not easy raising an adolescent girl alone, especially on a teacher’s salary.”
“I can imagine. Which grade?”
“Ninth-grade English in a nice suburban high school filled with largely uncurious white kids. They’re probably not so different than me at that age, though I find that more depressing than comforting.” Her smile resembled a grimace. “The prospering classes move there to escape. I guess it’s some comfort that their kids are smoking pot with their socioeconomic peer group. But why should I complain? The school’s safe, and so’s my job.”
“And Chloe?”
“She’s bright and pretty—actually, she’s beginning to look like my old yearbook pictures, back in more innocent times.” Laurie frowned. “But she’s getting a case of the sullens—if my teenage self is any guide, she’ll spend the next six years despising me, all the more so because I’m the only parental game in town.” Her voice softened. “It’s sad for both of us, I guess. For a long time she was my only company—I leaned on her more than I should have. No boundaries, as they say.
“But now she makes me feel lonely. I guess that’s what girls and their moms endure on the way to becoming human again.” Laurie summoned a falsely bright smile. “Tales of a Mundane Life. I shouldn’t squander the chance to see you on feeling sorry for myself.”
Darrow shook his head in demurral. “Sometimes being alone is hard.”
She gave him a solicitous look. “For everyone. On the surface, you still seem like the golden boy, so good-looking that I was always surprised by how nice you were. But maybe that helps you cover pain. Even back in college.”
“Maybe so. Things happen all your life that no one else can fix.” Then Darrow thought of Farr and Taylor, and wondered if this was true.
Laurie’s gaze became open, curious. “But you’re okay now?”
“Better. Part of that is the Caldwell job. It’s a
daily challenge, and it keeps me busy and engaged—there’s nowhere for a college president to hide.”
“It seems like you really care about Caldwell, Mark.”
“I do. I just hibernated for sixteen years.”
Laurie sipped her wine. “I don’t blame you.”
To Darrow, this sounded more like a shared emotion than sympathy. “It was tough on all of us, Laurie. We weren’t prepared for what happened.”
She put a curled finger to her lips. “I still think about that party, talking with you. It was only a few hours later . . .” Her voice trailed off, and then she gave him a sideways look. “Do you ever see Joe?”
“Quite a bit, lately.”
“How is he?”
“Pretty good, I think. As far as I can tell, he’s got a stable marriage and two nice kids.” Darrow paused, looking at her. “It probably helps that he sticks to sparkling water.”
Laurie bit her lip, nodding toward her empty glass. “I don’t, clearly.”
Darrow felt caught between the desire to keep her talking and misgivings just as deep. “So let’s have one more for the road,” he said, and hated the sound of that.
Laurie nodded. As Darrow caught the waitress’s eye, she said, “I’m a friendly drunk, you’ll be glad to know. Not like Joe.”
“Yeah. I remember how he was.”
“Maybe so,” Laurie responded with a somber tone. “But not as well as I do.”
When the wine arrived, Darrow took a sip. “I also remember,” he ventured, “Joe talking about his father getting drunk and beating on his mother.”
Laurie’s mouth twisted in a smile that made her appear both hard and tired. “He never said that to me. But everyone needs a role model, I guess.”
Darrow met her eyes, feeling torn between acceptance and dread. “Joe hit you?”
“Not in the beginning.” She shook her head, as though to clear it. “This is pretty hard to talk about. I never really have—for a whole set of reasons, I guess. Is this anything you really want to know?”
“Yes. At least if you’d like to tell me.”
The fleeting look she gave him was both grateful and reluctant. “When I first left Steve for Joe,” she said at length, “he was gentle. But part of the attraction was that Joe was wounded—I believed that beneath the spoiled rich kid was a boy who’d been hurt. I was the girl who could help him heal.” As she paused, Darrow noted the slight slur in her voice merging with a delay in choosing words. “One night he got really drunk at a party, and he said he wanted to ‘fuck’ me right away. So he bent me over a chair in someone else’s room, all the time saying disgusting things. It felt more like rape than sex.” Briefly her eyes closed. “He kept asking if he was better than Steve. And bigger.”
Darrow felt uneasy. “Yeah,” he said with gentle irony. “It’s the fear that haunts us all.”
“You’re not like that,” Laurie said emphatically. “Steve wasn’t either.” Abruptly she paused, the flush of her cheeks deepening. “At least not with me. When I dumped him, he was angry, but I never thought he’d hit me—not once. Instead he just felt terrible.”
Darrow paused. Quietly, he said, “So Steve tells me.”
She looked up again. “You saw him, too?”
“Yeah. He’s changed a lot—bitter, but also thoughtful. There’s more to Steve than most people got.”
“Not me. I always knew that Steve saw and felt more than he said—like you, I guess. When I was with Joe, sometimes, I wondered why I’d left Steve. My ex-husband is the answer. Meet a prick, and I still imagine seeing a wounded boy.”
Weighing how much to press her, Darrow looked around them. The crowd in the bar, commercial travelers in the final stages of enforced conviviality, was dwindling. “That night,” he said, “I thought Joe might have hit you.”
As though remembering, Laurie touched her face. “He had. But it happened the night before.”
“What happened, exactly?”
“It wasn’t the first time. He’d get drunk. Then suddenly he’d be jealous of Steve, like alcohol flipped a switch in his brain—I think he even scared himself a little. My father used to say, Never be with a man who scares you. That night was when I got scared for good.”
The quiet fervor with which she pronounced this intimated something left unsaid. Softly, Darrow asked, “What was different?”
As Laurie drained her wine, Darrow signaled for another. A long silence ensued, Darrow waiting her out. In a monotone, Laurie said, “I’ve never told this to anyone.”
“Then maybe it’s time.”
Laurie averted her eyes. When the chardonnay arrived, she took a quick swallow. “I was alone in his room, studying. I didn’t expect him for an hour. So I did what a lot of other girls would do—started going through my boyfriend’s drawers. The first two drawers only told me what I already knew—college boys are slobs.”
She stopped abruptly, fingers twisting a strand of frosted hair. “And then?” Darrow asked.
“I opened the last drawer.” Her voice became pinched. “It was filled with magazines. Pornography.”
She looked so disturbed that Darrow hesitated. “And that was what scared you?”
Laurie’s expression became self-questioning. “Was I scared then? Or just disgusted? I can’t put myself back there when so much has happened. I just stared at the magazines, one after the other, until all I could hear was the way he talked when he was inside me.” Her voice softened. “Except I couldn’t have been in the pictures.”
Puzzled, Darrow watched her. “Because?”
“Because I wasn’t black.” Laurie’s throat twitched. “It was like something from a slave-ship fantasy, white men degrading black women in chains, sodomizing or whipping them. When I felt myself wanting to vomit, I closed the drawer.
“Joe came back an hour later, drunk. He wanted me. I told him no—because of how he was, and because of the pictures. His eyes got wild, and he asked if I still wanted to do it with Steve. I was so disgusted I said, ‘Only when I want to feel like a woman.’ Then he hit me across the face.”
“What did you do?”
“I said I never wanted to see him again.” She paused again, looking up at Darrow. “He started to cry, almost sob. Then he said in this kind of whisper, ‘Tell anyone about this, and I’ll kill you.’ ”
Darrow felt a chill. “So you didn’t.”
“No.” Laurie took a sip of wine, unable to look at Darrow. “I was like Joe. Too ashamed for people to know what he was like, or the things I let him do.”
Darrow tried to find something to say. Finally, he said, “I think I understand.”
Laurie shook her head, rejecting easy comfort. “After you found Angela Hall, I thought about telling someone. But then it turned out she was with Steve.”
Darrow was silent until she met his gaze again. “So you didn’t have to say anything about Joe hitting you.”
“Yes,” she answered dully. “Or those pictures.”
So the police had missed it, Darrow thought, as had Steve Tillman’s lawyer. Both, it seemed clear, should have scoured Joe Betts’s life much harder. How many people, he wondered now, had been served by Steve’s guilt—if only to salve their conscience or put unspoken misgivings about Angela’s murder safely behind them. He understood Laurie Shilts well enough: she had never wished to speak of these things, just as part of Darrow wished that he had never heard them. But now he bore the weight of knowing. Gently, he said, “In the end, it only mattered to you.”
She gave him the bleakest of smiles. “You’re such a good guy, Mark. You always were.”
A useful attribute, Darrow thought uncomfortably, if you wanted to manipulate someone. “So tell me,” she continued in a throatier voice, “does a nice guy like you have anyone now? I hope that’s not a tasteless question.”
Darrow smiled, shaking his head. “After two years, a fair one. The answer is maybe. But I don’t know whether it’s real yet, or how long it can last. She and I are in very
different places.”
Saying this, he realized that he had spoken of Taylor to no one save her father. Hearing himself say the last phrase aloud, he realized how true it was.
Perhaps it showed on his face. “Only time will tell,” Laurie said. “Sorry if I unloaded on you.”
Darrow heard the regret in her voice, perhaps the fear of making herself less attractive. “It’s been really nice to see you,” he assured her. “If you ever need to talk, just call me.”
Hope and doubt mingled in her eyes. “Better go now, huh? It’s a school day for us both.”
Standing, she teetered for an instant. “Let me get you a cab,” Darrow said.
Laurie steadied herself. “Am I really that bad off?”
The bar was empty now, Darrow noticed. “No,” he answered. “But I had a bad experience with this once, and you’ve got Chloe to look after. Call me overresponsible.”
She took his arm, grateful to depend on him but still working out the logistics. “Tomorrow I have to drive her to school.”
“Don’t worry,” Darrow said firmly. “I’ll send a car for you and Chloe in the morning, and another one after school’s out. You can tell anyone who cares that you’ve got car trouble, and a paranoid new boyfriend.”
Laurie smiled. “That would keep them guessing, wouldn’t it?”
Darrow walked her outside and hailed a cab. As she got in, Laurie kissed him on the cheek.
Darrow stood there for a time. It was just as well, he supposed, that Taylor was not sleeping over. He had far too much to think about.
22
D
ARROW BARELY SLEPT. LATE THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER several more hours of thought, he decided to telephone Carl Hall.
To Darrow’s surprise, given that Hall conducted his business by cell phone, the number was listed. To his greater surprise, Hall answered. “This is Mark Darrow,” Darrow said without preface. “We need to talk.”
Warily, Hall asked, “About what?”
“I’ll save that for later. Alone, and in person.”
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