Before the audience had time to react, Mr. Amory then presented a check for $100,000 to the building fund and joked to President Downes, “May the great work of molding minds and hearts at Stonecroft Academy continue well into the future.”
He might as well have been saying go jump in a lake, Jake thought, remembering how Amory had settled at his place on the dais with a self-satisfied smile.
The last honoree, Dr. Jean Sheridan, spoke about growing up in Cornwall, the town that had been the enclave of the wealthy and the privileged nearly 150 years ago. “As a scholarship student, I know I received a superb education at Stonecroft. But outside the school grounds there was another learning place, in this town and countryside. Here and in the area around us, I acquired an appreciation of history that has shaped my life and career. For that I am eternally grateful.”
Dr. Sheridan did not say that she was happy here, or mention that all the old-timers would remember her parents’ domestic disputes that enlivened the town, Jake Perkins thought, or that she was known to break down and cry in class after some of her parents’ more publicized episodes.
Well, tomorrow’s the end of it, Jake thought as he stretched and walked over to the window. The lights from Cold Spring, the town across the Hudson, were less visible since a fog was setting in. Hope it lifts tomorrow, Jake thought. He’d cover the memorial service at Alison Kendall’s grave and then catch a movie in the afternoon. He had heard that the names of the four other graduates who had died were also going to be read at the memorial.
Jake went back to his desk and looked at the picture he’d dug out of the files. In an almost unbelievable twist of fate, all five of the dead graduates had not only shared the luncheon table in senior year with two of the honorees, Laura Wilcox and Jean Sheridan, but they had died in the order in which they were seated.
Which means Laura Wilcox is probably next, Jake thought. Can this be just a bizarre coincidence, or should someone be looking into it? But that’s crazy. Those women died over a period of twenty years, in totally different ways, all across the country. One of them was even skiing when she must have gotten caught in an avalanche.
Fate, that’s what it was, Jake concluded. Nothing but fate.
25
“I’m planning to stay on for a few extra days,” Jean told the front-desk clerk who answered the phone on Sunday morning. “Will that be a problem?”
She knew it wouldn’t be a problem. All the other reunion guests would undoubtedly be on their way home after the brunch at Stonecroft, so there’d be many empty rooms.
Although it was only eight-fifteen, she was already up and dressed and had sipped the coffee and juice and nibbled at a muffin from the continental breakfast she had ordered. She had arranged to go back to Alice Sommers’ house after the Stonecroft brunch. Sam Deegan would be there, and they would be able to talk without fear of interruption. Sam had told her that no matter how private the adoption was, it had to have been registered, and a lawyer must have drawn up papers. He had asked Jean if she had a copy of the document she had signed, giving up her rights to the baby.
“Dr. Connors didn’t leave me any papers,” she explained. “Or maybe I didn’t want to have any reminder of what I was doing. I really don’t remember. I was numb. I felt as if my heart was being torn out of my body when he took her from me.”
But that conversation had opened another avenue of thought. She had been planning to go to the nine o’clock Mass at St. Thomas of Canterbury on Sunday morning, before the memorial service for Alison. St. Thomas had been her parish when she was growing up, but in talking to Sam Deegan, she had remembered that Dr. Connors had been a parishioner there as well. In the midst of one of her sleepless periods during the night, it had occurred to her that it was at least possible the people who adopted the baby had been parishioners of St. Thomas as well.
I told Dr. Connors that I wanted Lily to be raised Catholic, she remembered. And if the adoptive parents were Catholic and were members of St. Thomas of Canterbury at that time, it would have made sense for Lily to be baptized there. If I could look at the records of baptisms between late March and mid-June of that year, it would be a start in searching for Lily.
When she woke at six, it was to feel tears running down her cheeks and to hear herself whispering the prayer that now was becoming a part of her subconscious: “Don’t let anyone hurt her. Take care of her, please.”
She knew that the office of the church wouldn’t be open on Sunday. Even so, maybe this morning, after Mass, she could talk to the pastor and make an appointment to see him. I’ve got to feel as though I’m doing something, she thought. Maybe there’s even a priest who was at the parish twenty years ago and who might just remember a parishioner adopting a baby girl at that time.
A sense of something imminent, a growing certainty that Lily was in immediate danger, had become so strong that Jean knew she could not go through the day without taking some kind of action.
At eight-thirty she went downstairs to the parking lot and got in her car. It was a five-minute drive to the church. She had decided that the best time to speak to a priest was after Mass when he would be standing outside, greeting people as they exited.
She started to drive to Hudson Street, realized she was at least twenty minutes early, and impulsively turned the car toward Mountain Road to look at the house where she had grown up.
The house was almost halfway up the winding street. When she had lived there, the exterior had been brown siding with beige shutters. The people who owned the house now had not only enlarged it but refinished it with white shingles and a forest green trim on the shutters. The new owner obviously understood how trees and plants could frame and beautify a relatively modest home. It looked almost jewel-like in the early morning mist.
The brick and stucco house where the Sommerses had lived also looked well cared for, Jean thought, even though it was obvious no one was living there now. The shades were drawn in all the windows, but the trim was freshly painted, the hedges neatly clipped, and the long bluestone walkway from the front door to the driveway was new.
I always loved this house, she thought as she stopped the car for a better look. Laura’s father and mother kept it up when they lived there, and then the Sommerses did as well. I remember when we were nine or ten, Laura said that she thought our house was ugly. I thought the brown was ugly, too, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of admitting it. I wonder if she would approve of it now.
Not that it mattered. Jean turned the car around and began to drive down the hill toward Hudson Street. Laura never deliberately meant to hurt me, she thought. She was taught to be self-centered, and I don’t think, in the long run, it’s done her much good. The last time I talked to Alison, she said that she was trying to get Laura a job on a new sitcom, but that it was tough to make it happen.
She said that Gordie—then she laughed and changed it to Gordon—could make it happen but that she didn’t think he would, Jean recalled. Laura has always been the golden girl. It was almost pathetic to see her playing up to all the guys, even, for God’s sake, to Jack Emerson. There’s something downright unattractive about him, she thought with a shiver. What makes him so certain that I’ll buy a house around here someday?
Earlier it had looked as though the mist would clear, but in the way of October weather, the clouds had become stronger and the mist was now a wet, cold drizzle. Jean realized that it was the same kind of weather as the day when she realized she was pregnant. Her mother and father had been having another of their arguments, although this one ended in what passed for peace. Jean was going to college on a scholarship. There was no need for them to have to put up with each other anymore. They had done their duty as parents, and now it was time for them to lead their own lives.
Put the house on the market—with luck, they’d be rid of it by August.
Jean thought of how she had come silently down the stairs, slipped out of the house, and walked and walked and walked. I didn’t know what Reed w
ould say, she thought. I did know that he would feel he had betrayed his father’s expectations for him.
Twenty years ago Reed’s father had been a lieutenant general stationed at the Pentagon. That was one of the reasons we never mingled with his classmates, Jean thought. Reed didn’t want it to get back to his father that he was seriously dating anyone.
And I didn’t want him to meet my parents.
If he had lived and we had married, would it have lasted? It was a question she had asked herself many times in the last twenty years, and she always came to the same answer: It would have lasted. In spite of his family’s disapproval, in spite of the fact that it probably would have taken me years to get the education I knew I had to have, it would have lasted.
I knew him such a short time, Jean thought as she drove into the church parking lot. I’d never even had a boyfriend before him. And then one day when I was sitting on the steps of the monument at West Point, he sat down beside me. My name was on the cover of the notebook I’d brought with me. He said, “Jean Sheridan,” and then he said, “I like Stephen Foster’s music, and do you know what song I’m thinking of now?” Of course I didn’t, and he said, “It begins like this: ‘I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair . . .’”
Jean parked the car. Three months later he was dead, she thought, and I was carrying his child. And when I saw Dr. Connors in this church and remembered having heard that he handled adoptions, it was like a gift, telling me what to do.
I need a gift like that again.
26
Jake Perkins figured the number of mourners at Alison Kendall’s grave at less than thirty. The others had all elected to go directly to the brunch. Not that he blamed them. The rain was picking up. His feet were sinking into the soft, muddy grass. There’s nothing worse than being dead on a rainy day, he thought, and hoped he’d remember to jot down that bit of wisdom later.
The mayor had skipped this event, but President Downes, who had already extolled the generosity and talent of Alison Kendall, was now offering a generic prayer that was sure to satisfy everyone except an outand-out atheist, if one happened to be present.
She may have been talented, Jake thought, but it was her generosity that has us out here risking pneumonia. I know one person who didn’t risk it. He looked around to be sure he had not missed Laura Wilcox, but she definitely wasn’t there. All the other honorees were present. Jean Sheridan was standing near President Downes, and there was no question she was genuinely sad. A couple of times she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Everyone else in the group looked as if they wished Downes would wrap it up quickly so they could get inside and have a Bloody Mary.
“We remember also Alison’s classmates and friends who have been called home,” Downes said soberly: “Catherine Kane, Debra Parker, Cindy Lang, and Gloria Martin. This graduating class of twenty years ago produced many great achievers, but also never before has one class known such great loss.”
Amen, Jake thought, and decided he would definitely use the picture of the seven girls at the lunch table with his story on the reunion. He already had the caption—Downes had just handed it to him: “Never before has one class known such great loss.”
At the beginning of the ceremony a couple of students had handed a rose to each of the people who came to the memorial service. Now, after Downes concluded his remarks, one by one everyone placed the rose at the foot of the tombstone and started to walk across the cemetery to the adjacent school grounds. The farther they got away from the grave, the faster they moved. Jake could read their minds: “Well, thank God that’s over. I thought I’d freeze.”
The last one to leave was Jean Sheridan. She stood there, looking not just sad but deep in thought. Jake noticed that Dr. Fleischman had stopped and was waiting for her. Sheridan reached down and touched Alison’s name on the tombstone, then turned, and Jake could see that she seemed glad to see Dr. Fleischman. They began to walk toward the school together.
Before he could stop her, the sophomore who was handing out the roses had given him one. Jake wasn’t much for ceremonies, but he decided to leave his rose with the others. As he was about to put it down, he noticed something on the ground. He bent down and picked it up.
It was a pewter lapel pin in the shape of an owl, about an inch long. Jake could see at a glance that it wasn’t worth more than a couple of bucks. It looked like something a kid or some nature lover who was on a crusade to save owls might wear. Jake was about to toss it away, then changed his mind. He brushed it off and put it in his pocket. It would soon be Halloween. He’d give it to his kid cousin and tell him that he had dug it out of a grave just for him.
27
Jean was disappointed that Laura had not bothered to attend the memorial service for Alison, but she also realized that she was not surprised. Laura had never put herself out for anyone, and it was silly to think that she might begin at this stage of her life. Knowing Laura, she wasn’t going to stand out in the cold and rain—she’d go directly to the brunch.
But by the time the brunch was half over and Laura had not appeared, Jean felt the beginning of deep unease. She confided that feeling to Gordon Amory. “Gordon, I know you were talking to Laura a lot yesterday. Did she say anything to you about not showing up today?”
“We talked at lunch yesterday and at the game,” he corrected. “She was campaigning to get me to make her the lead in our new sitcom. I told her that I never interfere with the people I hire to cast my programs. When she continued to persist, I rather unkindly emphasized that I never made exceptions, particularly for minimally talented school chums. At that point she used a rather unladylike expression and turned her charms on our insufferable chairman, Jack Emerson. As you may know, he has been bragging about his considerable financial assets. Also, last night he gleefully announced that his wife had just left him, so he was fair game for Laura, I guess.”
Laura seemed to be in wonderful spirits at dinner, Jean thought. And she was fine when I tried to talk to her in her room before dinner. Did anything go wrong later last night? Or did she just decide to sleep in this morning?
I can at least check on that, she thought. She was sitting next to Gordon and Carter Stewart at the luncheon table. With a murmured “Back in a minute,” she walked between the rows of tables, taking care not to make eye contact with anyone. The brunch was being held in the auditorium. She slipped into the corridor that led to the homeroom of the freshman class and dialed the hotel.
Laura did not answer the phone in her room. Jean hesitated and then asked to be switched to the front desk. She identified herself and asked if by any chance Laura Wilcox had checked out. “I’m a little concerned,” she explained. “Ms. Wilcox was supposed to meet a group of us and hasn’t shown up.”
“Well, she hasn’t checked out,” the clerk said genially. “Why don’t I send someone up to see if she’s overslept, Dr. Sheridan. But you take the blame if she gets mad.”
He’s the guy whose hair matches the top of the desk, Jean thought, recognizing both the voice and the tone. “I’ll take responsibility,” she assured him.
As she waited, Jean glanced around the corridor. God, I feel as though I never left this place, she thought. Ms. Clemens was the homeroom teacher when we were freshmen, and my desk was the second seat in the fourth row. She heard the door from the auditorium open and turned to see Jake Perkins, the reporter from the school newspaper.
“Dr. Sheridan.” The clerk’s voice had lost its jocular tone.
“Yes.” Jean realized she was gripping the phone. Something’s wrong, she thought. Something’s wrong.
“The maid went into Ms. Wilcox’s room. The bed hasn’t been slept in. Her clothes are still in the closet, but the maid did notice that some of her toiletries that were on the vanity are gone. Do you think there’s a problem?”
“Oh, if she took some things with her, I would say not. Thank you.”
That’s all Laura would need, Jean thought, for me to be asking questions about her i
f she went off with somebody. She pushed the button on the cell phone to end the call and snapped the cover closed. But who would she have been with? she wondered. If Gordon was to be believed, he had brushed her off. He said that she’d been flirting with Jack Emerson, but she certainly hadn’t neglected Mark or Robby or Carter, either. Yesterday at lunch she was joking with Mark about how successful his show was and saying that maybe she should go into therapy with him. I heard her telling Carter she’d love to do a Broadway show, and later she was in the bar with Robby for a nightcap.
“Dr. Sheridan, may I have a word with you?”
Startled, Jean spun around. She’d forgotten about Jake Perkins. “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said unapologetically, “but I wonder if you can tell me if Ms. Wilcox is planning to show up here today.”
“I don’t know her plans,” Jean said, smiling dismissively. “Now I really must get back to the table.”
Laura probably got friendly with one of the guys at the dinner last night and went to his place with him, she thought. If she hasn’t checked out, she’s bound to show up at the hotel later.
Jake Perkins studied Jean’s expression as she passed him. She’s worried, he thought. Could it be because Laura Wilcox didn’t show up? My God, is it possible that she’s missing? He pulled out his own cell phone, dialed the Glen-Ridge House, and asked for the front desk. “I have a flower delivery for Ms. Laura Wilcox,” he said, “but I was asked to make sure that she hadn’t checked out.”
“No, she hasn’t checked out,” the clerk told him, “but she didn’t stay here last night, so I’m not sure when she’ll be back to pick up her bags.”
“Was she planning to stay through the weekend?” Jake asked, trying to sound indifferent.