Lost Innocents (22 page)

“How could I have done that?” he said aloud. He’d been so preoccupied, so…accompanied, when he’d tried to get out that he must not have noticed. And last night he was too tired. He stood, jingling his car keys for a moment, then locked the trunk and went back into the room.

He sat on the edge of the one still made bed and dialed the number of his office. The phone rang and rang until a familiar voice answered. “Parish House…”

“Marge?” Nick asked, recognizing the voice of the housekeeper.

“Father Nick?”

“That’s me.”

“You calling from Canada?” Marge Sheehan asked.

“Hardly. I’m only upstate a ways. Listen, is Jim there? I think I left my briefcase in the office.”

“Oh no,” Marge said somberly. “He’s got services today for the girl who was killed.”

“Rebecca Starnes? I didn’t realize they were Catholic.”

“Well, she didn’t go to church here. But she was baptized Catholic. She went to Perpetual Sorrows. Her father was a Catholic, and he insisted they have the funeral in a Catholic church. Monsignor Hathaway didn’t want to do it because they were divorced, so they called Father Warren. To tell you the truth, the mother seems to be too bereaved to care. Oh, it’s a sad thing,” said Marge.

“Yes, it is,” said Nick, feeling guilty that he wasn’t there for the family, even though he didn’t know them. No, he thought. Forget it, that part of your life is over. “Did they find the baby yet?”

“That poor wee thing is with the angels, Father. Mark my words.”

“You may be right, Marge.”

“Anyhoo,” said Marge. “Do you want me to have Father Warren give you a call?”

“Well, I’m on the road,” said Nick. “If he finds it, just have him send it to the monastery, will you? I left the address…”

“I’ll do it,” said Marge.

“I’ll call him when I get to Canada.”

“We miss you already, Father Nick,” Marge said sincerely.

“Thanks, Marge,” said Nick. “I miss all of you.” He hung up the phone after a brief good-bye and sat on the edge of the bed, thinking about Rebecca Starnes. What happened to that girl in the park that day? He thought about Douglas Blake. He had advised Maddy to trust her husband, to be loyal. Was it the right advice? Or had he just said it because it would make it easier for him to leave, if she were still loyal to her husband and not looking to him for comfort? Had he advised her to remain loyal to an evil man, a man capable of murder?

A knock on the open door behind him made him jump. He turned around. A wiry woman with a graying pony tail wearing a white apron over jeans stood in the doorway. “Housekeeping,” she said. “Can we clean the room?”

Nick stood up. “Yes, I suppose so.” He took a last look around to make sure he didn’t leave anything else behind. Then he went out to his car as the chambermaid began hauling her cart of linens toward his door. He hesitated for a moment at the door of the car. There’s no turning back now, he told himself, getting behind the wheel and turning on the engine. You gave her the advice she wanted to hear. She was with Doug Blake because she wanted to be. You have done the honorable thing. Now forget her and get on with your life.

D
oug drew the eraser in an arc across the blackboard and sighed. If only all of life’s mistakes could be this easy to eradicate. If only you could draw a soft, dense little brick of fabric over them and make them disappear. He stood back and looked at the green board. He could see where the chalk had been. There was still an ivory haze veiling the bright green field, leaving it dull.

This was going to be even harder than he had anticipated, he thought. He saw it in everyone’s eyes. They all shook his hand and smiled and said congratulations, but that doubt lingered there, tainting him. He had attended the faculty meeting first thing in the morning and taught three classes. No one had said anything to him. Nothing that could be construed to as even faintly derogatory. Yet it was there, dogging him. Beneath that layer of worry was another layer. Many other layers, he corrected himself. All concerned with the death of Rebecca Starnes. Though it seemed that he was safe enough. If they didn’t know by now…

Doug replaced the eraser on the tray beneath the board, brushed his hands off, and walked over to his desk. He put some papers in his briefcase and snapped it shut. Even as he did it, he wondered why he was bothering to bring this stuff home. He wouldn’t be able to concentrate, yet he felt compelled to go through the motions. He pulled on his dark green jacket, picked up his briefcase, and steeled himself to go out into the hallway. Students rushed by, clanging their lockers and shouting at one another. They’re not thinking about you, he reminded himself. They have their own concerns. He decided to take a shortcut to the parking lot, out the side door and across the grass. The fewer people he had to talk to, the better.

As the fresh air hit him, he felt a little bit relieved. He stopped at the stone wall that ran along the perimeter of the school and gazed out for a moment at the girls’ field hockey team that was practicing down on the field. They looked so angelic, so carefree, hair flying, long legs pumping. Blissful, really. It made him hungry just to look at them. He reached absently into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out an open packet of cheese crackers. He put one in his mouth and began to chew. The cracker was stale and crumbled tastelessly on his tongue.

“Mr. Blake,” came a soft voice behind him.

He swallowed the lump in his mouth and stuffed the wrapper back into his pocket. Then he turned around and saw Karla Needham. She was wrapped in a large blue-and-gray Taylorsville warm-up jacket. Her shiny, dark brown hair was a cloud around her shoulders. She was smiling at him—sad eyes, lips—the works.

“Hey, Karla,” he said softly. She had one of the best figures of any girl in the school, although you could hardly see it, swaddled as she was in that duffel-type coat. He scanned her quickly, searchingly, from head to toe as she came up beside him and leaned against the wall, clutching her books to her chest and staring out at the field. Their elbows were close, resting side by side on the fieldstone. He felt his heart begin to hammer a little in spite of himself. He could not help but think about what Maddy had reported. That Heather had come by the house and accused him of having a relationship with Karla. She’d said that Karla had a crush on him.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Karla said.

He smiled to himself. He’d always suspected she liked him. She lit up when he came around. It was that look they gave you, cocking her head to one side. He’d seen that look on lots of girls. They were young, but they knew what they wanted. People acted as if these girls were naive, when actually their hormones were in a constant state of alert. They walked around all day, brushing up against guys, eyeing the crotch of their pants to see if they could provoke a reaction.

“Thanks,” he said. “It’s good to be back.”

She turned around and leaned back against the wall so that she was facing him. “I don’t think it was fair, what happened to you,” she said.

He glanced over at her. Her dark eyes were glistening, almost as if she were going to weep.

“It’s all right,” he murmured. “These things happen.”

“No, really,” she said, and she ran the toe of her perfectly white tennis shoe around in the sooty gravel beneath their feet. The gravel seemed to sparkle like mica. She shook her thick hair over her narrow shoulders. “Everybody knew that Heather Cameron had a crush on you. We all used to tease her about it last year.”

“She’s a mixed-up kid,” he said gently. “She has a lot of problems and…I’m afraid she took out her troubles on me…”

Karla gazed up at him through eyelashes that were long and curved. He could hardly take his eyes off them. “I’m glad it wasn’t really true,” she said.

“No,” he scoffed. “It was just a fantasy she had…”

“I’d hate to think about you, being with her,” Karla said softly.

Doug closed his eyes and felt the familiar, dangerous need course through him. Are you crazy? he thought. How can you even let yourself think of this? You’re standing here in the shadow of the school. Your enemies are waiting for you to slip, and your life seems to be crumbling around you. You can’t even think about it.

But he was thinking about it. And as he thought about it, he felt the heady nectar flowing into his veins, telling him he was alive again, a hero again, a conqueror. It was as if the gods had dropped this beautiful gift in his path, and he couldn’t turn away from it, no matter what.

“You want to walk with me?” he asked hoarsely.

She nodded, as if she were too overcome to speak.

He placed a hand on the small of her back, believing he could feel her skin beneath the folds of that coat. Gently, with his burning fingertips, he guided her. He looked both ways as they crossed the street, pretending to check for traffic but actually scanning the area for faculty, for students he knew. They seemed to be alone. He pressed against her gently, as if urging her to hurry, as if he couldn’t wait. Actually he couldn’t wait to be out of sight. After that, he would take his time. Young girls needed time, and a certain…finesse.

He steered her down a quiet block, lined with old houses, and toward the public garden across from a savings bank that was closed for the day. Hesitating at a pair of low fieldstone pillars, she looked up at him. He gazed into the warm liquid of her eyes and nodded, and together they entered the garden. In spring and summer this arboretum was a popular spot for visitors, but now, in the fall, it was quiet, with crisscrossing paths and lots of gaslights, bushes, and trees. It was the kind of place young girls loved to stroll, imagining romantic encounters. He had walked here with Heather at one time. He had walked here with other girls, too. It was always a good place to begin.

“This is a beautiful spot,” she said.

They all said the same thing, he thought. They are all exactly alike, at once timid and excited, trembling, and waiting to be taken, unable to gather their thoughts into anything more coherent than a comment on the day or the place.

“Then it suits you,” he said. They strolled down one of the pathways, one that was almost a tunnel thanks to the overhang of a bridal bower that would bloom lacy white in the spring. Beneath one of the trees was a small cement bench with scrolled sides. He pointed to it, and she walked over and sat down without speaking. He sat beside her, allowing his trousered knee to fall against her bare leg.

She looked down shyly. Her hands were crossed over her books, small and soft. He stared at them as if they were glowing. “I feel nervous,” she said with a soft giggle.

“Why?” he asked. When she shook her head, he reached over and touched her hand gently, as if rubbing some sort of glowing, mystical opal that was miraculously warm to his touch.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and melting. “I always hoped that maybe…that you might see me in a…different way.”

“I think you’re a beautiful girl,” he said softly.

“You do?” she asked.

“Of course I do,” he said. The need to have her was upon him like a wave, lifting him up, filling him with rapture. She was his for the asking. He knew he should stop, get up and walk away, but it was always the same. His very recklessness, the danger of his actions, filled him with incredible excitement. It made him high. His senses were flooded with sight and smell, like a child’s. And not just the sight and smell of her. No, it was everything. The bright air, the crackling leaves, the beauty all around him that seemed drab and superfluous in his everyday life. Suddenly he was new again. For a moment he was young, a hero. He was innocent, and it was all about to start. The fulfillment of every dream danced before him. Unending pleasure and no responsibility.

When he closed his eyes, however, he saw Maddy’s face, insisting on explanations and commitments. A never-ending treadmill of demands. He forced her from his mind and opened his eyes to gaze at Karla, fresh faced and adoring. It was like being transported in time. Back to a golden time. His spirits soared, and he felt the weight of his misery lifting. He reveled in pure sensual delight. If he were honest with himself, of course, youth had never been idyllic. High school romances had been fumbling and disappointing. Young manhood had brought an aching body and a lonely life on the road. The golden time he sought had never really existed for him. It was a dream of infancy, of pure bliss, of reveling in the love of an adoring woman who lived only to hold you. He had never known it. Never ever. But he sought it all the same. He had to try to know it, to seize it, or what was the use of living?

Doug reached over, feeling the shadow of the day lengthening behind him, almost touching him, and he slid his hand under the warm fleecy jacket, cupping his hand around the perfect, yielding softness of Karla’s breast. At the same time he bent toward her adoring, uplifted face and sought the same yielding softness from her lips.

From the darkness of his car, parked in the quiet roadway that wound through the garden, Richie Talbot held the lens of his father’s videocamera steady on the edge of the open window. “He took the bait,” Richie said softly. “Good work, Heather.”

“He said that was our special place,” Heather said dully, sitting in the bucket seat beside Richie. She had believed all his lies, all his talk about how pretty she was and how special. She had ratted on him only because he’d told her it was over when school started this year. Now here he was, trying to do it with Karla, just like Richie said he would. Tears formed in Heather’s eyes as she realized, finally, that she’d never mattered to him at all.

“We got him now,” said Richie, smiling. He knew their words would be on the tape. He didn’t care. One picture was worth a thousand words.

P
aulina stood at the well-worn oak refectory table in the kitchen, kneading bread dough on the floured surface of her breadboard. She pushed and pulled at the sticky mass under her fingers, trying to turn it into something smooth and satiny, as she had been taught, and as she had done a thousand times before. When she put her weight onto the heels of her hands and they sank into the dough, some of the heaviness from her heart seemed to lift.