The Twisted Thread (24 page)

“Big surprise,” said Jim. “I'll fix it first thing and see if I can figure it out.”

“And there's something else,” Nancy said. Jim listened and kept looking at the pictures of the dogs on the ice and the serious men in their peacoats. “Porter just texted me to ask to have the locks changed on his and Tamsin's offices. Could you handle that tomorrow morning?”

Jim waited before he spoke. He could hear that Nancy was walking across the campus, to her car, he hoped. It was close to ten. “Why does Porter need the locks changed?”

“I don't know,” she said softly. “Seemed odd to me, too.”

“I'll get to it right away.” Looking at Ernest Shackleton on a ship near South Georgia Island, Jim said, “Go home, Nancy. You need to take a break.” He himself felt abruptly tired and knew the next day was going to be a long one.

“Thanks, Jim, for everything,” she said, and he didn't think he was imagining the energy in her voice. She liked him, this woman liked him. And he liked her back. It was uplifting, even in the midst of all that was happening. “Nancy,” he said, “when this is all over, remember you agreed I could take you out to dinner?”

“Just as long as it's not a restaurant in a basement,” she said, and he laughed and promised her that it would be somewhere well aboveground. They wished each other good night, and Jim hung up feeling more alert than he had in a very long time.

He then crept down the hallway to Angela's room. She had fallen asleep with her lamp on. She barely moved as he pulled the book from her hands and tucked the blanket under her chin before clicking off the light.

He slept in his old room downstairs, which his mother had converted to a study of sorts. Her books and files lined the space, and all night he dreamed of librarians with fierce grins and rings of keys. When he woke at 4:30, he knew instantly he was up for good. He looked silently in on Angela and, for a few minutes, sat by her side and watched her breathe, the way he had his girls when they were babies, as if they needed his presence to remember to keep pulling air into their lungs. Then he showered, dressed, made his bed, and ate an egg and coffee. He did his dishes and laid a place for Angela at the table. He wrote her a note saying he was leaving early but would be back by three. “Call if you need anything, Ma.”

Even after all this activity, it was only 5:30. But he couldn't read or sit still, his mind caught in a fruitless circle of topics that rolled from Angela to Nancy, Kayla to Claire, and back again. The only solution was motion. He backed up his car as quickly as possible so as not to wake his mother and drove off to campus as the sun was rising over the edge of the green hills.

The morning was utterly tranquil, and this early, not even the dog walkers or the most masochistic of runners were up yet, much less anyone else on his crew. The shop smelled of oil and well-used tools, warm metal. He found what he needed for the locks at Nicholson and gathered a few other tools. He liked his work. He liked that he got to do it on his own and that no one really interfered with him because he was good at it. He could do it for years to come. But Armitage was changing. Looking at the barrels of the new lock he was about to load in the old doors of Nicholson, he knew that the intuition he had first had the morning he'd learned of Claire's death was coming true. Nothing would be the same afterward. And as he shouldered his satchel full of tools, he knew, too, that, for the first time in a long time, this job wasn't going to be quite enough to satisfy him. You old goat, he told himself, part of what you're saying is that you want to pursue this woman. And that you don't want to be dating your boss.

He almost laughed as he walked from the shop across campus to Nicholson. Well, it was respectable as far as motives went, and his mother would certainly be happy that he would consider leaving the academy. But he wasn't going to say anything to anybody until he had something else in hand. As for what might possibly replace working at Armitage, he had no idea. Going back for a graduate degree kept tugging at his mind.

He had just arrived in front of Nicholson and stood for a moment looking at its stained glass, its third-floor turrets. For all the silly flourishes of its architecture, it was the school's center, the setting in which its most important decisions unfolded. It was where the board met, the faculty gathered, where students were disciplined or expelled, where teachers were hired or let go. Finally, he walked into the long dark hall and stopped still. He had always liked this first scent of Nicholson, its smell of school: soap and paper. The hall was wide and dark, the marble floor smooth and polished. The whole structure was so firm and solid, crafted when materials were better, when workmanship took time and everything from tools to bricks was made by hand. The slates on the roof had been shaped by chisels well over a hundred years ago. When the tiles needed work, Jim always marveled at how well formed they were, how delicate the edges of each one were. The work had required remarkable care, time, attention and had been done with the intention of making it last.

Slowly, he headed toward Porter's office and climbed a short flight. When he had first been hired at the school, caring for these stairs had been one of his jobs, but Nancy had pulled him off janitorial detail and given him tasks that let him use his real skills as a carpenter and a person who could fix almost anything.

He paused on the landing, put his satchel by his feet, and looked out over the Quad, thoughts of Nancy intruding though he was trying firmly to keep her out of his mind. He hadn't felt this way about someone since when? It was funny how it had sneaked up on him. He hadn't, he had to say frankly, felt exactly this way about his wife. He had married Carla because she was pregnant, a decision he'd never regretted because it resulted in his lovely eldest daughter. And he had loved Carla, but it had never felt natural with her. Every speck of their marriage felt earned and built. With Nancy, there was an ease that it had taken years to achieve with Carla. But it terrified him, too. And nothing beyond a kiss in the basement had actually happened yet. They hadn't even had a real first date.

It was time to get started. Porter's office was at the far end of the corridor, and Jim crept down it noiselessly. He had chosen his shoes for years for their ability to move without a chorus of squeaks or slaps along hallways and tunnels, which meant picking footwear with rubber soles. He could wear loafers in another life or running shoes or clogs. The thought was enough to make him smile, and then he heard a voice coming from the end of the hall.

It was someone speaking rapidly and loudly, and at first he couldn't place it because he'd never heard this person speak in anything but a moderate, steady tone. It was Tamsin Lovell, and she was yelling at someone on the phone. And it wasn't just yelling, Jim realized; this woman whom he'd always thought of as composed and immeasurably dutiful was shouting. Initially, Jim thought she might be in trouble, but then he heard the anger in her words, and moving lightly along the corridor until he was just outside Porter's office door, he heard the words themselves.

“Colson, you don't understand,” Tamsin cried with blind fury. “I have the boy, I have him.” Her voice was ragged, shattering. Jim heard the whir of a machine as well as the frantic rush of Tamsin's words.

The person on the other end obviously tried to interrupt her, but she cut him short again. “Colson,” she said. Tamsin's rage flowed on: “You have to help, Colson.”

Tamsin had to be talking to Colson Trowbridge, the head of the board. An influential Boston lawyer, an alumnus, a generous donor for whom the new athletic complex was named. Jim had often been the one in charge of preparing the boardroom for meetings, and he had seen Trowbridge on several occasions over the years. Tall, well groomed, the man had seemed the embodiment of clubby success. And self-confidence that bordered on arrogance.

She said she had the boy. Was she talking about the baby? She was trying to get Trowbridge to step in to help somehow. Just as he was about to turn back down the corridor, to flee from whatever was happening in that room, Jim's cell phone chirped, its signal for a low battery. In his distraction last night, he must have forgotten to plug it in. Tamsin paused, slammed down the phone, and the door flew open. She wore running shoes, athletic shorts, and a T-shirt. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she was flushed and breathing hard. Jim understood instantly that she had chosen an outfit that would give her a reason to be seen on campus so early in the morning. But she hadn't expected to be caught here. And then the humming sound that had seemed to come from the office appeared to be rising from his own head, and it was the sound of pure fear. Because Tamsin, as she ran at him, was lifting high a fire extinguisher, ready to smash its red bulk at his skull, and then he realized where the sound really came from. A shredder. She was running a shredder. But then he saw her bared teeth and the shiny cylinder and then nothing at all.

CHAPTER 20

T
rack had just finished for Saturday afternoon, and Made
line wondered again why they were bothering with sports. The students need the exercise, Grace had insisted. It kept them busy and tired after class. It kept them out of trouble. Madeline wondered what kind of trouble Grace might be worrying about after the worst that could happen already had, though she allowed that tuckering teenagers out to whatever degree possible was most likely a good idea. The last three days, her group of athletes had thrown itself into punishing rounds of sprints and difficult cross-country runs. Still, she thought, all this activity is certainly not good for me. Dealing with troubling encounters with students and discomfiting news about their extremely extracurricular activities had left her more addled than usual. She was dreading leaving and returning to the dorm. God only knew what she'd find on her doorstep next. In addition, last night Owen had had the grace to send not a text but an actual e-mail saying that things seemed to have petered out between them and he was ready to move on. Meaning, Madeline thought, that he already had. Amazing how a computer screen could give off a whiff of new girlfriend, but it did.

Approaching her apartment, looking forward only to the coldest shower, she saw something else that wasn't good for her. Kate, her sister, had manipulated her way past security and onto campus. Her baby was in her arms, and he was screaming.

“Tadeo,” Madeline shouted, glad in spite of herself to see the little boy. “Hi, baby, stop crying! Auntie Madeline is here!”

“Oh, God, Madeline, you're disgusting. You're getting sweat all over him,” Kate complained. But Tadeo immediately stopped wailing and snuggled instead into Madeline's arms. Even in the few weeks since she'd seen him, he'd grown. Kate, however, was the same as always: beautifully turned out and apparently immune to the effects of high humidity. A diaper bag that managed to be elegant was slung over her shoulder, and smooth dark blond hair flowed down her back. She wore a topaz necklace and unwrinkled linen pants and shirt. It dawned on Madeline that Kate was all in white. She had a just-nine-month-old baby and she was in spotless white. Yet Madeline, without a single child in tow, couldn't wear a white T-shirt to breakfast without spattering cranberry juice in a crimson plume all over herself. Fred had pointed that out last week, and she had wanted to deck him. Thinking of Fred, where was he? She hadn't seen or heard from him since his trip to Brooklyn, which was not a good sign.

Tadeo, Madeline was glad to notice, took after her. He was covered in a fine layer of rice cereal and yogurt and needed nothing more than a dip in the tub. Madeline fished out her key from her shorts pocket and ushered them all inside. Fortunately, no signs from the Reign were immediately present. “I can't believe you let them put you in this dump. It's tiny,” Kate said. She collapsed on the futon sofa, and Madeline was glad she'd cleared it of her laundry this morning, depriving her sister of one more thing to criticize.

She ignored Kate and went straight to the bathroom. Tadeo was pulling on her necklace and trying to bite it. “Are you teething, little man?” she asked him.

“Glor,” he said, apparently meaning Yes, and it sucks. Drool streamed in twin rivers from either side of his mouth. Oh, how she loved this baby, his physical completeness, the seemingly poreless skin, the clear fire of his dark eyes. He was just beautiful. He gnawed some more on the silver chain.

Kate had been astonished that Madeline wanted to be present at his birth. “Not in the room or anything,” Madeline had assured her, though she'd secretly hoped that her sister would invite her to be right there. She had always wanted to see a baby being born, and this one was going to be her nephew. “Just nearby, so I can help. So I can meet him right from the start.” She thought that would be nice, sisterly, auntly, something she should do when Isabelle and David so clearly weren't capable of it. Kate had grudgingly agreed to have her at the hospital, and for that, Madeline would always be grateful. When she'd met Tadeo for the first time, he looked more like a large plum with a thatch of black hair than a person, and still, she'd been overwhelmed with joy and surprise, conscious of a deep, abiding mystery she had no idea existed. Kate and Nick had been too exhausted to notice that Madeline wept as she held the swaddled baby, welcoming him to the world.

Now, as she let the water seep into the tub, making sure it was only tepid, Madeline thought of Claire's baby. He would be about a week old. He would need constant care, constant feeding. Warmth and of course love. Where was he? Why hadn't they found him or any trace of him? Madeline couldn't say “body.” She refused to admit to herself that he might have been killed, too. Tadeo, squirming in her arms, said, “Glahglahglah.”

She unpeeled his onesie from his sticky body and took off his diaper, too. He sat with pleasure in the warm water and splashed it with fat hands. Madeline gave him her washcloth to play with and hoped Kate wouldn't ask when the last time was Madeline had actually cleaned the tub.

But that was too much to hope for. Kate was standing behind her, drinking a glass of water. She actually had one for Madeline in her other hand. Just when you were ready to write Kate off altogether, she'd do something that made you not quite hate her anymore. “Thanks,” she said now, “but when was the last time you cleaned that tub?”

“This morning, with my toothbrush,” Madeline said. “He's happy, Kate. Let him be.” That was new, she thought. I never talk back to Kate. Perhaps death and harassment were firming up her inner strength. To her surprise, her sister didn't come up with a retort. Instead, she flipped the lid down on the toilet and sank onto it. Tadeo noticed her, said, “clom,” and kept splashing happily when he wasn't sucking on Madeline's washcloth. “You're so good with him,” Kate said. “You get him.” To Madeline's horror, Kate was crying.

“Kate?” she asked, propping the baby up a little more firmly.

She was having a hard time, she said, but even when she cried, Kate's complexion didn't become mottled and her mascara didn't run. She wanted to apply for a tenure-track job in New York, but Nick didn't want to leave Boston. The baby couldn't sleep through the night. Nick was working a lot, and even with the nanny, she was just tired all the time. This was the worst of it: he wanted lots of kids. She didn't think she wanted any more. It was too hard. She was desperate to get back to a job. Work was so much easier than parenting. “Madeline, it's just so hard.” She started to sob. This time, her mascara really did run. And Tadeo started to scream in earnest.

I'm getting good at this, Madeline thought, this being graceful under pressure. She scooped the baby up and bundled him in a towel. One arm around Tadeo, she used her other hand to pull Kate up from the toilet and to wrap her close. Her sister was shaking and crying so hard, she couldn't speak. This was worse than Madeline had realized. Somehow, she maneuvered everyone out to the living room, settled Kate on the futon, got Tadeo diapered, and from Kate's handsome bag fished out a bottle that she microwaved. Between hiccups, Kate said, “You're not supposed to do that,” and Madeline said, “Shut up, Kate,” and did it anyway, because what the baby needed was food and reassurance and the chance to sleep. He conked out in a couple of minutes, and she laid him on a towel on her futon and turned a fan on low so he wouldn't get sweaty and hot again. Then she refilled Kate's water glass and said, “What's going on? You're a basket case,” thinking this was the first time she had ever had reason to use that word in relation to her sister.

“I want to leave Nick,” Kate sniffled. It was the job issue and the kid issue and maybe they'd just been too young and they'd outgrown each other. The baby sighed in his sleep and kicked out a leg. Madeline took in the dumpiness of her environment. The old throw pillows, the inch of ancient coffee in the percolator. The piles of final papers she needed to correct by Monday and the battered copy of Norton's anthology of American poetry. Her sneakers smelled, and frankly, so did she. Most days, a list like this was enough to give Kate a strong advantage. But Madeline felt something welling up in her, something powerful enough to sweep away her sister's cosmetic superiority.

“No,” said Madeline firmly. “No. You have to try harder. You said you would do this. And if you can't, you can't just walk away like it never happened, as if Tadeo wasn't there. You have to do better than that. You have to do it for the baby. And you know what? You have to do it for Nick. Kate, he's a great guy. You're lucky to have him.” Madeline had always liked her brother-in-law. Despite being handsome, smart, and rich, he was also a nice man. Despite every opportunity not to, he'd resisted self-importance. “I'll help you, Kate. I'll be around all summer. I'll give you time. You can get counseling. You can work it out.”

Kate blinked at her. She took a deep breath. She was returning to her usual state. “I don't know what I want,” she said, and her voice wavered. The baby stirred. He would be awake soon. Madeline fetched a clean suit from the diaper bag.

“How did you get on campus?” she asked her sister. “And why are you here?” Now that Kate had stopped weeping, Madeline could ask what had brought her sister out from Boston.

“I told the police I had to meet Porter, and then he happened to be walking by the gate with his dog,” she said. “I said I wanted to check on you. He owes Nick a favor; one of his twins has an internship at Nick's firm this summer.”

“How does Nick know Porter?” Madeline asked. Nick hadn't gone to Armitage, which at first had seemed to count against him during his courtship of Kate. Slipping Tadeo's leg through a hole in a fresh onesie made Madeline reflect that it was a lot easier to dress a sleeping baby than one who was wide awake.

“We saw him last summer up in Castine, where he has this little house. He was there with his kids. Nick sailed with them a few times. That's when I met that girl who was killed. She was up there, too.”

Tadeo turned over in his new suit, stuck his bum in the air, and sighed again. “Glarr,” he added sleepily.

“You met Claire?” Madeline asked.

Kate said, “Yes, in August. It was one of the things I wanted to tell you, but you kept not returning my calls.” She glared at her sister. “Or e-mails. She was a beautiful girl. She looked just like her mother.” Flora, Kate explained, had come to Maine to get her, supposedly, though Claire had obviously been taking care of herself for years. Kate thought there was another agenda at work. One night, they'd all had dinner at Porter's house, but Lucinda wasn't there. “I think Flora and Porter were old flames,” Kate said, wiping away all traces of her tears, more herself now that there was some gossip to distract her. “They seemed comfortable together. I got the sense that, if Lucinda had been around, it wouldn't have happened at all.”

Then Tadeo woke and Kate looked at her watch and said she guessed she should get back. Madeline, still thinking of what Kate had said, helped her sister gather her things. At the threshold, Kate said, “I know I told you about it. That's when I found out Porter was going to hire you. After you'd gotten rejected everywhere else.”

Madeline remembered now. She'd been struck by the casualness with which her sister mentioned eating a meal with the headmaster. Probably Kate had mentioned Claire and Flora, too, but what had registered was the ease with which she spoke of Porter, the way she had waltzed into his house.

Tadeo was in that blissful post-nap mood where he was neither hungry nor sleepy. He was being, simply, a sweet and loving baby. “You're so lucky, Kate,” Madeline said. She meant it mostly about Tadeo, but the remark encompassed everything: Kate's confidence, her degrees, the potential of her career, her marriage. “Work it out with Nick,” she said as she held the door open.

Looking slightly less disconsolate, Kate sniffed. “I'll try. Please don't tell Mom or Dad about this.”

“Why would I do that?” Madeline asked, truly curious. She never told her parents anything of consequence. Isabelle and David had each called once since Claire's death, to make sure she wasn't going to be arrested imminently, as David put it. “In need of legal counsel?” he'd asked, and she'd reassured him that no, indeed, she had all her bases covered. She even held herself back from saying, And if I did, you'd be the last person I'd ask.

“I don't know.” Kate shrugged. “Just in case.”

“Wait a minute, Kate. There's something else.” Madeline had no desire to tell her sister about what had been going on, but Kate would certainly know about the Reign, and perhaps she'd have some useful information. Kate was ready to go but waited impatiently just outside the door, jiggling Tadeo on her hip. Madeline asked, “When you were here, did they have this Reign of Terror thing? Complete with Robespierre and all this silliness about who could sit where?”

To Madeline's concern, Kate's face grew closed and haughty. She shifted Tadeo protectively to her other side and said, “I'm afraid I can't talk about that.”

“Oh, God,” Madeline cried, “you were one of them. Of course! I should have known! Kate, how could you? They're dreadful, these girls. Do you know what they do to each other?” Madeline was going to bluster on, but Kate said, coolly, “You have no idea what you're talking about,” and started to walk away.

“Kate, how could you have been a part of it?” Madeline called after her. But all her sister said was “Phone me when you've pulled yourself together,” in her usual, infuriating manner that implied she had cornered the entire market on composure. Madeline was left standing on her doorstep staring at the slim, retreating figure of her sister. Kate slipped across the Quad and past Greaves to where she'd parked with her usual irreverence for rules in the faculty lot. It seemed a miracle or some dark joke that she and Kate were related, Madeline mused, anger still ticking through her at her sister's lack of total disclosure, her invocation of thorny silence, a pact that apparently trumped family loyalty. Madeline was glad Kate was gone, despite the fact she had taken Tadeo with her. She went to take a shower and was letting her frustration with Kate sluice off under the flow of water when, abruptly, she began to sputter. Spinning the taps shut, she lurched for a towel. What Kate had said struck her the moment she'd rinsed the shampoo from her hair: Claire had been with Porter and his family in August and the girl had returned to school in mid-September, most likely already pregnant.