“Miss Campbell.” Kathryn turns around as Hunter is shutting the door behind him. Her heart leaps a little, but she tells herself to relax—what’s she afraid of? Still, it feels a bit strange; she can’t remember when she’s been alone with a teacher in a classroom with the door shut.
As if reading her mind, he says, “I always keep this shut in the summer. There’s no one else here, anyway.”
“There are a few people,” she protests feebly.
“Not up here. I have it all to myself.” He grins, leaning back against his desk with his arms half folded, hands underneath, like a football coach. He’s wearing a Nike T-shirt and black bicycle shorts, and Kathryn wonders if he biked into town this morning. She remembers that he used to do that kind of thing, hiking up mountains before school, training for marathons and posting his daily miles on the board for the class to keep track of. “I thought you might come by,” he says. “Something about our conversation seemed … incomplete.”
“Umm,” she says, thinking, All right, here we go, with the vertiginous sensation of jumping off a high diving board, “there was something. I’ve been wondering why you didn’t tell me you were involved with Jennifer when she was your student.”
He gazes at her for a moment through narrowed eyes, as if he’s having trouble seeing her. Then, biting down on the word, he says,” ‘Involved’?”
“Sleeping with. Do I need to be more specific?”
His face is a mask of feigned shock. He laughs. “What a thought. What a fantasy.”
“Come on,” she says. “Jennifer must have told you I knew.”
“You must have misunderstood.”
“We all knew,” she continues. “Abby, Rachel—everybody.”
“They’re lying,” he says calmly. “Abby Elson is a drugged-out piece of trash, and Rachel lives in some kind of fantasy land.” He nods, as if remembering. “She used to send me poems. You know—love poems. So I’m afraid your sources are shaky, at best.”
Kathryn smiles. “They’re not my sources. Jennifer was my source.”
“Now you’re lying.”
Taking a deep breath, Kathryn says, “She used a code; she told people she was orienteering twice a week, and then she’d go to your place. She’d start out in the woods somewhere, and you’d pick her up in your car.”
His eyes are trained on hers, but he says nothing.
“It began sometime in the fall,” she continues carefully, “after the suicide attempt. Nobody else understood, but you knew what to say, how to help. You were almost like a father figure—”
“Not a father figure,” he says.
Kathryn feels her knees buckle, as if someone has kicked them from behind. She holds her body rigid. “You helped her,” she says.
Holding his hands up in front of his pursed lips as if he’s praying, Hunter looks at her for a long moment. Then he sighs. “She needed help.”
“I know.”
“There was nobody she could talk to.”
Kathryn feels a pain in her chest. Come on, Jen. Don’t get deep on me. We’re supposed to be celebrating. “I know,” she says.
“What else do you know?”
Her mouth is dry. She swallows. “I know that she loved you,” she says softly.
“Did she tell you that?”
“She didn’t have to. It was plain to see.”
And maybe it was, if she’d been paying attention. Maybe all of it was more obvious than she knew. Shared glances, a hand lingering on a shoulder, coded language and double entendres—Kathryn hadn’t seen any of it; she’d missed whatever clues might’ve come her way. Where had she been when Jennifer was slipping out to see him? How could she have been so oblivious when they were in his class together every day?
“She told me you didn’t know,” he muses, as if talking to himself. “She said she was afraid to tell you.”
“Afraid of what?”
“That you couldn’t handle it—you might tell somebody. That it would be weird in class.” He shrugs. “Who knows? But I guess she lied to me.”
No she didn’t, Kathryn thinks. You’re the only one she didn’t lie to. “She didn’t mean to tell me,” she says. “I kind of figured it out.”
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“What was there to say?”
“So why do it now?”
Her hands, she realizes, are trembling. She puts them behind her back. “I’ve been thinking about what you said at the reunion—about how I was such a nothing in high school.”
“I don’t think I said that exactly,” he protests mildly.
“But you were right,” she says. “I was in her shadow. I have been for a long time.”
“What does this have to do with—”
“I just wanted you to know that I know,” she says. “I thought it might clear the air between us.” She looks directly into his eyes. “You were right. I always envied what Jennifer had.”
Without expression, he appraises her. There is a long silence between them.
“I…” She hesitates, raising her hand to her mouth, and shakes her head. Then she turns away, as if to leave.
He reaches out and puts his hand on her arm. “What?” he asks, pulling her back. His grip is firm, and she resists. He lets go, lifting his hands as if in surrender. For a moment neither of them says a thing. “What do you want from me?” he asks finally.
She looks at him steadily, calmly, though her heart is racing. “I want … to know you. I’m tired of playing games.”
He gazes at her quizzically, tilting his head as if trying to see her a different way. “I don’t know, Kathryn,” he says finally. “I don’t know if I believe you.”
“If you’re involved with Rachel …”
“Who told you that?” he says sharply.
“I’m not dumb. I saw that look between you at the reunion.”
“We …” He hesitates. “There was something. Not anymore.”
Now he’s lying, she thinks, watching his Adam’s apple bob slightly as he swallows. She wonders if Rachel has told him about their conversation. It’s impossible to tell. All of a sudden Kathryn feels a wave of panic, like nausea, rise up in her. She doesn’t know what is real and what is false; even if he acts like he believes her, she has no idea if he really does. She doesn’t trust anything—her intuition, his cues. How foolish, she thinks, to imagine that she can play games like this with someone like Hunter. He knows all the tricks—he’s spent his life playing games.
“Are you ready for this?” he says abruptly.
For what? She looks at him, at the small smile on his lips, at his dark, piercing eyes. Almost imperceptibly, something about him seems to have changed. He is gentler, somehow, his expression softer.
“Yes,” she murmurs.
“Tonight, then,” he says.
She nods.
“There’s a diner off of Route l-A, near the Hampden town line. It’s called Raymond’s.”
“I’ll find it.”
“Seven o’clock.”
She nods again. “Seven o’clock.”
Walking out to the parking lot in the drizzling rain, Kathryn’s head feels light, as if she’s short of oxygen. It’s so easy to lie, she thinks. You just say the words, and they might as well be true. She feels the same way she used to feel as a teenager when she deceived her parents and got away with it—disbelief mixed with fear that they’d be behind her in a second, that they’d figure it out. When she realized she’d pulled it off, she felt a thrill of relief, and then, some time later, deep in her bones, a sadness that she could deceive them so easily, that her omnipotent parents could be fooled. Because if that were true, then they weren’t omnipotent anymore; anything could happen. They couldn’t save her and they couldn’t hurt her. She was on her own.
Chapter 28
When Kathryn gets home there’s a note from her mother on the kitchen table and a message from Jack on the answering machine. “I’ll be out again tonight—sorry!” the no
te reads. “A party at Julie Spenwen’s for work. Thanks for letting me know where you were last night. Hope it was fun. We need some groceries if you get a chance. Breakfast tomorrow? Love, Mom.”
Kathryn pushes the button on the machine. “Hey, Kathryn,” Jack says. “I’m wondering where you could be. Anyway, you know how we talked about moving you in other directions at the paper? Well, there’s a concert tonight at the Maine Center for the Arts, an Appalachian bluegrass band, and I’d like you to cover it. You can interview the group afterward. It’s not a unique story, but the director of the center has been pestering me for publicity about this event, and I’m thinking you might have an interesting take on it. Call me back.” She hears him start to put the phone down, and then there’s a clatter and he says, “Oh, hi to you, too, Mrs. Campbell.”
Kathryn stands at the table for a moment, trying to figure out what to tell him. Then she dials Jack’s number. “I’m having dinner with my mother tonight,” she lies. “Maybe if I’d known about this earlier …”
“Can’t you postpone it? I had to pull strings with the arts editor to get you this assignment.”
“Sorry. It’s important to her. But let me know if something else comes up, okay?” She feels a twinge of guilt; she can tell he’s annoyed. But she shrugs it off. “Hey, I think I left my earrings at your place. I might have to pick them up later.”
“After your mother-daughter bonding session?” He says it sarcastically, but she can hear a relenting in his voice.
“Maybe. I don’t want to wake you.”
“You can wake me,” he says. “Just don’t disturb my dreams.”
It’s early afternoon when the rain stops, when the gray cloud ceiling begins to break apart and glimpses of blue appear. Standing in the living room, looking out the picture window, Kathryn stretches her arms over her head, tugging her shoulders at the sockets. It’s been nearly a week since she’s gone running, and her body feels sluggish and stiff. She finds her running shorts in the dryer and an old cotton T-shirt of her mother’s—FUN RUN OF ‘91—hanging on the line, and she slips them on quickly, inhaling her mother’s floral perfume and a whiff of Tide detergent as she pulls the T-shirt over her head. Her mother doesn’t actually like to go running; Kathryn suspects the T-shirt is for show, or some old boyfriend’s. Or maybe both.
She starts out slowly, her feet squishing down the street. A block away, on Center Street, she can hear cars shushing by, but Taft Street is eerily quiet. On Montgomery she takes a left, past the older houses with peeling paint, the broad expanse of park made lush by the rain, past the newer houses of brick and siding that cluster together in a secluded inlet, and makes her way toward the Kenduskeag.
It’s been years since she’s been to the spot by the river where the five of them sat around the fire that night, watching Jennifer walk out into the darkness. For a while after it happened Kathryn had taken comfort in returning there, as if Jennifer might somehow be present, as if Kathryn might be close to her that way. But when the search parties dwindled and the investigation slowed, the place became a painful reminder of what they didn’t do. I’ll be fine, she’d said, and they believed her; they didn’t stop her. They let her slip away.
Thinking back now, Kathryn can see how much she wanted to take at face value what Jennifer had told her—as if her words, even when spoken without conviction, were some kind of promise. Why had she been so eager to accept that Jennifer was fine, when every indication was that she wasn’t? Why had she been so unwilling to read between the lines?
“FINE,” Kathryn’s sophomore-year college roommate, a psychology major, had yelled at her one time, frustrated at Kathryn’s unwillingness to open up. “Fucked-up, insecure, Neurotic, Emotional—yeah, you’re fine, you lying bitch.” Kathryn knew her roommate was right—it was a meaningless word, a cover. It hid what she didn’t want others to see, and what she couldn’t face in herself. She lived on the surface of that word, repeating it so often that she almost believed it.
She has been so afraid for so long. She was afraid that if she admitted to one thing, one genuine feeling, then she’d have to admit to it all; she’d have to feel everything. She didn’t know if she could do it. She was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to hold things together if they started to fall apart, that she would be unable to contain the chaos. Jennifer was right to keep things from her—her sadness, her neediness, her relationship with Hunter. Because what would Kathryn have done if she’d known?
The rain has started up again. It falls lightly on her face, her neck, her arms; it gets in her eyes and mixes with her tears, making the road ahead a blur. She’s glad to be crying, glad for the rain; it feels like both punishment and absolution. All the tears she never shed, the pain she wouldn’t let herself feel, the relief at admitting her own complicity. She may not be responsible for Jennifer’s disappearance, but she is responsible for ignoring Jennifer’s unhappiness, for refusing to face the fact that she might have been in trouble. She is accountable for that.
The Kenduskeag is swollen with the rain, its banks muddy and sodden. Avoiding the soupy trails, Kathryn runs on the slope of matted grasses, which are slick and squeaky underfoot. She feels almost drunk—or on some drug that makes things appear off kilter and unbalanced. Trees seem to be falling toward her, their leaves and branches heavy with rain.
The site, when she reaches it, is barren and nondescript. She stands for a moment breathing heavily, trying to get her bearings. To the left is the spot where they parked their cars. To the right, where there used to be a clearing, brambles and weeds have grown up. She had expected to be overwhelmed, to feel immensely sad, but instead she feels nothing. It’s just a place.
She runs along the edge of the long dirt road leading back to the main road that parallels the river. At the fork she bears left, her feet slapping the pavement, following the route Jennifer took that night. In the ten years since, much has happened on this stretch of road. New developments have sprung up, streets have been paved, trees cleared. But somehow it still feels secluded; the infusion of people and activity seems less to have transformed the wilderness than to have been absorbed by it.
After a mile or so she comes to the intersection of Griffin Road, the place where Jennifer’s gum wrapper was found and where the police dogs lost her scent. Kathryn stops and looks up and down the road. A logging truck rumbles by, its wheels sizzling in the rain. Several cars pass, and then a small black pickup heading north slows and comes to a stop in front of her with the motor running.
The passenger-side window scrolls down. “Are you all right? Need a ride?” a young woman shouts, leaning toward her across the seat. She’s wearing a floppy straw hat and tortoiseshell glasses. Sodden bags of mulch are piled in the truck bed.
“No thanks,” Kathryn says. “I’m in the middle of a run.”
“In this weather?” The woman screws up her face.
“I’m almost home. But thanks anyway.”
“Okay, whatever you say.” She waves and starts to close the window. “Wait,” Kathryn says. “Where are you going?”
She shrugs. “I could drop you anywhere.”
“No, I mean, where are you headed? What’s up that way?”
“Oh.” She looks out the windshield. “I live about eight miles from here, on Mud Pond. There’s not much else but fish and bears up there.”
“You anywhere near Pushaw?”
“Sure. Is that where you wanna go?”
“No, I just wondered.” Kathryn smiles and steps back, waving good-bye.
Standing in the rain, she watches the pickup pull away, its red tail-lights glowing smaller until they vanish over a rise. She tilts her head up and closes her eyes, feeling the soft raindrops on her eyelids, tasting their metallic sweetness on her tongue. Then she turns around and heads for home.
Chapter 29
Hunter is sitting on a round stool at the counter with his back to the door when Kathryn gets to the diner that night, a few minutes late. He’s drinking coffee
and talking in a low voice to the waitress, who’s leaning against the ice-cream cooler and laughing in a familiar way, as if she knows him.
Kathryn takes the stool beside him. He doesn’t look up. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d show,” he says.
She slips off her jacket, puts it on the empty seat beside her, taps her wet umbrella on the floor and lays it at her feet. “I said I would.”
He laughs. “I don’t take much stock in what people say.”
The waitress raises her eyebrows at him and slides a laminated menu toward Kathryn. “Coffee?”
“Do you have tea?”
“Lipton.”
“Okay.”
Turning to the shelf behind her, the waitress opens a box. Kathryn looks around. The diner is tattered but comfortable, with blue-vinyl booths and framed car ads from old Life magazines. Edsels, Fords, Chevys, Coupe de Villes. Two sixtyish men in flannel shirts are sitting at a booth in the back, playing cards. At another booth, an elderly woman with her hair in a net is daubing her face with powder and peering in a small compact mirror. “Runaround Sue” is playing on the jukebox. “I never even knew this place existed,” Kathryn says.
“It’s a local hangout.”
“I grew up in this town.”
He laughs again. “You’re not a local.”
The waitress sets a cup of hot water in front of Kathryn, a tea bag in an envelope on the saucer. Then she refills Hunter’s coffee and moves away.
“You know each other,” Kathryn says quietly, glancing at the waitress.
“I’ve spent some time in this place.”
“She likes you.”
“I like her, too,” he says evenly.
“Are you dating her?”
“No.”
“Are you ‘involved’ with her?”
He turns and looks at Kathryn. “You ask a lot of questions.”