on a cell phone in the hall. She wore cheap shoes. They looked like they were hurting her feet. Her trousers were good quality but they needed to be pressed. She was young and attractive and her eyes were sharp.
They flicked over her while saying into the phone, “Nothing so far. I don’t think we’re going to get much.” She resisted the urge to return the detective’s gaze, walking down the hall at her same leisurely pace. Nothing, she thought. They had nothing and they would have nothing. She would use the detective’s words when she told the others. It was the good news they needed. She hadn’t doubted, but the others didn’t have her strength or her gifts.
She had to lead them in all things. A minor irritant, this self-doubt. She’d never experienced such a disability herself. They looked to her as bleating sheep to a calm shepherd. And she would lead them, just like she always had.
The police would look, but they wouldn’t find. She’d learned long ago that she could count on her own careful planning and the general principle that no one ever spotted anything hiding in plain sight.
Chapter Seven
Nicole Morel had been assigned as a roommate a quiet, plump girl who had the incongruously exciting name of Destiny. She’d gazed solemnly at Nicole behind owlish glasses upon her arrival and announced that since Nicole had gotten first pick of the beds, it was her choice as to which of the identical desks each would call their own. Nicole wasn’t surprised when Destiny picked the one with the better view out the window.
They moved quietly around each other in the room, careful of personal space, careful not to touch each other’s things. Nicole was nervous and wondered if Destiny felt the same. Would she have been happier rooming with another African American and not some half-French newcomer?
They set out their personal belongings quietly, both of them eyeing each other’s things but with none of the chatter that Nicole heard coming from the other rooms.
Destiny put a series of framed photos on her dresser, all of them featuring her and a series of smiling people who had the same round faces and inquisitive eyes.
Nicole had two photos. The first was an aerial shot.
“What city is that?” Destiny had asked, moving closer to look at it. “Where did you take it?”
“Paris. From the Eiffel Tower.”
The other photo was in a silver frame. Back home, her old home, its place had been on her bedside table. She found it wrapped in a sweater in her trunk. Her mother must have packed it because Nicole had left it behind.
There she was at ten, her smile so wide that the braces were visible on her teeth even though the picture had been taken from a distance. She was clutching her father’s hand on one side and Paul’s on the other. Her mother had her arm around Paul’s shoulder. Smile everybody, smile.
They were standing by a fountain in Italy whose name she’d forgotten. Something famous. Something educational, Paul complained, and they didn’t want to be educated on their holiday. Only he’d only said it to rile their mother and she’d laughed with him in the end. He’d always made her laugh.
“Is that your family?” Destiny had asked, her voice a jarring interruption.
“Yes.” She placed the photo on the dresser next to the other picture. She put her clothes neatly away in the drawers and left her trunk in the hall to be taken down for storage.
Destiny was still unpacking. Nicole lay down on the bed, but from there she could see the photo. She got up and switched its place with the shot of Paris and stood back, assessing.
“Paul wouldn’t want you to be this way.” Her mother had said that to her so many times, but couldn’t seem to take the advice herself. Her face had been so white and drawn. Not that her father had been any better since Paul’s death; there had been circles under both her parents’ eyes. They’d slept no better than she did, but the family meeting had focused on her.
They’d asked her to sit with them in the living room and she was painfully aware of Paul’s empty chair. They’d mentioned her falling grades, her truancy, her seeming lack of interest in everything she used to care about.
“You’ve given up ballet, riding, even going out with your friends,” her mother said, ticking them off on her fingers.
How could she bear to explain to them that when she went to the ballet studio she saw Celeste, Paul’s girlfriend? She didn’t want to remind them of this and it hurt too much to reveal that most of her friends had really been Paul’s. It was Paul everyone gravitated toward. He’d been so funny and full of life. She’d been included as his little sister, but once he was gone they were, too.
As for riding, it was easier to give up competing than to see the worry come back into her mother’s eyes and feel her fear that she would lose another child.
“We are going back to the United States,” her father had announced, stepping over her mother’s concern, declaring his solution for whatever problem was at hand just as he always had.
“This isn’t the time, Laurent!” Her mother hissed, her eyes flashing their annoyance. For a moment her father looked confused, but then his jaw hardened.
“We can’t stay here now,” he said, “there are too many ghosts here.”
Were there other ghosts, Nicole wondered, or did he just mean Paul? Her grandmother had lived with them briefly, before she’d passed away. A sweet woman who was always pressing coins or foil-wrapped chocolates into their hands. They’d had the wake for her in Paris, too, but it had been different. Sighs and mournful faces, of course, but there had been laughter, too. Not like Paul’s wake.
She’d taken the photo and angled it so that it couldn’t be seen from the bed or from the desk. She would have put it in the drawer but her new roommate had seen it.
“You were talking in your sleep last night,” Destiny announced as Nicole came into their room and dumped her books on the desk. Nicole didn’t respond.
“Don’t you want to know what you were saying?” Destiny put aside the paperback she was reading and sat up on her bed.
Nicole shrugged, trying to look unconcerned, and turned from her roommate as if it didn’t matter. She could feel her face growing hot, though, and knew that the blush would spread to the tips of her ears where Destiny could see it on her pale skin. She pretended to be absorbed in arranging her textbooks, but she was poised, listening.
“Well, I can’t tell you because it was in French.” Destiny laughed. “And your French is a whole lot faster and better than mine.” She laughed again.
Nicole forced a smile, but her sense of relief wasn’t faked. She didn’t want to embarrass herself. She didn’t want to scream Paul’s name. She dreamed about him stepping off the sidewalk, seeing it in slow motion, that slow step down, his turning back with a smile on his face, the sound of the truck’s brakes squealing.
Stop. Stop thinking about it. She forced it back into the box in her head and locked it tight.
“Are you going to lunch?” she said.
Destiny walked fast for someone with extra weight. She didn’t say anything until they spotted a tall, gangly white girl with limp brown hair who had her head in
