the school year ended, she packed her bags and kissed him good-bye. He’d watched her drive out of town, and out of his life.
His father still got mad about it if her name ever came up. “I’m not getting any younger, and I still don’t have any grandchildren,” he’d say every once in a while, smiling to make it seem as though he were teasing, but the set of his jaw and the tic in his cheek showed he meant it. Perry knew his dad was proud of him for following him into law enforcement—but a part of his dad worried that Perry was stuck in a rut.
“Well, Jennifer’s not losing any sleep over not marrying me,” Perry said. “That’s for sure.”
“You don’t know that, Perry,” Marjorie replied. “She could be sitting there every night hoping you’ll stop being stubborn and say the magic words to her.” She shuffled his glass over to the fountain and refilled it. “Just tell me to mind my own business and I’ll shut up.”
“It’s okay.” He took another drink and grinned at her. He liked Marjorie, always had—despite her kids. But you can’t blame her for her kids—she did the best she could. Her kids had been train wrecks. Marjorie’s oldest, a daughter, had run off to Manhattan when she was seventeen and hadn’t been heard from since. Frankie, her second, had been in Perry’s class at Lebanon High. Frankie was a wild kid, coming to school reeking of marijuana. He’d been killed driving drunk the summer after graduation. Darby, her youngest, had been on the same road as Frankie—but seemed to have straightened out after Frankie was killed. He got a job right out of school as a mechanic over at Mike’s Firestone, gotten married, and bought a house down in the Banks near Marjorie’s. Still, everybody knew that Darby gambled, and word at the sheriff’s office was that he was probably dealing in stolen cars. They had their eye on Darby Pequod.
“Marjorie’s always had a hard life,” his mother used to say, “but she never complains, bless her heart.” They’d gone to Lebanon High together and were friends. And when the cancer was eating his mother alive a few years back, Marjorie had come over every day with wrapped sandwiches from the Bird.
“So what’s gotten you so tired out today, Marj?” Perry asked her.
“First day of school over at the college.” The locals rarely called it Wilbourne. It was just “the college.”
“Yeah? A lot of students coming in?”
“In and out all afternoon, kept me hopping.”
For a moment, the face of that girl he’d pulled over appeared in Perry’s mind. What was her name? Barlow. Susan Barlow.
Marjorie sighed, but then she smiled. “Those girls are good tippers. I guess they had their welcome thing tonight, because it slowed way down after six thirty.” She stretched, pressing both hands into the small of her back. “Man, my back is hurting. Be glad when I get home and can soak in a hot bath.”
They both turned when the bell at the front door rang.
10
Virginia Marshall, Ph.D., was not in a good mood.
After leaving the welcome ceremony, she’d driven aimlessly around town with no real idea of where she was going or what she was doing, other than she didn’t want to go back to her apartment. Tonight was the last straw, she thought over and over again as she cruised the quiet streets. She was fed up, tired, and sorely tempted to march into Dean Gregory’s office the following morning and slap her resignation down on his desk. Love to see the look on his weasel face if I did.
The thought made her smile, and her blood pressure started finally to go down to a reasonable level. When she turned onto the square, she saw the lights on at the Yellow Bird. The bright lights looked inviting. No point in driving around all night, I’ll just stop in there for a cup of coffee. She parked next to Perry Holland’s deputy car, and walked in.
She waved at Perry and sat down at one of the booths that ran along the right side of the diner. “Just coffee, please,” she called as she reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a notebook. She carried it with her everywhere, using it to jot down notes and thoughts whenever they occurred to her. She didn’t see the look Marjorie gave Perry—but she didn’t need to. She knew she wasn’t well liked in Lebanon, and that was just fine with her.
She hated Lebanon, and she hated Wilbourne College even more.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time, even though her colleagues at Harvard thought she was completely insane. No matter how hard they tried, though, they just didn’t understand her need to get away from Boston, to get away from Harvard, to just get away. After watching her son die for two years of chemotherapy that didn’t work, of medications and drug protocols and marrow transplants, of watching him try to smile and be brave for her through enormous pain and suffering, Boston was just too much for Ginny. Her colleagues didn’t understand that every time she looked at one of her students, she hated them for simply being alive. Every time a young man walked into her classroom or through her line of vision, it was like the knife being twisted in her heart all over again.
Grief counseling hadn’t worked, drinking didn’t help, the pills did nothing except depress her all over again. And as Ginny suffered, her marriage crumbled around her as well. She knew her marriage was in trouble, she knew Jim needed her, needed more than a zombie who just wandered around in a coma not caring about anything, but she couldn’t do anything, couldn’t make herself care. Jim didn’t understand her, didn’t understand that she felt that “moving on” was just a politer way of saying, “Let’s forget Eric ever existed,” and when he finally sat her down and said, “Ginny, I’m not getting what I need from you anymore,” she just looked at him and replied, “And it’s never once occurred to you that maybe you aren’t giving me what I need?”
So when Jim packed and left, Ginny didn’t feel anything other than a passing sense of relief that she didn’t have to deal with him anymore. She just was numb everywhere, as though all her emotions and nerves had died.
She didn’t think she’d ever feel anything again.
So when Wilbourne College made an offer, she’d decided to take it. It was a surprisingly good offer—considering what she’d already been making as a tenured professor at Harvard who’d published best-selling works on the history of the Christian religion. Something about being in the woods—and teaching girls, not boys—had appealed mightily to her. She’d driven over to Lebanon on a three-day weekend to meet the other faculty and get a feeling for the town and college. That first weekend, she found Lebanon quaint and charming—it reminded her of her own hometown, Hammond, Louisiana—and she liked the college. The campus was beautiful, and she liked the idea of working with a student body that was over ninety-five-percent young women. There’d be no reminders of Eric everywhere she turned. The change was exactly what she needed.
She resisted every temptation to remain on the faculty at Harvard—her department chair begged her to simply take a leave, to keep her options open. Her agent thought she was insane—“Ginny, part of your appeal to publishers is your position at Harvard. You can’t give that up”—so she’d finally accepted emeritus status. But that was the only concession she made to her original decision to leave Boston behind. She sold her town house rather than renting it. She got rid of everything inside of it, not wanting to keep anything that would remind her of her son, anything that might keep the agony alive inside her.
I have to get on with my life.
That had been her mantra on the drive to Lebanon. She’d gotten a second floor apartment—small
