✥ ✥ ✥
Ruby’s morning was off to a hurried start, and she didn’t have time to chat with Amanda Blakeney. Yet there she was, scrambling across the Blakeneys’ front lawn, then across the street, then up Ruby’s walkway to the porch. Does she watch for me to leave? Ruby wondered. The woman was fond of bringing Ruby’s shortcomings to her attention—and always, for some reason, in the morning. One of Amanda’s pet peeves was her neighbor’s failure to draw up her venetian blinds evenly. “It gives a house a disheveled look, don’t you think?”
When she wasn’t complaining about blinds, Amanda might enlist Ruby to signing petitions. The most recent, just last week, had been an effort to get the street converted to one way.
“The cars just seem to roar through here these days,” Amanda had said, brandishing her clipboard. “The boys from D and L have found the quickest route to our Baines girls! Honestly, I’m just waiting for somebody to be run over.”
Ruby had signed obediently, even though she’d never noticed the alleged roaring. Over the decades, she had learned about keeping the peace with her neighbors and flattering them whenever possible, especially Amanda.
This morning, Amanda wanted something else. “Ruby, a word?” she called out.
“I’m so sorry, Amanda, I’m late for a meeting.” Ruby fumbled in her pocketbook for her car keys. She managed to flash a smile. “I wanted to walk today, it’s so glorious, but I don’t have time.”
“Just a minute?”
Ruby nodded. As much as the woman rankled her, she could spare her a minute. In some ways, Amanda was a model neighbor, bringing soup when Ruby was ill and a casserole when Darrell’s mother died, keeping an eye on the house when she and Darrell went to their cabin in the mountains. She’d even presented a graduation check to each of their three sons.
Amanda met her at the curb, where Ruby’s car was parked. “You’re so knowledgeable,” her neighbor said, “and I wonder what you’ve heard about the investigation of the unfortunate Mr. Patton.”
Ruby reached past her neighbor for the door handle of the Bel Air. “Oh, I’m sure I don’t know any more than you, Amanda. Just what I read in the Gazette.”
“It’s just, I’ve heard a rumor that the police are broadening their investigation into . . . you know, these vice matters.” Amanda frowned, unable or unwilling to elaborate. “I heard they might even talk to other Baines faculty.”
“Where did you hear that?”
Amanda winced at the sharpness of Ruby’s tone.
“Irene Carr mentioned it at our bridge game. She wondered about the theater director and someone in your department?” When Ruby didn’t respond, Amanda added, “Irene can be an awful gossip, though, stirring up trouble for no reason.”
And the pot calls the kettle black, Ruby thought.
“I don’t know her well,” Ruby said, which was technically true. She knew Mrs. Carr mostly as Gen’s next-door neighbor. Gen had complained more than once that Irene Carr commented on her comings and goings in an unnerving way.
“I wondered if there was even a hint of truth to it.”
“I’m sure I don’t know.” Ruby struggled to keep a casual tone.
“It’s all so unsavory, isn’t it? I do hope Baines can escape a bigger scandal.”
“If I hear anything, Amanda, I will let you know.”
“I see you had your women’s group last night,” Amanda added as Ruby settled herself behind the steering wheel. She was probably in her mid-forties but acted like an ancient biddy, keeping close tabs on everyone else.
“I did indeed. See you later, Amanda.”
Ruby closed the door with a definitive slam and waved through the glass. She sped off down the street toward campus. Amanda would probably complain to someone that she roared.
Chapter Five
Gen
First came the Hershey’s kisses in her department mailbox. The following week Gen found a box of creme-filled Girl Scout cookies propped against the door of her office. Someone likely had a kid sister who hadn’t unloaded all her boxes during the cookie season.
Gen knew she was likely to devour the cookies in short order if she took them home, as she had the candy kisses. She had developed a craving for sweets after the breakup with Carolyn, and she alternately binged on chocolate ice cream and Tom Collinses to mask her pain. The failed attempt resulted only in tighter waistbands on her fall wardrobe.
Now, Gen dutifully placed the cookies in the department office for everyone to enjoy, not saving even one for herself. The treats vanished by the end of the day, and she spotted the history chairman helping himself to two vanillas.
She would have forgotten the gifts in time, chalked them up to some girl’s innocent gesture of regard. Maybe Margaret Sutter was quietly repaying her for the loan of the Civil War book.
The situation turned less childlike when a package appeared on her porch, wrapped in brown paper. Inside was a lurid pulp novel, Girls’ Dormitory, its spine cracked and cover tattered.
Two summers back, Carolyn had picked up the novel at a drugstore and read it in one sitting during their Rehoboth trip. She had pronounced it “a delightful dose of trash” and urged it on Gen. The cover, with three girls in various states of undress, sparked Gen’s interest, but the description of a college dormitory housemother who “initiated” students made it seem too salacious to bother with. Gen had tossed it aside for Doctor Zhivago, which she’d been saving for vacation.
She knew Carolyn hadn’t mailed the novel; the package had been placed on her porch with care. Whoever wrapped it tied it up with the same pink ribbon as the candy kisses she’d received at school.
Gen’s skin crawled at the thought that her “admirer” knew where she lived. Granted, Springboro was a compact town where people recognized each other by sight, if not by name, and she was the only Rider in the local directory. Still . . .
Worse, Girls’ Dormitory was about a lesbian predator at a girls’ school—a creepy message, for sure, but possibly an ominous warning.
The novel’s housemother plot brought back a memory. In her second year at Baines, the dean at the time asked Gen to be a dormitory housemother. “We rely on our single ladies without families for these positions,” the dean had said. “It will look good on your CV if you ever go up for promotion.”
The dean mentioned no end date for the appointment, which had made Gen nervous to accept. She wasn’t dating anyone at the time, but that didn’t mean she wanted to become a nun. With the advice of a friend at another college, a woman she’d dated in graduate school, Gen finessed her refusal—an excuse about a long-term lease. She’d never told anyone at Baines about the housemother offer, not even Ruby. Girls’ Dormitory landed too close, an eerie coincidence.
And that turned her thoughts to Juliet, who wanted desperately to give up her
