“One of the downsides of being a teacher,” a middle-aged woman wearing a tweed suit said with a grin as Lauren sat down. “They say being on this platform is putting us in a place of honor, but the truth is that we’re really just on display for the herd. Feels strange, doesn’t it?”
“Alice, you’ll scare her,” an older man admonished. He stood up and extended his hand across the table. “Leonard Whitecliff, and this is my esteemed colleague in the English department, Alice LaRue.”
“Oh Leonard, you’re the one who’ll scare her with your Masterpiece Theatre manners.” Alice laughed and offered her right hand to Lauren while taking a small roll from a basket with her left. “Personally, I still eat here for these.” She broke open the bread and steam rose from it. “Aah. Warm bread is the true mark of civilization.”
A tall, quiet man seated to Lauren’s right chuckled at that. “My vote goes to indoor plumbing,” he said. “James Bolton, science.”
There was a flurry of other introductions and she promptly forgot most of the names. She’d gotten a salad to eat and there were sweating glass pitchers of iced tea and water with slices of lemon floating in both.
“We understand that you’re the one who found Morgan,” Alice LaRue said. The others paused in their eating and looked expectantly at Lauren.
“Yes,” she said.
“We’ve heard that she was naked? Is that true?” Ryland Pierce asked.
Lauren’s hand faltered and the iced tea she was pouring splashed onto the linen cloth. A pool of amber spread around her glass as she dabbed at it with her napkin.
James placed a hand gently on hers, stilling Lauren. “It’s okay,” he said in a low voice. “They’ve seen worse stains.”
Lauren looked up to see a row of expectant faces. “Yes,” she said. “She was naked.”
Her appetite shriveled as she said it. She had managed to push the image of that girl’s drawn face and purplish skin far from her mind while she was teaching, but now it rushed back with a vengeance. She could feel bile rising and thought she might be ill.
“She was a very strange girl,” Leonard said. “She really didn’t fit in here.”
Alice grimaced. “Oh, Leonard, just because she was a free spirit.”
“Flouting all the rules, repeatedly—that goes beyond being a free spirit.” Natalie Myers, a startlingly thin math teacher said with a moue of distaste.
“I’d say that’s the very definition.” Alice countered, slathering another roll with butter. She munched on it placidly.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to agree with Leonard and Natalie,” Ryland Pierce said, but he didn’t sound at all regretful. “She was quite a handful. It’s just like her to cause controversy even in death.”
Natalie suddenly said, “She’s dead. Let’s not speak ill of her.”
“I’m surprised the media hasn’t shown up yet,” Ryland said as if she hadn’t spoken.
“St. Ursula’s doesn’t need the publicity,” Alice said with dismay. “Not just when we’re recovering from what happened two years ago.”
Lauren asked, “What happened two years ago?”
“Two stupid kids killed driving drunk,” Leonard said.
Alice added, “They crashed into a tree on campus. For some reason it made the national news—you probably saw it.”
Lauren shook her head. “I was out of the country.”
“Oh? Where were you?” Leonard gave her an inquiring smile.
“Studying in London.”
“Lucky you,” Alice said. “Did you get to Paris? I adore Paris—I got these there some twenty years ago.” She fingered the string of long, swirled-glass beads around her neck.
“Heavens, Alice, she was a baby twenty years ago!” Natalie said with a laugh. “I’m surprised Sister Rose hired someone so young to replace Sister Agnes. No offense.” The last directed at Lauren with a little laugh.
She was spared from replying by Alice. “Poor Agnes. That was really awful. It’s amazing how fast the mind can disintegrate.”
“What happened?” Lauren asked.
“Alzheimer’s,” Leonard said. “And the worst part was people didn’t understand, well, at least not until the paranoia.”
Ryland Pierce interrupted him. “Goodness, this is depressing lunch conversation. Let’s turn to something more pleasant, shall we?” He shone his capped-tooth smile on them all and Alice gave a little harrumph under her breath.
“Tell us about your background, Ms. Kavanaugh,” he said. “I understand you attended a prep school outside of Pittsburgh?”
Lauren nodded and took a bite of salad. She hoped he’d move on, but it appeared that he’d just started.
“Where was that?”
“St. Mary’s Academy.”
“Oh, I’m not familiar with that one. It must seem like old times coming to St. Ursula’s. Is it similar?”
“A bit,” she said while thinking, too much. It was too similar to her past, too much a reminder of the girl she’d been and of everything she’d hoped to forget when she went to Europe. “Aah, Catholic schoolgirls wrapped so tight in their little plaid skirts.” Michael laughing as he looked at a class picture.
“Was it a boarding school?” Alice said.
“No.” She’d longed to go to boarding school, wanted desperately to get away from that picture-perfect house and the expectation that it would hold a picture-perfect family. When she thought of those years it was often of the hours spent in a spacious, cold dining room, sitting ramrod straight at that vast polished table while being forced to endure formal meals with older parents for whom she’d been an unwelcome surprise.
They’d had their three children, the five of them a perfect tableau for family portraits and the annual Christmas card. Her mother was forty-two when she found out she was pregnant again. Lauren’s arrival disrupted the plan and she’d grown up with the burden of knowing that it was only because of allegiance to their Catholic faith that she’d been born at all.
“I’m sure many of our traditions will be familiar to you,” the guidance counselor said.
“Yes, we’re very big on tradition at St. Ursula’s,” Alice said. “Everything must be done in the same way as it’s been done for the last one hundred years.”
Leonard rolled his eyes. “Not if left to you, Alice. I’m sure we’d be doing liturgical dance in chapel if left to you.” He shuddered. “As a history teacher, Ms. Kavanaugh, I’m sure you’ll find the history of St. Ursula’s very interesting.”
“St. Mary’s didn’t have any ghosts?” James said. “Tell her about our ghost, Leonard.”
“What ghost?” Lauren said.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Ryland said with an uneasy laugh. “That’s just an old story.”
“I’ve seen her,” Alice said with conviction. “It’s not just a story.” She leaned toward Lauren. “When the school was founded there were eight nuns living on the top floor of the main building. One of them, the youngest, hanged herself from the railing over the main stairs.”
Lauren’s mouth was dry. “Why?”
“She was pregnant,” James said.
“Rubbish!” Leonard wiped his hands briskly with his napkin and