“Well, you’re here at Wilbourne, aren’t you?” Joyce let out a hoot. “And they don’t take idiots here!” She smirked. “The occasional lefty moron, of course—you can’t get away from that in academia, of course, especially here in the Northeast—but I have no doubt you’re going to do just fine.”
Sue managed a smile.
Joyce reached into a worn Louis Vuitton bag on the floor. “Unfortunately, I can’t visit with you as long as I would like—I have to be in D.C. tonight, which means driving over to Albany and catching a flight, and I should be gone already—but I so wanted to meet you.”
“I don’t know much about my mother. I’d love to hear what you remember about her.”
Joyce had pulled out a book from her bag. She opened it to the title page and scrawled quickly on it with a pen. “Here you go,” she said, handing it to Sue. “A copy of my latest book, just for you. I wrote my cell phone number on there as well as my private e-mail address. I want you to call me night or day if you need anything, okay? Or e-mail me—I will always answer you. Anything for Mariclare’s little girl.”
“Did you know her long? And my fath—”
“Sweetie, I can’t talk now. I promise to be back up here soon to really get to know you better. Maybe in a few weeks. Then we can talk endlessly about Mariclare. My schedule is just so insane right now.” She slipped her bag over her shoulder. “But read the book in the meantime…and I’ll give you a call to set up dinner when I can get back up here.”
Sue tried to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.
“Okay, move on out!” Joyce barked to her assistants, who suddenly came running into the room, scooping up boxes and suitcases. Joyce reached over to give Sue another hug. “So good to finally meet you, sweetheart.” Then she swept out of the room, leaving Sue standing there alone.
Sue glanced down at the cover of the book. There was Joyce, dressed pretty much the same as she had been tonight, with her hands on her hips. She was standing in front of a chalkboard, where the word SMEAR was written in green chalk. Across the bottom were the words How Liberals Have Perfected the Art of Libel.
In the upper left-hand corner inside a black balloon, it read, The latest from New York Times best-selling author Joyce Davenport!
She opened the book to the title page.
For Sue, I hope this is the start of a beautiful friendship, Love, Joyce.
Her cell phone number and e-mail address, as promised, were written underneath the signature.
Sue walked out, holding the book, and headed across the campus. The auditorium had emptied out, and a cold wind had blown up. There was a full moon so there was plenty of light, but it seemed weird how fast the entire campus had emptied. There were no girls milling about now. Everyone was back in their dorm rooms, unpacking and preparing for the first day of classes, and anyone who wasn’t would be shooed inside. It seemed Sue’s grandparents weren’t the only ones to set curfews. Sue walked faster, rubbing her arms to warm them up as she headed down the path to Bentley Hall.
She was lost in thoughts of her mother.
She’d always, always, felt something missing in her life. Her grandparents had loved her, but she’d never been able to feel close to them. Whenever she was at a friend’s home—even Becca Stansfield’s—she’d missed the camaraderie, the closeness she sensed between her friends and their mothers. Her friends might complain about busybody moms, they might fight with them, even call them monsters—but every time Sue listened to them complain, all she could think was, I’d give anything to have a fight with my mother.
Her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them away.
Suddenly, she wished she’d asked Joyce Davenport in which dorm her mother had lived.
Stopping in front of Bentley Hall, however, Sue knew the answer to that question.
Her eyes flickered up to that third-floor window where she’d seen that face earlier. Where she’d thought she’d seen a face, that is—the face of a woman screaming.
That was my mother’s room.
How she knew that for certain, she couldn’t say. It was impossible to know such a thing, but she knew.
And the woman who screamed?
Had that been in her mother?
Had that been Mariclare?
The campus was suddenly very cold. Looking around her, at the deserted walkways and windows so black that seemed to blot out the light behind them, Sue felt as if she were the only one left alive at Wilbourne.
She pushed through the front door and headed for her room.
8
The town of Lebanon went dark no later than nine every night.
Every night of the week, with the exception of the Yellow Bird Café around the town square, the 7/11 near the high school, and Earl’s Tavern out on the county road, every business within the city limits was locked up and closed no later than nine. The streets fell silent, and the only signs of life to anyone driving through town would be the occasional light in the windows of a house. It made the sheriff’s life much easier, and the night shift for the deputies was generally slow and quiet, disrupted only by occasional acts of vandalism or a drunk driver every once in a while. Lebanon was a quiet town, and as the mayor, Robbie Kendall, was fond of saying whenever making a speech, “a fine place to raise a family.”
Unlike other small towns around the country, Lebanon wasn’t drying up and blowing away. Sure, every year after graduation, a high percentage of teenagers hit the road and never looked back—an interesting mix of the slackers and the top students. The top students went away for college, incurring years of debt in student loans, and the slackers headed for bigger cities—New York, Philadelphia, Boston, or Albany. Some of the college-bound kids came back after graduation if there was a job to bring them back—working in the Walgreen’s pharmacy or teaching, for example. But the slacker kids didn’t come back, and outside of their families, no one really cared. Those kids were lazy, a bad element, and the ones the adults in town automatically thought of whenever drug use came up in conversation. The sooner they left town, the better.
Yet enough of their classmates stayed around and went to work after getting their diplomas, settling into life in Lebanon as adults. They married and had enough kids to keep the population steady each year as another group of kids left. The town folk worked hard. They paid their bills, and rarely complained. If there wasn’t a decent job in town, there were the paper mills and meatpacking plants forty minutes north on the highway in Senandaga, the county seat. The only people who didn’t work were just lazy or drunks.
So far, the scourge of drugs plaguing other small towns had stayed away from Lebanon. Sure, some of the kids smoked pot or drank, but it wasn’t a big problem and for the most part, other than an occasional car wreck, they didn’t bother anyone. Lebanon High School provided a decent education, and had turned out some championship teams in football and girls’ basketball. Robbie Kendall was right. Lebanon was a good place to raise a family. The last murder had been seven years ago, and pretty much everyone agreed Wade DeBolt had had it coming. If he hadn’t been slapping his wife Norma around, she wouldn’t have needed to shoot him.
Still, even if folks in Lebanon didn’t need to lock their doors at night, they did anyway. Better safe than sorry, was the general thought, and above all else, Lebanon folks were practical. There was a great big crazy world out there, and who knows when someone from outside might blow into town and cause trouble?
There were nine churches in Lebanon, and they were all well attended every Sunday. The churches were the centers of social activity in town, with picnics and potlucks and dances for the teenagers. They were all Protestant—the few Catholics in town attended Mass up at St. Dominic’s in Senandaga. There wasn’t any friction between the different congregations,