All The Pretty Dead Girls (8 page)

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 but cozy—just a few blocks off the town square. She arrived two weeks before that fall semester began, enthusiastic and ready to go to work. She had all of her research for her book—on hold for the whole duration of Eric’s illness—packed in the trunk of her car. She was eager to get back to work on it. In the peace and quiet of this small upstate New York town, she planned on making it the best work she’d done.

Those two weeks before school started, Ginny found some good used furniture and set her apartment up exactly the way she wanted. When the town paper, the
Lebanon Herald,
called requesting an interview, she’d been more flattered than anything else. After all, when you’ve been interviewed by
The New York Times,
what did you have to fear from the
Lebanon Herald
?

That was her first mistake.

The reporter had been a woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties. Her name was Gayle Honeycutt. Gayle had been kind of nondescript-looking, very pale, with white blond hair and no eyelashes. Short and running a little to overweight, she had tiny hands and tiny feet and a simple, straightforward manner that Ginny found appealing, especially in comparison with other interviewers she’d faced over the years. Gayle accepted a cup of coffee, and settled herself into a wingback chair. She smiled at Ginny.

“I’ve never met someone who’s been on the
New York Times
best-seller list,” Gayle said meekly. “It’s a bit intimidating.”

Ginny laughed. “I’m just a normal person, Gayle. No need to feel intimidated. I’ve just been very lucky with my work, that’s all.”

“I don’t really understand the point of your work,” Gayle had said, clicking on her tape recorder and pulling out a pad of paper with prepared questions on it. “I mean, I’m sorry, but I just don’t. I’ve read your books, but—”

“What is it you don’t understand?”

Gayle had smiled. “Well, why don’t you just tell me what you hope readers take away from your book?”

So Ginny had embarked on a spirited lecture about the importance of historical research into the Bible and religion. Her first book, the one that earned her the Ph.D., had been
Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine,
a study into how the early male-dominated Church had deliberately excluded women from its hierarchy. She explained to Gayle that the early Christians had twisted not only the Old Testament, but the teachings of Jesus himself to establish their own power base. She made a point to stress that she wasn’t attacking anyone’s faith—and that she herself believed in the teachings of Jesus. But historical evidence existed, she told Gayle, that showed how early Church leaders had, for political purposes, distorted and sometimes removed entirely large segments of the Bible.

“What if much of what you’ve ever been taught about Christianity is wrong?” Ginny had asked the reporter in her enthusiasm. Gayle had sat there dispassionately, taking notes. Ginny talked for more than hour, even if Gayle didn’t ask many questions.

When the article appeared, all hell broke loose.

For one thing, the headline simply read:
CHRISTIANITY
,
SAYS NEW PROFESSOR AT WILBOURNE COLLEGE
.

Dean Gregory had called Ginny into his office, and lectured her for over an hour about “dealing with the press”—which, considering Ginny had much more experience with the press than he did, was more than a little insulting. Not once did he even give her an opportunity to defend herself. Gregory had always been enthusiastic and friendly before, but from that moment on, Ginny and Dean Gregory kept as far apart from each other as possible.

Ginny’s name was soon anathema in the town of Lebanon. She’d hear the townspeople whispering whenever she walked into a store: “That’s the atheist, the heathen, the anti-Christian bigot.” A group called the Concerned American Women, New York Chapter, somehow got hold of the interview and started a campaign to get her fired. Televangelist Bobby Vandiver thundered from his television program on one of the religious cable channels for days about the “Christ-hating professor” at New York’s Wilbourne College.

At first, Ginny had considered it a badge of honor to be condemned by the man who’d blamed the “licentiousness” of New Orleans for causing Hurricane Katrina, and predicted fire and brimstone for Massachusetts for allowing gay marriage. And, much to her publisher’s delight, the controversy simply sent all of her books jumping back onto the best-seller lists.

But then she started getting the death threats in the mail—and so many obscene and threatening phone calls, she had to change her number and keep it unlisted. She filed police reports and talked to a special agent from the local FBI office in Albany, who assured her it was unlikely that anyone would actually kill her, which was only slightly reassuring. It was a rough couple of weeks, especially considering school was starting.

To the college’s credit, the vast majority of parents came down on her side. The board of trustees refused to yield or even listen to the angry fanatics—the school was private, after all, and not dependent on tax dollars—and even Dean Gregory issued a statement of support. Ginny suspected—given the way he’d started treating her—that his statement was more about refusing to be told how to run his college than any actual support for her. The storm lasted about three weeks, and then it died away. Bobby Vandiver and the Concerned American Women found a new cause célèbre—a teacher in Pennsylvania who’d invited a gay author to speak to her student group—but around Lebanon, Ginny Marshall was forever considered a “troublemaker.”

She smiled as Marjorie brought her a cup of coffee and a small saucer full of creamers. In return, Marjorie gave her a half smile and walked away.

What had gotten Ginny into such a snit tonight was Gregory’s treatment of her in front of that harpy Joyce Davenport. It was bad enough that he asked that publicity hound (for that’s all Ginny considered Davenport to be) to speak at the campus welcoming event, but to dress Ginny down in front of her was too much to take. For in fact, during the media storm that had accompanied Ginny’s start at Wilbourne, Joyce Davenport had written a column shredding her and her books, using Ginny as an example of “what’s wrong with higher education in this country.” It was the one instance where Ginny considered suing; the column was full of so many slanders and lies and half-truths, it was hard to believe any newspaper would publish it.

It had taken all of Ginny’s self-control not to choke the bitch to death as soon as she saw her on the stage earlier tonight.

But the worst part had already occurred. There had been a faculty reception at the dean’s house before the welcome address, a semiformal cocktail party that everyone was required to attend. Ginny had considered not attending the party, but that would give Gregory what he wanted: an opportunity to reprimand her. So she’d go—
and be perfectly charming to that bitch, and to Gregory and his mousy, smarmy little wife, too.

Maybe, Ginny reasoned as she got dressed for the night, Joyce Davenport was different in real life. No one could be that malignantly cruel and deliberately ignorant, could they? Maybe it was all just an act, a persona Davenport assumed to make money and get herself on television.

Ginny had arrived at the reception late, and slipped over to the bar, hoping to avoid both the dean and and Davenport. But no sooner had she asked for a glass of red wine when Gregory placed his hand on her shoulder.

“Joyce, I’d like you to meet Dr. Virginia Marshall,” he said in his most charming voice. “She’s one of our more famous faculty members.”

“Yes, I know.” Joyce’s face was seemingly friendly. “Isn’t she the atheist?” she asked sweetly.

“No,” Ginny replied. “I am not an atheist. I consider myself a Christian.”

“Well, that’s what makes America great, isn’t it, Dr. Marshall?” Joyce Davenport said, still smiling sweetly. “We can call ourselves anything we wish, even if it isn’t true.”

Ginny opened her mouth to reply, her face flushing angrily, but Dean Gregory cut her off before she had a chance to say anything. “Speaking of which, Ginny,” he said, “I need you to stop by my office tomorrow around one. I’m more than a little concerned by this theory of religion course you’re teaching this semester. I’ve had a chance to look over the curriculum, and I think we need to talk.”

“What?” She stared at him openmouthed. He couldn’t be serious.

“We’ll talk tomorrow.” He waved his hand in dismissal, and Joyce gave her a parting smile—not so sweet this time, Ginny thought.

“You need a refill?”

Ginny’s eyes flickered upward. Marjorie stood over her with a pot of coffee in her hand. Ginny nodded. “Thanks,” she said. Marjorie filled her cup to the brim, then returned to the counter where she was talking with some young man.