Dominance (37 page)

I stopped in the middle of a twisted, snaking sentence. “Sort of.”

There were a few seconds of silence. I took my pen to the end of the line, wrote her name in the margin, then started back again.
Calm calm calm calm be calm Laura—

She said, “Daddy says you have a twin.”

“Identical.”

“What's it like? I imagine it would be . . . exciting.”

Again I stopped writing, looked at her. “How do you mean?”

“To always know that someone who's just like you is out there somewhere. To have somebody who's so close, a copy, living a different life. What's he like?”

“Different,” I said. “Moody.”

“I sense a sibling rivalry.”

“You don't know Henry.”

“Henry Malcolm.” She said the name as if it had a taste, a texture. “Are you a philosopher too, Jonathan?” she asked, her eyes flicking toward my notebook, and at the sound of my own name something happened inside me, an electric tingle. I glanced back down at the ink-slick page, at the quickening water.

“A writer.”

“You've published?”

I shrugged. “I will. Soon.”

She smiled, freckles stretching tight. “Maybe I'll read your books one day. Maybe my father will publish them.”

But as she said this she was walking away, and for the longest time I stood, my heart pounding, the river loud and fast below me, until I realized I was standing in the rain.

*   *   *

It stormed that night, and Laura and her father stayed with us. My stepmother fixed up the guest bedroom, flurried around the house clutching towels and sheets. As much as I would like to speak of a romance, it didn't come. Not then. We were too young, too wrapped up in ourselves. Our time would come five years later.

I was doing a signing in a bookstore in Manhattan. My first book had just been published by Ashbrook, her father's imprint, and there were a few people milling about. They were more curious than anything—
Leibniz and Kant: A Philosophy of Rivalry
would, alas, not change the world.

Signing books, speaking with my eyes down (“Who should I make it out to? Sarabeth? Ah, that's a beautiful name—is she your daughter?”), I heard a familiar voice and looked up. She stood at my table, smiling. She had changed ever so slightly, like a vase turned so that it strikes a different light. There was a hardness in her blue eyes, a weariness.

“Laura,” I said, looking up, pen poised above paper, fingers tensing gray-knuckled against one of Henry's fountain pens.

“Daddy says the book is selling well,” she said, a lie that I appreciated nonetheless. “He says you're a natural, like your father.”

I waved a hand. “And what about your own father? He's a great editor, Laura. Tell him I said so.”

“I will.”

A comfortable few seconds passed. There was no one behind her.

“So what brings you here?” I asked. “A run on Umberto Eco?”

The smile touched her eyes. “You remembered.”

“I wrote it down.”

I went back to the page, scratched
To Laura, I will always remember our storm,
staved off the urge to go on, to tell her everything I was thinking, and slid the book toward her across the table.

“Sarah Lawrence,” I said. “You must have graduated by now.”

“Life's weird” was all she said, tucking my book beneath her arm and glancing beyond me, at the wide front window, the people streaming up Eighth Avenue.

I said, “Would you like to get some coffee?”

Simon & Schuster Paperbacks

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Will Lavender

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Paperbacks Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition September 2012

SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at
www.simonspeakers.com
.

Designed by Jill Putorti

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Lavender, Will, date.

Dominance / Will Lavender.—1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed.

p. cm.

1. College teachers—Fiction. 2. Murderers—Fiction. 3. College

students—Fiction. 4. Serial murder investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3612.A94424D65 2011

813'.6—dc22

2010046118

ISBN 978-1-4516-1729-0

ISBN 978-1-4516-1730-6 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4516-1731-3 (eBook)