Suddenly (39 page)

“Hush! Don’t say that!”

“A week,” Nonny repeated defiantly. “No more. One week.”

Paige rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m not sending you back yet, so you can forget about dying. And right now I need you. I have to make a quick run to Peter’s.” She gave Sami a hug and felt a tug at her heartstrings when the little girl clung to her sweater. “I’ll be back,” she said softly. She pried the little fist free and kissed it. “I promise. I’ll be back.”

Peter didn’t answer her knock, but his car was in the driveway, so Paige didn’t leave. She let herself in, thinking that if he had been behind the break-in at her house, fair was fair. She went through the first floor calling his name, to no avail.

The basement door was open and the light on. She called again. When he didn’t answer, she went down the stairs. He was standing with his back to her, hands on his hips, shirt cuffs rolled back over a handsome maroon sweater. He was looking at a row of photographs that hung drying on the line.

She stepped closer. She wasn’t surprised to find that the pictures—one shot, actually, printed at different levels of enlargement—were of Mara, but she would never have guessed at the feeling they captured. Through a smile, a tilt of the head, a softness that Peter’s camera had nabbed, it was a Mara she had rarely seen.

“Wow,” Paige breathed, momentarily forgetting why she had come.

Peter nodded. “Finally.”

She couldn’t take her eyes from the prints. One was the echo of another, with no diminishing effect. “They’re stunning, Peter.”

“Thanks.”

“This is how I’d like to remember her.”

“Beautiful?”

“At peace.”

He studied the prints for another while, before finally letting out a sigh of relief. “I knew what I wanted. I just wasn’t sure I’d be able to get it. Negatives can be deceptive. I’ve probably looked at this one ten times without seeing the potential.”

“What made you see it this time?”

He shrugged. “My eyes. They’re clearer. And my mind. Working better. Rational, rather than desperate.”

“You’re at peace with her death?”

“I’ve accepted it. I’m remembering her life more now. The good things. I feel like my own life is finally aimed right.”

He didn’t sound to Paige like a man consumed by guilt, or like a man with anything to hide, which surely he would be if he had impregnated Julie Engel. But he certainly did look handsome in his maroon sweater. The color was perfect for him. Then again, maybe it was his acceptance of Mara’s death that became him so.

“Can we talk?” she asked quietly.

He looked around in surprise, as though realizing for the first time that she was there.

She led the way back upstairs—it would have been wrong to have said what she had to say in front of Mara—and waited until he had shut the door before saying, “Julie Engel is pregnant.”

His head jerked slightly. “Don’t know why that surprises me. She was looking for trouble. It was only a matter of time before she found it.”

“She’s saying you’re the father.”

His expression spoke of the bizarre. “Me. You’re kidding.”

“She told her father, who told Noah, who told me.”

“Jesus.” He dropped his head, then brought it right back up and speared Paige with a look. “Do you believe her?”

“I don’t want to. You told me once that there was nothing going on between you.”

“It’s the God’s truth. I never touched the girl. She might have wanted it differently. She might have
fantasized
it differently. But the minute she unbuttoned her shirt, I left. I told you that.”

“She says you forced her to have sex.”

“Forced? Good God, Paige, if you weren’t convinced before, you should be now. Julie Engel is one hot little number. No way would anyone have to force her. My guess is it’d be the other way around.”

“Do you have any pictures of her?”

“Not a one. I told you that, too. The pictures I took were in broad daylight in the park by the church. They were innocent shots, supposedly for her stepmother, but when she tried to make it into something more, I was outta there. I exposed what I’d taken. She can’t pin anything on me. She doesn’t have a shred of proof.”

“Unfortunately,” Paige cautioned, “the accusation can do the harm, whether there’s proof or not.”

“I’m innocent until proven guilty.”

“In court. On the street, not so. As Head of Mount Court, Noah will have to fight the charge that the school’s physician forced himself on a female student. As pediatricians, our group will have to fight the charge that one of us forced himself on a patient.
If
all this gets out. So we have to nip it in the bud, which is why I’m here. Aside from the picture-taking episode, have you been alone with Julie lately?”

“No.”

“Has she ever come here?”

“Never.”

“When did you see her last?”

“Right before Thanksgiving, at the hospital. She was doing volunteer work.”

“She may say she sneaks off to see you at night.”

“Well, she doesn’t. I’ve been staying late at the hospital. You can ask the nurses on Three-B.”

Paige wondered if he was involved with one of them. Then she thought of Kate Ann Murther and experienced a sudden dawning. It must have shown on her face, because Peter grew defensive.

“There’s nothing wrong with my seeing Kate Ann. People jump to judgment about her without a whit of knowledge, but she’s a sweet person. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we watch a movie. When she asks about my work, she asks intelligent questions. She’s grateful for anything and everything I do, because it’s so much more than she’s ever had. Here she is, a paraplegic, and she feels good about herself. Because of me. Because I care.”

Paige touched his arm. “I think that’s wonderful.”

“Then why do you look so astounded?”

“Because it makes sense now. You have been different lately. Calmer. More directed.”

“Tragedies help you prioritize things. So does a person like Kate Ann. I’m taking on Jamie Cox, because, damn it, he ought to help pay her medical bills, and if he doesn’t, I may just marry her and let my insurance pay.” He looked momentarily unsure. “I could do worse.”

“Much worse,” she agreed, feeling a sudden, deep warmth for the man.

He rubbed his palm over his chest, over the fine, hand-loomed maroon wool that Paige had seen remnants of not so many weeks before. “Mara was right. I do sabotage relationships. But I’m comfortable with Kate Ann. I can be me, and she likes it. So I’m thinking more clearly and seeing more clearly.” He gestured toward the basement. “Maybe that’s what those pictures were about.”

“Maybe,” Paige said, feeling an odd envy.

“I won’t have Julie Engel ruining everything. So. How do I prevent it?”

“We,” Paige corrected, because she had a new faith in Peter. “We show up at Noah’s office tomorrow when Julie’s father does. We bring our own lawyer and threaten to countersue for damages if any are caused. That will give the Engels cause to keep their mouths shut while they weigh their options. And while they’re doing that, we try to learn what we can at Mount Court. Julie has friends—”

“
Loyal
friends.”

“But they like you, too.” She smiled crookedly, having spotted a rose in a bed of thorns. “You’re a charmer, Peter. You wink at them, and their little hearts flutter. Just the thing that’s gotten you in trouble could get you out. If those friends understand how much damage an unjust accusation will cause you, they may come forward. Julie’s been fooling around with someone. Her friends probably won’t have witnessed it firsthand, but they’ll know something. You’ll see.”

It sounded right, and easy, and fair. Paige just hoped it would prove so. With everything else closing in around her, she needed something to work.

N
OAH STOOD AT HIS DESK AT NOON THE NEXT
day, not quite knowing how his life had suddenly become so complex and wondering if he could hold it together. He had been hired as interim Head at Mount Court first and foremost for his managerial skills. He hoped they were good enough.

One thing was for sure. He wasn’t quitting. He had done that twelve years ago, when Liv had humiliated him. He had walked away and made a new life, and in the process he had lost Sara. He had no intention of losing her this time.

Nor—despite what her reluctant little mind supposed—did he intend to lose Paige.

And then there was Mount Court. What he had first thought to be a horror of a place had turned out to be something with promise. The best of the faculty were emerging as leaders, shaming the laziest to do more. Same with the kids. First-term grades were higher than they had been in years, and while there were grumbles aplenty about the increased course demands, there were smiles as well. For the first time the students knew what was expected of them. They knew what the rules were, knew what would happen if they broke those rules. The fact that they were thriving was a validation of Noah’s approach.

Now along comes Julie Engel, insisting that Peter Grace had raped her. And along comes Julie’s father with his lawyer, making grandiose threats. Countering them were Peter Grace and his lawyer, who had, for the time being, at least, gagged the Engels by threatening a countersuit if a smear took place before ample evidence was found. That gave Noah a little time.

“They’re here,” his secretary said from the door.

He waved a hand. The secretary relayed the gesture and stood aside while four girls entered the room. They were Julie’s friends—Alicia, Deirdre, Tia, and Annie. They had called earlier to ask to see him, to his relief. If he had been the one to call them, he would have been accused of tampering with potentially hostile witnesses. Now he was simply the Head of Mount Court being accessible to his students.

He motioned them to sit and perched on the corner of the radiator. “What can I do for you?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.

Alicia, the spokeswoman apparent, said, “We heard what happened this morning.”

“How?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.

“Julie told us. She said she wasn’t supposed to, and she made us promise not to do anything, but she’s really upset. She said you don’t believe her. But we
saw,
Mr. Perrine.”

He sat very still. “You saw what?”

“We saw her with Dr. Grace.”

“Doing what?”

“They were hugging. It was at the hospital, right in front of everyone.”

Noah might have moaned in disgust, if he hadn’t had faith in Paige, who had faith in Peter. “What kind of hug was it?”

Alicia looked confused, clearly caught off guard.

“What do you mean?” Deirdre asked.

“Was it a friendly hug?”

“What other kinds are there?”

“There are passionate ones. Or desperate ones. There are relieved ones. And victorious ones.”

“They were
wrapped in each other’s arms
.”

“Uh-huh,” Noah acknowledged. “That’s how I’d define a hug. What I want to know is what kind you saw.”

“It was a
hug
,” Alicia insisted, as though that made it all clear.

“Then perhaps there wasn’t anything wrong with it,” Noah pointed out. “I hugged you—remember, when we all made it across Knife Edge—and no one thought anything amiss. Did you think I was coming on to you?”

Alicia colored. Quickly she said, “No.”

“But you’re sure that the way Dr. Grace and Julie were hugging suggested they were having an affair. How do you know? What did you see that suggested passion? Did they kiss?”

“Maybe later.”

“Did you see them do it?”

“No.”

“Did they hold hands when they were drawing apart?”

Alicia sought the others’ help, but they remained quiet. “No,” she conceded, then added, “They couldn’t do that. Everyone was watching.”

“They were watching the hug, too. I take it that it was less suggestive than hand holding? Pretty innocent, huh?” When Alicia didn’t respond, he said, “Okay. Let’s talk about words. Did they say anything to each other at the time of this hug? Make any promises? Set a date for later?”

Tia said, “We didn’t hear. We were on our way downstairs.”

“Just because we didn’t hear anything,” Deirdre put in, “doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

“Yet you choose to believe that it did,” Noah said.

“Because Julie says.”

Noah drew in a deep breath and sat straighter. “Well, I say that Julie is in a whole lot of trouble and wants someone to share the heat. So she’s fingering Dr. Grace, who is old enough to be her father and, by the way, has no trouble finding women closer to his own age. Why would he be interested in an eighteen-year-old?”

“Men always like younger women.”

“Always?”

“A
lot
of the time.”

“Are you speaking from personal experience, Deirdre? Has Dr. Grace ever come on to you?”

“No.”

“Or you?” he asked Alicia, who quickly shook her head. “Or you?” he asked the other two. There wasn’t a single nod.

“Yet you jump at the chance to say that he came on to Julie.”

“She said he did.”

“And you’re her friends, so you’re supporting her. That’s a fine thing to do, assuming the case is a valid one. If not, your support is ill spent. If she’s lying, you won’t look so great. You’ll be walking around here with egg on your faces, because if she’s lying, the other kids will know. They’ll know that she was fooling around with another student, or maybe with someone at home during fall break, who just happened to get her pregnant, and chances are they’ll know who that boy is. Do you think he’ll sit back and let Dr. Grace take the fall for him?”

“He’ll get in worse trouble if he comes forward,” Annie said, and immediately knew she had blundered. She shot a frightened look at the others, who tried their best to ignore her.

Noah didn’t home in on her. If he couldn’t get a name from the others, he might seek her out separately, but she was the most vulnerable of the bunch. He wouldn’t put her on the spot. Not yet.

“The fact is,” he said to the group as a whole, “the deed is done. Julie is pregnant. You girls know; the rest of the school will know before long, and kids will be whispering.” He knew how that worked. Boy, did he ever. “My guess is that it’ll be the major topic of discussion, second only to where you all will be skiing over Christmas. And there will be speculation. Dr. Grace may seem like a perfect patsy, but he’ll be denying her claim. If it comes to a trial, his lawyer will put you girls on the witness stand and ask you the same kinds of questions I asked you before, and you’re going to make fools of yourselves. Because one hug, between people who know one another, particularly in this day and age of the sensitive man, does not make an affair. There might have been any number of reasons for that hug, all totally innocent. If any of you saw something else, something more definitive between Julie and Dr. Grace, either at that time or at another time, I’d like to hear about it. I’d also like to hear about relationships she may have with guys here. You can be sure I’ll be asking the faculty. They see more than you think.”

“Why can’t Julie just get an abortion and be done with it?” Tia asked. “Why does
anyone
have to be named?”

“In theory, no one does, though that means Julie has to take the flak alone. In this case, someone has already been named, and that someone stands to lose his practice and his reputation. I want to get at the truth before that happens.” He looked from one face to the other. “Any suggestions about who the guilty party really is? Any names Julie might be scribbling in her notebooks? Anyone she might be stealing off to be with in the shack by the pond—you didn’t think I knew about that?” he asked in response to the widened eyes. “I was young once. That’d be the place I’d pick if I wanted shelter from the night with my girl.” He made a round of the faces again. “No thoughts on who’s using the shack now?”

If they had any, they weren’t sharing them.

“Let me say one more thing, then,” he offered gently. As he saw it, his job included the teaching of values. “You kids have an unwritten code that says you don’t rat on each other, and that’s commendable, in some circumstances. In others, it isn’t at all.

“This is one of those others. I could understand you maintaining a silence if no names had been mentioned. What happened between Julie and this other person was private. If they don’t speak up, that’s their decision. But we’ll probably find out who it was anyway, and the longer it goes on, the harder it will be on that person.” He let the thought sink in before adding, “If you all keep your silence and sit by while Dr. Grace’s name is smeared, you’ll be as guilty as Julie.”

He saw one hard swallow, several fidgety fingers, and a pair of eyes that were trying not to blink. Quietly and with disappointment, he said, “If any of you want to talk again, alone or together, I’ll be around and glad to listen.”

He gave the radiator a pat, rose, and went to the desk. By the time he had focused on the papers there, the girls had left. The timing couldn’t have been better. Two minutes later he got a call from the president of the Board of Trustees.

Roger Russell had graduated from Mount Court thirty years before, was a successful businessman in New York, and traveled to Tucker for monthly meetings. He and Noah talked on the phone in between. Noah liked him. He was thoughtful and reasonable, realistic about Mount Court’s problems, and anxious to solve them. He was a modifying force for the rest of the board, which was older, more conservative and demanding. If any of those others had been president, Noah might not have taken the job. It was Roger’s personal plea that had clinched it.

Now Roger was pleading again. “Tell me that what Clint Engel just told me isn’t true.”

Noah had known Clint would call him. When parents were paying as much as Mount Court parents were, if they didn’t get satisfaction from the Head of the school, they went higher. “I’m not sure what he told you, but the part about his daughter being pregnant is true.”

“By the school’s doctor?”

“That part isn’t true.”

“Are you sure?”

“Reasonably. I don’t know the man well, but I do know one of his partners, and she
is
vouching for him. Apparently Julie made a play for Peter. She asked him to take pictures of her, and when he refused, she was angry. Now she’s pregnant, and she needs someone to blame, hence her revenge. The real father could be one of half a dozen seniors here. She’s an active dater.”

“Clint is livid. Whether or not charges are brought against the doctor, he blames the school for lax supervision.”

“Do you?” Noah asked, wanting to know where he stood.

“Of course not. The school can’t take these kids to the toilet, for God’s sake, but sex happens there. Sex happens all over the place at boarding schools, except maybe at the few single-sex schools that remain, and even then you never know. So how can we get at the truth?”

“I’ll be meeting with the faculty members who are closest to Julie later,” Noah said. “They may know who the boy is. Or they may be able to find out. It won’t be so bad if it’s a student—easy to blame on the irresponsibility of youth, rather than a man the school pays to guard the well-being of the students.”

Roger sighed. “We have a serious problem in either case. I tried to calm Clint down, but he’s out for blood. I’ve set up a meeting with him here in the city tomorrow. Our lawyer will come. Between the two of us, we may be able to convince Clint that he’s hurting his daughter more than anyone by making a scene.”

“He’s a volatile man. It’s no wonder she had to cry rape. He has her up against a wall.”

“He’s working on putting us there, too, Noah, and damn it, I don’t like that. Mount Court is finally getting its act together. To be set back by one irresponsible girl doesn’t seem right.”

Noah tried to think positively. “It may come to nothing. She may break down and confess to being involved with someone else, in which case her father will know she was lying. Or someone else may come forward, with the same result. The school is in trouble only if Clint chooses to take us to court.”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t,” Roger replied. “For more reasons than one. You’ve done a remarkable job in three months. I was hoping I could convince you to stay.”

In September, Noah wouldn’t have considered it. He would have laughed in Roger’s face. But things had changed. He might want to stay now. For more reasons than one. “I promised you one year. You’ll have that, at least.”

“But you’ve started good programs. I want them continued and more added. If this thing goes to court, that may be impossible. The board will want to distance itself from you and everything you’ve done, which means regressing to the place we were at before you came. You’ll be blamed right along with the doctor. We won’t have much of a choice, Noah, if Mount Court is to come out with the least amount of damage.”

Noah understood that. He was a realist. Unfortunately, if he left under the cloud of a lawsuit, finding another headship would be hard. He could go back to the foundation, but that wasn’t what he wanted.

“I’ll let you know what happens tomorrow,” Roger concluded. “In the meanwhile, call me if you learn anything. We have to settle this soon, one way or another.”

Noah knew precisely what Roger hadn’t said. Totally aside from minimizing the damage to Mount Court that would arise from a scandal, there was the matter of hiring a new Head. If Noah wasn’t staying, other candidates would have to be interviewed. The time for that was fast approaching.

Noah had no sooner signed off with Roger than he received a call from Walker Gray, a member of the board. He, too, had received a call from Clint Engel, who belonged to his golf club. Walker was far less sympathetic than Roger had been.

“How could this have happened? I thought you were brought in to straighten things out, so now one of our students has been molested by the school doctor. How did it
happen
?”