by Elise Juska
He studied her for another minute. “Okay,” he said. “Well, call me later.”
“I will,” she said, and as she walked away, wished she could unsay it.
The dorm room was empty. Alexis wasn’t home yet from Art History. That meant she’d gone to lunch after, which meant she wouldn’t be back for at least another half hour. More, if she lingered in the dining hall with her friends from class. Anna felt shaky: nerves, or hunger. Hunger, more likely. She’d eaten nothing all day except the apple and four health center saltines. She assessed Alexis’s junk food stash and what remained of Felicia’s gift basket but the thought of actually eating repulsed her so she chugged a bottle of water and stuffed her mouth with gum.
She wished Alexis were there, and she didn’t. Because she needed her to analyze what had just happened but it would be hard to fully explain without getting into things she didn’t want to talk about, i.e., the anxiety/eating/shooting—they had melded in her mind as one panicky, pulsing thing: all the subjects she’d planned on keeping to herself and that, once spoken, had predictably blown up in her face.
Her phone started buzzing inside her backpack. Anna couldn’t handle talking to James. But when she dug out the phone, she saw that it was Kim again.
Text Message Kim: Hey girl
Text Message Kim: Tried calling
Text Message Kim: Did u see this?
Anna watched the little dots that meant more was coming. Then a series of three quick photos appeared. Together, they made up a newspaper page.
Text Message Kim: Your poor mom!!
Anna stopped chewing, the hinge on her jaw suddenly freezing. She reached into her mouth and removed the wad of gum and dropped it in the trash. Then she clicked on the first photo: It was the front page of the Sentinel, the student paper at Central Maine. CLASSMATE REMEMBERS KILLER. A light snow of panic flurried in her brain. She absorbed the article in fragments, like flashes of an X-ray machine.
Professor Maggie Daley
so vivid and so disturbing
ten thousand times
most haunting was a paper of a personal nature written by the future killer
Another buzz.
Text Message Kim: Did she say anything to you???
…
…
…
Anna’s heart was an ocean in her ears. Her mind flew back to that morning after Gavin’s party, how she’d roamed the house and couldn’t find her mother anywhere. How, when finally she tried the barn, she’d discovered her kneeling on the floor, looking upset, a paper on her knees. I think it’s best if we not mention this to anyone. At the time, it hadn’t struck Anna as strange. That was her mother: private person, taker of precautions and abider by rules. She wanted to write back and tell Kim about it, but now she felt afraid. She’d told James and already she regretted it. She could just imagine Kim telling Tucker, and Tucker telling his new Central Maine friends. She crunched her stomach in and out as she watched the little dots that signaled Kim was typing, and braced herself for whatever was coming, but when the words blinked to the surface, her eyes filled.
Text Message Kim: How’s your man?
Text Message Kim: Miss u friend
Twelve
The affair continued: Suzanne was sure of it. Robert seemed distracted, even more so than before. For a while, that summer, during treatments, she had thought it might be over. He was around the house more, and attentive, accepting. Gone was the need to apologize for disappearing to her room, gone the sense that she was always disappointing him. Their relationship was sexless, but private and tender, absent of expectations. In a strange way, Suzanne felt happier than she’d been in a long time.
Since the start of the new semester, though, Robert was back to staying late on campus. A few times, she’d seen him glance at his ringing phone, then shove it back in his pocket with an inattention that was conspicuous. At home with her, he often seemed annoyed. He thought her reaction to Doreen Howard was unhealthy—extreme. Suzanne frequently reminded herself of the response she’d received from the online support group when, finally, she’d dared post something. You are stronger than you think.
Robert’s schedule was predictable, almost to the minute. Every Saturday at eleven he went for a run. He returned an hour later, fingers pressed to his wrist, Saturday Times clamped under his arm. While he was gone, Suzanne conducted a thorough search of his things. It was a habit she’d taken up a month ago, the weekend after the shooting, and already it had grown more efficient and refined. She began in the bedroom—Robert’s bedroom, the guest room—and, starting with his wallet, inspected everything that had exited or entered the house with him in the previous week.
It was a mostly pointless exercise, but it helped to feel she wasn’t doing nothing, and because her husband was not a detail person (was not, in truth, cut out for having an affair), bits of evidence surfaced here and there. A blue wool thread. A strand of medium-brown hair (long—it pained her). A receipt for food on a Thursday night, enough for two. Suzanne had deduced that must be when they saw each other, during Robert’s supposed office hours—he had never held evening office hours before—and though anytime she called, he answered, there was something guarded in his voice. M—that was the letter she’d twice spied come up on Robert’s cell phone before he pretended not to see it. She assumed M must be someone at the college. A few times, when he was in the shower, she’d attempted to read his text messages but didn’t know his password and had no good reason to ask; she’d guessed a few combinations, all wrong, then gave up.
Suzanne had told no one about her suspicions—she would have told the online group but it didn’t feel right, when people were dealing with matters of life and death—though as she searched, she often found herself talking to her dead mother in her head. Not about her marriage, but about her childhood. About the careful way their house had felt after Suzanne’s father left. Above all, her mother hated being made a fool of, hated being embarrassed. Lately, Suzanne had come to see the quiet vigilance of those years as a kind of sadness, and her mother, plagued by headaches, as clinically depressed. She was amazed at the effort it must have taken to keep up appearances, to keep things looking right.
The house was so quiet it seemed to hum with it. Suzanne performed a quick search of Robert’s wallet—loose bills, lunch receipts—then turned to the week’s worth of clothes piled on the cedar chest. She turned out pant pockets, inspecting their contents with the detached precision with which she did a load of wash. In the corduroys Robert had worn on Tuesday, she found a Sudafed tablet (he had complained of allergies) and a plastic coffee stirrer, like a tiny sword. A receipt (smoothie, energy bar) from the student union was stuffed in the pocket of his jeans. As she turned toward the door, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the vanity mirror—for a moment, she didn’t recognize herself. Her hair was short now, and striking. When it started growing in, she’d dyed it dark brown. Her mother had always said that, with her height, she could have been a model if only she’d had more confidence. Staring at her reflection, Suzanne felt a quick gathering of tears. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into the bed and draw the shades. But she glanced at the bedside clock—it was nearly eleven thirty. Robert would be back before she knew it. She drew a steadying breath, and continued downstairs.
The study was an addition built off the living room and appended to the rest of the house by a short, enclosed bridge. When they bought the house, this feature had struck Suzanne as charming, like something out of a fairy tale, but she had grown to hate it. The bridge only emphasized their separateness. The study was hexagonal, large windows on five sides: Depending on the weather, it was the warmest or coldest room in the house. This morning, it was cool and foggy and it reminded her of home, though the South Carolina fog was thicker. Maine fog, she knew, could burn or blow off at any time.
She sat down at her husband’s long, L-shaped desk. To the west, the study overlooked the backyard, the stone patio, and the grove of winter firs;
to the east, it faced the wide, leafy street. Suzanne would have positioned the desk to face the peaceful span of yard, but Robert had done the reverse. His email had been left open, as usual. She skimmed the inbox but found nothing. Even Robert was not that careless. On the desktop, she noted three empty mugs, a stack of exams for 101. Peeking from the bottom of the pile, she saw the school newspaper, the word KILLER in garish red letters. Suzanne stopped and slid the paper out. CLASSMATE REMEMBERS KILLER. Below the headline sat photos of two boys. One she recognized as Nathan Dugan, though it wasn’t the picture she’d seen endlessly on the news. He was younger here; he was even faintly smiling. In the more recent pictures, he looked bigger, and his skin had worsened. The other boy, the classmate, appeared entirely different. Studious and shy, nestled in a heavy sweater. He looked like he was cold. Have you ever wondered about that kid sitting next to you in English class? Suzanne unfolded the paper and dropped her eyes beneath the fold. Apparently, in a class the boys had had together, Nathan had written a paper that was violent and haunting. It had worried the other students, but the teacher hadn’t done anything about it. She’d even refused to be interviewed for the article. Asked if he thought his professor had been negligent, Luke admitted, “Probably, yes.”
As she read the last line, Suzanne felt a lash of anger—at this teacher, who should have known better, at the world of academia, which seemed to attract smart but self-involved people like these. She was enraged, but there wasn’t time to stop and indulge the feeling. She hadn’t yet touched Robert’s briefcase, and it was ten of twelve, according to the clock on the computer. She refolded the paper, arranging it exactly as she’d found it, tucked under the stack of exams with the word KILLER just visible underneath.
The briefcase sat on the floor beside the filing cabinet. Suzanne had chosen it herself, a gift when he got his first job teaching; the leather was hard and shiny then, but now it was fashionably worn. Its unbuckled pockets flapped like tongues. She reached into one of the soft side pockets and rifled through it: more exams. In another, a spare pair of reading glasses, a napkin, a fistful of pens. The zippered pocket in the center contained only a single paper, seamed with squares, as if it had been folded and reopened. Two Post-it notes were stuck to the front.
sorry
call me
Suzanne placed the paper in her lap. For a minute, she just stared. The handwriting was small, cramped cursive, feminine-looking. A quick flush crawled over her skin. The top of the c was torn where the pen had ripped through the page—in haste, or anger? The heat crept under her hair. For a moment, she allowed herself to believe there might be an innocent explanation, but the truth settled in her bones, sickeningly clear. To find these notes was to stumble upon a primary source: not just proof of the affair, but of the emotional life that went with it, the fact that her husband, whom she saw every day strapping on his briefcase and biking to campus, was in another relationship so legitimate that he apologized and was apologized to—it left her feeling freshly betrayed. Though she’d suspected all along, to know for sure was a different thing entirely; she realized how much she had been clinging to that sliver of doubt.
She stared helplessly at the Post-its, heart pounding. Her arms felt weak. Her eye fell on a sentence crawling out from beneath one of the yellow squares—ammo, two rifles and a AR-15. Suzanne paused, then suddenly picked up the paper, flipping to the title page. When she read the name on the front, she gasped.
Her first instinct was to avert her eyes, as one would from a bloody animal on the side of the road, but she forced herself to look. At the date: May 3, 2012. The course: Freshman Composition. The teacher: Professor Daley—she recognized this name. It was the teacher from the article, the one who had ignored the essay. She paged quickly through the entire thing, feeling nauseated—no respect for using semiautos to hunt with or say it’s not PC but in the right hands— At the end, she threw the pages on the desk, hands trembling. Why did Robert have this? What was wrong with him? Why would he have brought this into their home?
Because, she thought furiously, this was what Robert did. Let ugliness into their marriage, just invited it right inside, like flinging rats on the living room rug.
Dizzily, her eyes drifted through the comments in the margins—the handwriting was small, cramped—and her breath stilled.
The final detail shuddered into place: M.
For a moment, she stayed sitting there, in the thump and sweat of her discovery, staring out the window at the quiet street: the red blaze of the oak tree, pale slab of autumn sunlight breaking through the fog. She wished she could freeze time, go back and pretend she didn’t know, but she turned to the computer. Eleven fifty-seven. She pulled up the school website, typed in Daley, and waited for the photo to appear on-screen. Her first thought, uncharitably, was that Maggie Daley wasn’t pretty. She was plain. Thin lips, hair pulled back in a simple ponytail. Long, yes, and medium brown. She was wearing what looked like a flannel shirt, unprofessional, the sort of thing one threw on to do yard work. Mousy, Suzanne’s mother would have called her, in so doing removing the sting of envy, but as Suzanne skimmed her faculty bio—degrees and publications, an award for teaching—her very plainness felt threatening. She was the opposite of Suzanne, and the fact that this was the woman Robert was drawn to, this was what he was looking for, left her feeling bereft all over again. Maggie Daley may not be pretty, but she was smart and she was accomplished. And selfish, Suzanne reminded herself, insecurity hardening into indignation. The woman was selfish, and she was negligent. Not only was she carrying on an affair with a married man—a married man whose wife had cancer, she thought, in a rare blast of self-pity—she’d ignored a student who was clearly violent, and who later went on to murder four people, including sweet Doreen Howard at the beginning of her long, happy life.
A check of the clock: eleven fifty-eight. Suzanne stood up and walked to the copier by the window—rage made her actions precise, purposeful, not a wasted motion—and pressed the paper beneath the lid. She watched as the pages baked in the machine, peeling off one by one onto the tray, then refolded and returned the paper to Robert’s briefcase, gently pressing the Post-its back on top. Next she made a copy of the newspaper article, taking one of Robert’s highlighters to the last few sentences and smothering them in wet gold. Clearly, in hindsight, that intervention was necessary—not only that, it might have prevented a tragedy. She considered including a note—I felt you deserved to see this—but trusted she didn’t need to. She wrote only, With deepest sympathy, then retrieved a manila envelope from Robert’s filing cabinet and slid the pages inside, still warm. She addressed the envelope to Arlen Mackey, c/o Lowe’s Hardware Store, Elkton. Then she pasted on five stamps, more than it would need, and left the house in the opposite direction from where Robert would be coming. The morning was a little chilly, but today the chill felt motivating, as she walked the eight blocks to the post office and dropped the envelope in the mailbox with no return address.
Thirteen
Anna had read the article in the student newspaper and immediately called her mother, who assured her there was nothing to worry about. Exaggerated, she said. And poorly written. Once Anna had calmed down a little, she could see that this was true. She reminded herself that Nathan Dugan and his essay being creepy wasn’t so surprising. She’d read enough of her mother’s papers to know they were often personal—jarringly so. The more upsetting part was the implication that her mother could have done something to prevent what happened later. This, Anna knew, was impossible: that a student had written something that would have required Maggie’s attention and she’d missed it.
Kim admitted that the article had caused a minor stir on the Central Maine State campus, but also acknowledged it was only the student paper; no one cared all that much. Tucker, she said, hadn’t even read it. (Wait, Janie joked. Tucker reads?)
Anna had no intention of telling James about the article, not after yesterday’s conversation. She didn’t want to encourage h
is interest—it seemed to border on excitement—but when she heard a knock at the door Saturday morning, not yet ten o’clock, Anna knew that it was him.
“Go away,” Alexis groaned.
Anna’s first thought, foolishly, was that James had discovered she’d gone out the night before. When she’d texted him, around seven thirty, she’d said she felt too sick to do anything, but then Alexis had dragged her out to a party anyway. A fraternity party, the kind of party James hated. Perfect, Alexis said. You don’t have to worry about him showing up.
Now, from the top bunk, Alexis raised her voice to a sleepy shout. “This better be necessary!” she said, and James opened the door.
“Oh,” he said. He was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, ragged at the hem. Anna noted several blue-penned scribbles on his arms. “I didn’t think it was that early,” he said, but paused on the threshold for only an instant before walking to Anna’s bed. When he bent to kiss her, she wondered if he could taste stale beer on her breath. “Did you get my texts?” he said.
Since their conversation the day before, James had sent several messages, most of them links to stories about the shooting he’d found online. Anna hadn’t read them. “I think so,” she said.
“You think so?”
“I got some of them. But maybe not all of them.”
From the top bunk, Alexis offered, “You were sick. You were probably asleep.”
James ignored this, kneeling on the floor beside Anna’s pillow. “Have you seen this yet?” he said, and held out his phone. Anna propped herself up on her elbows and looked at the screen. CLASSMATE REMEMBERS KILLER. She didn’t know what was worse: that the article was now online and James had found it, or that Alexis was there listening.
“Yeah,” she said quickly. “I saw.”
