“You say no.” It was as simple as that, but so difficult for teenagers to do. Paige sighed. “I care about you, Julie. I don’t want you to be pregnant, but if you are, the sooner you know, the greater your options will be.”
Paige drove Julie in her car. Noah followed in his. It wasn’t long before the three of them were sitting in Paige’s office, with Paige fighting an odd sense of déjà vu. Such a short time ago, it seemed, she was sitting with Jill. Now here was Julie, from a privileged home and in a privileged school, so different from Jill, yet so similar.
“First off, we have to call your father,” Noah said. “Any decision you reach has to involve him.”
“No, it doesn’t. I’m eighteen.”
“But you’re a student at my school, for which your father pays the tuition. You were in our care when this happened. It’s my obligation to tell him.”
“He’s right,” Paige told Julie. “How you and your father decide to handle it from there is your choice, but as Head of Mount Court, Mr. Perrine has to call.”
“He’ll want to know who the father is,” Noah said.
So did Paige. Someone hadn’t used a condom. That person had been as shortsighted as Julie. Whoever it was ought to be with her when she faced her father.
Julie sat back on the sofa, crossed one knee over the other, and smoothed tight jeans over long, slender thighs.
“Julie?” Paige prompted.
Julie eyed her mutinously. “I thought you were on my side.”
“I am. That’s why I want to know. You didn’t do this alone. You shouldn’t have to be alone in handling it.”
Julie said nothing.
Noah leaned forward. Gently he said, “Look. You can stonewall if you want. You don’t have to tell us. We understand that you’re in an awkward position, but your father may not be as understanding. He’s going to want to know who the father is and where we were, that we couldn’t stop this from happening.”
Julie snorted. “You can’t stop things from happening. You don’t know half of what goes on in the dorms.”
“We know more than you think, but you’re right,” he said less patiently, and rose. “We can’t stop things like this from happening unless we run the place like a prison, which I refuse to do. It isn’t fair to those students who do have a sense of responsibility.”
Paige, too, rose.
“I’ll drive her back,” Noah said, looking tired. “Then I’ll try her father. We can’t do much more until we reach him.”
Paige nodded and walked them outside. It was all she could do not to slip her hand through Noah’s again. She wanted his warmth. She also wanted to ask if he would come by that night, but she couldn’t very well do it with Julie right there. So she simply smiled and waved when they drove off, then headed home.
She was mentally drained, feeling nearly as bad for Noah having to deal with the pregnancy of one of his students and the potential for scandal at Mount Court, as she felt for herself. Her own worries took precedence, though, when she walked into the house. From the kitchen came the sound of Sami’s squeals. She followed them and stood for a time, unobserved, at the door.
Sami was in her high chair. Nonny was feeding her. The kitchen was messy in a lived-in sort of way.
Paige tried to imagine coming home to a spotless, quiet, empty house. It was a chilling thought. But the other—the other was unsettling, too. Could she come home to a full house and not feel guilty that she hadn’t cooked dinner? Could she just pick up and leave at night when she had emergency calls? Could she simply close her door and shut everyone out when she wanted to be alone?
She gasped when something furry and alive rubbed against her leg.
“Paige,” Nonny exclaimed, “come in, come in, there’s a little someone here who’s anxious to see you.”
Paige bent to give kitty a tickle—kitty, who was growing bigger and more affectionate by the day—then went to Sami, who tipped her head back and gave her a saucy grin. “Hi, sweetie. How’s my little girl?” Her throat tightened around the words. Sami wasn’t hers. Other parents were in the process of staking their claim.
“Tell Mommy what you did today,” Nonny urged Sami. “Go on. Tell her.”
“What did you do?” Paige managed to ask.
“She took a step,” Nonny said proudly. “Just one, before she fell, but considering that three months ago she could barely sit by herself, it’s astounding.”
“Took a step?” Paige asked Sami. “Let me see.” She waited only long enough for Nonny to wipe the food from Sami’s face before lifting her out of the high chair. Holding her close, she carried her into the living room, then stood her up at the sofa and moved back.
She held out her arms. “Come here, sweetheart. Walk to Mommy.”
Sami plopped down on her seat.
Paige gently stood her up again and moved back. “I want to see. I miss such good things when I’m at work. Show me now, sweetie.”
Sami plopped down again, but this time, before Paige could go to her, she crawled to Paige, climbed up on her knees, and held out her arms.
Paige picked her up, acutely aware of the way tiny arms circled her neck. “Oh, sweetie,” she whispered, torn to bits and on the verge of tears. “I do love you. But motherhood is an awesome undertaking. Like marriage.”
The phone rang. Paige continued to hug Sami, but when it rang again, she reached for it.
“We have a problem,” Noah said without prelude. “A real problem.”
“Another one? I’m not sure I can take it.”
“Julie’s father is furious. He’s flying up in the morning with his lawyer. He says he’s suing the school.”
Paige thought quickly. “He hasn’t got a case. Julie has a history of not following the rules at Mount Court. She has a history of being disciplined. It’s not like you all turned the other way and ignored what was going on. Besides, she is eighteen.”
“You’re right. No case. But he can make enough noise to rake me and my school over the coals. I can take it. I’m not sure the school can. But there’s more, Paige. Julie’s suddenly saying that the father of her baby is Peter Grace.”
“Peter,” Paige cried. “That’s nonsense!”
“It’s what Julie says.”
“Well, she’s lying,” Paige vowed, but the words were no sooner out of her mouth than she thought of the letter Julie had written to Peter, the pictures he claimed he hadn’t taken of her, and the ones he had indeed taken, though not of Julie, that had upset Mara so.
“She claims,” Noah said, “that he forced her.”
“Of course. She’d have to say that. It’s the only hope she has of weaseling her way out of this. But it isn’t true,” Paige insisted, praying she was right.
Noah sighed at the other end of the line. His voice lowered. “I was hoping to drive over and sneak in your window, but I’m thinking I should pick you up at the front door and pay Peter Grace a visit. I have to know his side of the story, and fast. The potential for damage to Mount Court is substantial. So is the potential for damage to your practice.”
Paige realized that as he said it. She thought of losing the practice, on top of Angie and Noah and Sami. “What’s happening, Noah?” she asked in a wavering voice. “My world is breaking up.”
“Not yet, babe. Not yet. Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?”
“Yes—no.” She struggled to decide how best to handle Peter. “Let me go alone. Peter tends to get defensive.”
“If he’s innocent—”
“It doesn’t matter. That’s just the way he is. He may be angered so by the accusation that he turns around and walks out, which won’t accomplish anything at all. I’ll go alone, then I’ll call you when I get back.”
Noah reluctantly agreed. She hung up the phone but sat for a bit holding Sami, who was playing happily with the silver pendant that hung around her neck. “Do you like that?” she asked softly.
“Ma. Ma. Ma. Ma.”
“My mother sent it from L
.A. a few years ago. She said she knew the artist. Think she did?”
“Fooooo.”
“I like it, too. Chloe’s a great gift giver. A lousy mother, but a great gift giver. She should have been my rich aunt.”
“If she’d been that,” Nonny said from the door, “you wouldn’t have been my granddaughter, and I wouldn’t have led half as rewarding a life.”
“You’d have been footloose and fancy free.”
Nonny shook her head. “I need to do meaningful things, and the more the better. I’ve felt younger since I’ve been here than I have in years.”
“You’re an angel, doing all this for me. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Don’t you hear what I’m saying, Paige? I don’t want your thanks. I just want you to let me keep on doing what I’ve been doing. Send me back to that apartment and I’ll die in a week.”
“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 threat
en 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.
twenty-two
NOAH 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.
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