Drowning With Others

by Linda Keir

  When Katharine Henry materialized beside her outside the student union and hugged her warmly like the surrogate mother she’d been, Andi almost relaxed.

  “A little quieter than the last time I saw you,” Katharine said. “The line was so long to congratulate you on your brilliant daughter I didn’t have a chance.”

  “We’re very proud of her,” Andi said, for what felt like the thousandth time.

  “I wouldn’t have expected any less,” Katharine said kindly. “You know, I’ve never put too much stock in the various storied couples over the years, but I truly thought you and Ian were a perfect pair.”

  “We’re fortunate to still have such a solid relationship after meeting so young.”

  “That foundation makes it a lot easier at times like these.”

  Andi swallowed hard. Times like these?

  “This whole Dallas situation had to be hard, knowing him as you did,” Katharine said, without changing her airy tone.

  Andi had barely managed to keep it together all week. Fearful that the floodgates were about to open, she didn’t say anything.

  Katharine knew.

  “My dear,” Katharine went on, turning to look her in the eye. “Dallas Walker was responsible for his actions. All of them. Not you.”

  After Andi lost her mother, she’d spent years trying to hold on to every expression of joy, pain, and grief along with an image of her mom’s beautiful face. It was only when Katharine Henry became her dorm mom that she allowed anyone to fill a sliver of that void. And all these years later, Katharine’s face told her everything.

  She knew.

  She had known all along.

  “How did you . . . ?”

  Katharine sighed. “At first, I chose not to believe the rumors among the faculty, even though I saw the way he looked at you.”

  Andi thought about Miranda Darrow, who’d also known, even though she didn’t remember Andi’s name. I feel like it ended in a vowel sound.

  “That morning, after I stumbled upon you and Sylvie Montgomery getting sick in the bathroom, I went to the nurse, thinking there was something going around I needed to be aware of.”

  “Sylvie was bulimic,” Andi heard herself say.

  “Yes. But you weren’t,” Katharine said. “After I spoke to the nurse, I went back to the girls’ bathroom and checked the sanitary receptacle, where I prayed I’d find a tampon wrapper. I found your pregnancy test.”

  “It didn’t . . . progress,” Andi said blankly.

  “No matter what happened, I wasn’t sorry to see Dallas Walker disappear.”

  “What happened to him?” Andi asked, her voice sounding plaintive to her own ears.

  “Teacher-student relationships have always been a problem at boarding schools,” Katharine said, in an oddly instructional monotone. “Until recently, when a teacher engaged in sexual misconduct with a student, they were quietly asked to resign. In some places they were even sent away with good recommendations, which they used to get jobs at other prep schools.”

  “Tell me,” Andi insisted.

  Katharine wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I felt I had a duty to report what I saw in the trash. I was just trying to protect you.”

  “And then Dallas, confronted by the administration . . . ?”

  “Never in a million years could I have imagined he’d end up dead.” Tears streamed down the furrows in her suddenly aged face. “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “But you know who did.”

  “Glenlake has always been renowned for its writer-in-residence program,” Katharine recited as though she’d been telling herself those very words for years. “They just couldn’t let one man’s actions destroy what so many have built.”

  When Ian had told Andi he was going to get to the bottom of things, it was just as well she didn’t ask what, exactly, he planned to do to make that happen. As he approached the address he’d found on Roy’s employment records, he wondered the same thing himself.

  After leaving US 41 for a suburban four-lane, then following turns until he found himself on a winding country road, he finally found the street number marked on a mailbox that held on to its post with a single remaining nail. As he rolled slowly up the potholed dirt driveway, he saw a muddy white farmhouse slumped among a grove of neglected trees. Off to one side was a new-looking, corrugated-metal three-car garage, and in the yard behind that was a battered mobile home that still looked more habitable than the house.

  He killed the car engine and jerked back as a slobbering rottweiler put its paws on the door and woofed at him through the glass.

  All the clichés check out, thought Ian, shaking.

  He didn’t even think of getting out of the car until the front door opened and Roy appeared, calling the dog as he stepped out on the sloped porch.

  “Come on in, Gunner,” he shouted.

  Reluctantly, Gunner heeded his master’s command.

  Ian got out of the car, leaving the door open in case he needed to dive back in. The dog had retreated only partway and watched him alertly.

  “I’m Ian Copeland,” he said.

  Roy came down the steps and squinted at him. “I know who you are.”

  Ian wasn’t exactly sure how to ask his questions without having Roy slam the door in his face or, worse, set the dog on him. How have you held down a job at Glenlake for so many years, given your spotty attendance, shitty attitude, and all-around lack of a work ethic?

  “I knew your wife back then, and now I know your daughter, too,” Roy said.

  Having watched the once formidable Roy cream Dallas at pool, Ian knew he needed to play to win.

  “We both know things about each other,” he said.

  Roy raised an eyebrow, as if daring him to go on.

  “Glenlake’s been paying you to work when you feel like it since just after Dallas disappeared,” Ian continued. “And they’re going to keep paying you whether you show up for work or not.”

  “You don’t think they’ll fire me?” Roy asked, taking the bait.

  “I know they won’t.”

  “Because it wouldn’t look good to pink-slip a guy who couldn’t show up for work because he was in jail. Not after the charges were dropped and he was found innocent.”

  This was the moment. Ian delivered his educated guess as confidently and casually as he could.

  “But I know you’re not innocent.”

  Roy folded his arms and looked down at the dog.

  Ian stepped forward. “I want to know how Dallas died.”

  “It was an accident,” Roy said, eyes averted.

  “You seriously expect me to buy that?” Ian said, hoping his bravado wasn’t going to result in his own inadvertent death.

  Roy looked up and shrugged, as if it made no difference to him. Ian thought he looked tired.

  “We both know each other’s secrets,” he pressed. “Which is insurance neither of us will tell. I just want to know how.”

  Roy considered that. Apparently, it was enough.

  “Can you believe they had a private detective following that little girl? I guess he saw us all together, and someone told him I bitched out the poet pretty good one time. No secret I used to like to fight. So the detective wanted me to rough him up a little, scare the crap out of him so he’d stop messing with the fine young merchandise there at the school.”

  “Jesus. You were paid to beat him up?”

  “I figured I’d pop him once or twice, and he’d be so scared he’d take his pool cue and his poetry books and fuck off,” said Roy. “But he must have thought he was tough. Next thing I knew, he came flying at me like he knew MMA. I clocked him, and he fell down and hit the back of his head.”

  Roy was silent for a beat, then thumbed toward the trailer behind his house. “Happened right back there. Steps to my trailer are made out of cinder blocks. He caught the corner. He twitched for a few minutes, and that was all she wrote.”

  “An accident,” Ian said.

  “Didn’t mean
to kill him.”

  “Then you got rid of his body and his car in Lake Loomis?”

  “Waited until after midnight, then drove up there and sent him over. Long fucking walk home. Pretty good solution, actually.”

  “Until his body and the car were found.”

  “Which shouldn’t have been my problem at all.”

  “Why is that?” Ian asked.

  “I went to that headmaster guy.”

  “Darrow?”

  “Yeah. I told him I didn’t mean to do it, but his boy attacked me, and things went bad. I told him if he wanted to keep me quiet, he needed to make it worth my while.”

  “So they gave you a job on campus for life.”

  “And I kept up my end of the bargain. Sometimes I even showed up so no one would ask why I was on the payroll.”

  “Until you ended up in jail.”

  “I used my one phone call just right. I knew there was too much riding on me keeping quiet for them bigwigs over at the school to let me sit there for long,” he said. “And then your daughter shows up to get me sprung. I still don’t know how they worked that, but they’re the brainy ones, not me.”

  When he left, Ian wondered if he could make it far enough down the road so Roy wouldn’t see him when he pulled over and threw up.

  An eternity passed before Andi spotted Ian pulling into the guest parking lot.

  She ran over to him as he got out of the car.

  “Dallas definitely didn’t commit suicide.”

  “I know,” he said, as wild-eyed as she’d ever seen him. “I just met with Roy.”

  “That was dangerous,” she said. “Roy killed Dallas.”

  “Darrow hired him,” Ian said.

  “And they’ve been protecting him all these years.”

  “But he was only supposed to scare Dallas into leaving you alone,” said Ian grimly. “He said it was an accident, and I believe him about that at least.”

  “My god,” Andi said. “What are we going to—”

  “I called ahead, and Scanlon is expecting us.”

  Ian grabbed her hand and led her into the building, past reception, and up the scrolled wood staircase toward the headmaster’s office.

  Sharon Lysander stopped them at the top of the stairs.

  “I’m afraid Headmaster Scanlon’s not going to be able to give you any of the answers you’re looking for,” she said.

  “And why is that?” Ian demanded. If he was surprised, he wasn’t showing it.

  Lysander motioned for them to follow her down the hall and into the conference room across from her office. “Because he doesn’t know anything. Neither he nor I were here at the time.”

  “Go ahead, Gerald,” she said as she closed the door behind them.

  Gerald Matheson’s voice was amplified by a black receiver in the center of the conference table. “It was a complicated situation.”

  “Is it Glenlake policy to address statutory rape by hiring thugs to deliver beatings?” said Ian, approaching the phone.

  “That was Darrow’s decision,” said Matheson hastily, the volume too loud but no one taking the initiative to turn it down. “Just as Dallas made his own decision. Instead of receiving the message, he decided to . . . escalate.”

  Andi put her head in her hands, the awful pieces of the puzzle falling quickly into place. “Roy covered up the murder, and Glenlake covered for Roy.”

  “Obviously, nobody intended for Dallas to die,” interrupted Lysander, weirdly dispassionate. “The powers that be erred in pursuing an extrajudicial solution to the problem, but nobody wanted to expose the school or, certainly, the student and her family.”

  “The ‘problem’ was a human being,” said Andi. “His bad judgment and actions notwithstanding.”

  Ian’s hands were flat on the polished tabletop, his knuckles white. “And everything was just fine until Tate found the car.”

  “After Curtis Royal was taken into custody, difficult choices had to be made,” said Matheson.

  “You could have let a guilty man stand trial for the crime he committed,” said Ian pointedly.

  “And destroy Glenlake Academy in the process?”

  “So you used the power and prestige of the institution to pressure the Lake County Sheriff’s Office to accept a suicide verdict and release Roy before he talked out of school,” said Ian bitterly.

  “Fortunately, we had your remarkable daughter,” said Lysander. “The kids look like heroes and have not only reclaimed Glenlake’s reputation but put us on the map for our commitment to social justice.”

  “And that’s it?” Andi heard herself say. “We just go on as if nothing ever happened?”

  “Either that or one of our country’s preeminent educational institutions, one that has prepared countless bright minds for roles of leadership in society, is engulfed in a disgrace whose repercussions will echo for years.”

  “The illustrious Copeland legacy, forever tarnished by a tawdry scandal in which your and your daughter’s names will figure prominently,” Matheson said. “Do you want that, Ian? I know no one else at the school, past or present, would ever want such a thing.”

  “It would be a shame to see the school implode just as your twins begin their Glenlake careers,” Lysander said. “I hear they’re having a magnificent day.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Ian scanned the crowd of graduates, parents, and assorted family members, looking for his equally ill-at-ease wife. He’d momentarily lost Andi in the swirl of girls in white dresses and the boys in blazer-and-khaki combos. The storm had blown so hard the night before, rain battering the windows of their room at the Old Road Inn, that Ian had wondered whether the commencement ceremony could take place at all. Finally, by midmorning, the rain had stopped, and by noon, hot sun had replaced the dark-gray clouds. The grounds crew had rushed into action, squeegeeing sidewalks, putting plywood under chairs, and relocating as much seating as possible to the bricked landscaping fronting the peristyle. By the time things got underway in the afternoon, it was a steamy spring day, even if the branches of the newly leafed trees were still drooped and dripping.

  He left the twins amid a group of incoming siblings in the refreshment tent. Neither he nor Andi had figured out a way to stop their inevitable matriculation at Glenlake without telling all three kids more about the institution than they ever needed to know.

  Watching his footing, Ian weaved through the swirl of giddy graduates and proud parents. Andi was still nowhere in sight. Had he forgotten where they were standing, or had she been pulled into a new conversation?

  Picturing Cassidy’s flushed face as she stepped off the stage, diploma in hand, he remembered the exuberance of their own graduation as though it had taken place last week. He had been so grateful to be back together with Andi—even though he had sensed a distance at the time, he hadn’t wanted to examine it more closely. All he’d been able to think about was that, despite a cruel interruption, their future together was back on track.

  That morning at brunch, Cassidy had surprised them by announcing that she would not be attending Amherst as widely assumed. Instead, she wanted to go to NYU.

  “Nothing against the family alma mater, Dad,” she assured him. “I just need some time to figure out who I am, to be me.”

  Somehow, he’d managed not to wince at her nearly exact quote, obviously unintentional, of her mother at seventeen. And he couldn’t question her logic. Because she really was doing it for herself.

  Seeing Sharon Lysander and Katharine Henry standing apart, he confirmed that Andi wasn’t in the area before giving them a wide berth. Not that he expected she’d be anywhere near either of them.

  Despite the sunny faces, the future didn’t feel as fresh and full of possibility as it should have. The dark secrets at the heart of Glenlake Academy had touched only a few of these students, but he couldn’t shake the image of the school’s corruption as a spore that latched on to each and every person in attendance. Corruption propagated until som
eone put a stop to it, and those who’d told him the secret had judged him correctly. Rightly or wrongly, he would not be the person to take down the institution his family had done so much to build.

  He wondered if he’d ever be able to forgive himself for that.

  Finally, he saw Andi, standing with Cope and Biz. Cope had on a jaunty, open-weave summer fedora, and Biz was wearing enormous black sunglasses that obscured not only her eyes but half her face. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to share a word of what he knew with his parents. They loved Glenlake so much he imagined it would crush them. Andi, his lifelong love, had exposed her shoulders to the sun and was shading her eyes with one hand as she waved him over.

  “We’re going to go read Cassidy’s senior page,” Andi told him when he arrived.

  They strolled across campus together to Holmes Library and located Cassidy’s page on the newly renovated third floor, a long way from where his and Andi’s pages were hung. As to where Cassidy herself was at present, who knew?

  They all crowded around to read.

  Feeling suddenly wistful, Cassidy just wanted a moment alone. After separating herself from the crowd, she stood under a tree and looked back at campus, taking a mental picture and thinking that leafy, bucolic Glenlake was just about as far as you could get from NYU. Which was good: she was both nervous and excited about the concrete, the crowds, and the chaos.

  She had wrestled with the decision to be so far away from Tate, who had never wavered from Duke, his first choice. But even though it looked like her parents would survive their secrets and continue to be the It Couple in everyone’s eyes, Cassidy knew that, like penning her senior page, she also had to write her own story. And high school relationships almost never worked out, anyway.

  But there was no need to rush the ending. She and Tate had plans to meet up over the summer, and if he really did come to visit her in New York like he promised, they would see where things went from there.

  Mr. Kelly saw her and walked over. “Taking a last look?”

  “I’ll be back,” she said. “My little brother and sister are starting next fall.”

  “It’s going to look a lot smaller the next time you see it,” he said with a grin.