Till the End of Tom

by Gillian Roberts

Seventeen

  * * *

  * * *

  I wasn’t sure how Mackenzie would feel about my Sunday excursion. I had been supposed to make decisions and come home with a little checklist completed. Instead, I spread the joyous word that I hadn’t gotten what everybody else thought I wanted. “You’re an odd bride-to-be,” he said. “For which I’m grateful.”

  “You aren’t upset that we’re still in wedding venue limbo?” I didn’t wait for an answer because I knew he wasn’t. I decided on a quick meal of omelets—brides-to-be are busy people. I chopped onions and mushrooms and sautéed them while we spoke. “Beth, on the other hand, is practically in mourning.”

  “You had a phone call,” he said. “A woman who refused to leave her name. She sounded upset.”

  “A woman, not a girl.” My first thought was of strange miracles—that the mysterious daughter had contacted me. My second thought, closer to rational possibility, was that a student had called. “Nothing said about grades? Absence? Papers due? Did she say ‘so she goes’ or ‘whatever’?” I scooped the mix out of the pan and put it aside and poured the egg mixture in. I loved that first buttery sizzle.

  “Woman,” he said. “Upset. Sounded tentative, unsure of herself. Talked in half sentences and let things dangle, like ‘I only wanted to . . . I guess it won’t . . .’ and she never hit the subject part of the sentence. I asked about your calling her back, but she said she wouldn’t, she couldn’t, and anyway, she would be gone the rest of the day. Ask me, she wasn’t being evasive so much as falling apart.”

  I put the filling into the first omelet. It was nice that C.K. had paid attention, answered the phone, attempted to take a message, and even tried to analyze the lack of any hard data. I couldn’t fault him for that. But I really didn’t see the point of messages like that one. Why tell me about it, except to drive me a little crazier, make me a little more apprehensive?

  “Sasha said we should cherchez la femme,” I said.

  “A breakthrough at last.”

  “Maybe that was la femme herself. Maybe Nina finally returned our calls.” I slid that omelet onto a plate and worked on the second one.

  “I’d think that cherchez la femme theory would raise your feminist hackles. What does it mean? That every crime since Eve has a female at its core? If she didn’t actually do it, then she made him do it? And isn’t it usually because she’s been spurned?” He grinned. “Do people get spurned anymore? Or just dumped?”

  “The late and oddly unlamented Tomas Severin was an expert spurner. Sasha would have experienced spurning, had he lived long enough to do so. He was not a model of constancy.”

  The omelets were done, and quite beautiful to behold, and I went from mildly crazed to vastly contented. This was how it was supposed to be. Omelets, salad, a glass of wine, music in the background, and the guy.

  He must have felt the same way, and he even suggested a lunch date—a pack your own food sort of lunch date—for the next day. His schedule was open, and I had no clubs or meetings at noon. Life was good.

  I relaxed to the point where I forgot to obsess about the Arbussons and their amazing daughter, and about the Severins and their mysteriously missing daughter, and didn’t return to them until we were washing up.

  “It’s odd, isn’t it?” I said. “The unmentioned daughter?”

  Mackenzie doesn’t find as many things astounding as I do. Perhaps he’s seen too much, knows too much about human nature. He washed the omelet pan and passed it to me for drying. “Lots of families have squabbles and estrangements,” he said.

  “I get the feeling it was a particularly nasty variety of that. Meredith—”

  “My, but you develop relationships with great speed.”

  “—was on a rant about how the authorities should have been called in long ago because of the way Ingrid treated this daughter. That’s extremely harsh, and Meredith’s a most staid-looking woman. She also said that had Tomas Senior lived, none of this—but she didn’t say what ‘this’ meant—would have happened. Unfortunately, her husband shushed her up, so there was no way to find out why she felt that way, or what was done, or whether anybody knew what had become of this daughter.”

  “Is it important?”

  “Couldn’t it be?”

  He was silent for too long. A polite way of letting me know he didn’t feel a particular urgency about this information.

  “Well,” I admitted, “most people think she’s dead.”

  He nodded. “I keep thinking about Cornelius following Tom Severin.”

  “I don’t think it’s such a big deal. They were together at the lawyer’s, so it doesn’t strike me as particularly weird if they were continuing on, each to his own destination, in the same direction. It’s not that big a city.”

  “Simply seems he had the most motive and, if she’s telling the truth, opportunity. Edwards more or less agrees.”

  “You spoke to the cop?”

  “The cop?”

  “I didn’t mean to insult the individuality of every member of your former profession. Saved time, is all.”

  “I told you. At the funeral. We’re friends, after all.”

  “You didn’t tell him what Penelope said.”

  “Not yet.” Of course he hadn’t. We were private, not public, investigators.

  “You didn’t tell him what Cornelius said, either, right? About Nina’s brother?”

  He shook his head again. “Didn’t want to get the fellow in trouble if there’s no need. In the big scheme of things, his crime wasn’t that much—a little marijuana farm, for which he served his time. Let’s wait and see.”

  “Wait—if Edwards said something about Cornelius, then he can’t think Zachary killed Severin.” My private black cloud dissipated. “Tell me I’m right.”

  “Apparently you are. I only hope Owen’s right, too.”

  THE NEXT DAY went smoothly enough for a Monday, when teachers and students all have trouble being back in harness. Expectations are so high on Fridays, and we never are willing to remember how insufficient any weekend is to hold all our dreams for it.

  But my students’ Monday morning grumpiness seemed minimal, and I had not a trace of Monday morning blues. I’d deflected The Manse, learned a little, and with one week between us and Tomas Severin’s death, and despite the confusion surrounding it, things were approaching proportion again. Even Rachel Leary looked as if she’d gotten some rest over the weekend. “I have more ideas for the eating disorders campaign,” she said. “We’ll talk later.”

  I liked her optimism, which was catching, and the idea of calling it and thinking of it as a campaign. Who knew? We might actually make a difference.

  And now, with the enormous relief of having Zachary off the list of suspects, I thought we should stop pretending that we had more investigating to do for Penelope and call it quits. The income was nice, but it was time to move on. Besides, the police were now directing their attention to Cornelius, so she had achieved her desired goal and, I suppose, so had we. We could eat our sandwiches and talk about it.

  My lunch date arrived promptly at noon. I was waiting downstairs for him, so as to avoid the student messenger and the peculiar giddiness engendered by any suggestion of a private life on my part. Mackenzie said that he had a lead on Nina’s brother’s whereabouts, and if I wasn’t too busy after school, we could visit him then and have our second date of the day. And the good news was that we could bill for the after-school date.

  His car was in the loading zone outside—the very spot where Cornelius, our prime suspect, had been afraid to break the law and park because all he’d had to unload were his grievances. I didn’t want to think about that.

  “I had an idea,” Mackenzie said as we pulled away from the curb.

  “Can’t be too exciting of a one. I have just under an hour.”

  He grinned. “We have what—three days before your mother arrives for the shower?”

  “I was in such a good mood, do we have to talk about
that?”

  “Yes,” he said with too much solemnity.

  “Okay, yes, three days. She’s arriving and so is your mother. Don’t forget.”

  “As if I could . . . but I thought of something that might let them ease up on us, at least not feel that you don’t want to get married.”

  “You were eavesdropping!”

  He glanced over at me and looked vastly amused. “Shocked? Listen, here’s a hot tip: When somebody is totally aware that there’s no privacy—so that she comments on it—”

  “Somebody like my sister?”

  “—then she’s right, and there’s no privacy. Got that? Not a great place to share secrets you don’t want the other person in the same space to hear.”

  “She was whispering. Her back was to you.”

  “I am a trained eavesdropper. Besides, I knew everything you said.”

  I couldn’t remember what I’d said, and I told him so.

  “Basically, you made it clear that you’re crazy about me and frankly, even though you were swapping confidences with your sister, isn’t it a little late for you to be embarrassed about my knowin’ that? I had, in fact, suspected it already.”

  “Okay. Then what about our mothers, and when do I get to eat this sandwich? I am starving.”

  “You can eat any time.”

  “Lunch in the car is our intimate tête-à-tête?”

  “No, City Hall is. We get our work taken care of there, then we can go up to the viewing platform and survey our city—and finish the sandwiches. Would that be sufficiently intimate?”

  “Are we searching records? Going to court?”

  “We are preparing our defense.”

  I opened one of the sandwiches, turkey with mustard and Swiss cheese, and passed him a half while he circled, looking for a parking lot. Walking would probably have been faster. I knew that there was no way to defuse my mother once the rocket fuel was in place and the starter button pushed, but I thought it was delightfully innocent of Mackenzie to think he could do so, and learning the error of his ways was something he’d have to do on his own. “May I ask how?”

  He found a lot, took the ticket, and pulled in. Only when the car was in a slot did he turn to me with the look Columbus must have had when first he spotted land. “We’re getting our marriage license.”

  “Now? Today?”

  He nodded.

  “But—”

  “Takes a few minutes, and no waiting.”

  “How can you know if—”

  “I’ve got friends in high places. Also in low and bureaucratic offices. There’s no blood test anymore, nothing except a few questions and proof you’re who you say, and it’s good for two months and it’ll be proof of our sincerity. Next time any of them start in on you, tell them everything’s taken care of already—and wave it around your head.”

  Perfect. A marriage license to be used like garlic for vampires.

  * * *

  Eighteen

  * * *

  * * *

  THE afternoon also went relatively smoothly, though my seniors seemed agitated, as if a low-grade electrical current pulsed through the entire class. They did their work, participated in the discussion, and I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong enough to ask them about it coherently. So I asked incoherently by saying, inanely, “Everything all right?” They responded with that powerful blankness only a teenager who is hiding something can master. I deserved it. We were having our final discussion about the book, talking about topics they’d suggested. We’d therefore once again gotten absorbed by nature versus nurture, and this time we included place, and how where we live and in what times might affect our lives. We touched on how much we all fulfill our parents’ expectations and play our assigned roles in the family, and whether we have to continue doing so. We talked about the concept of fate, all in the context of the novel.

  Somewhere during the discussion, I realized that Zachary, normally a voluble boy and an eager participant, had said nothing all period, and with a rising sense of dread, I understood that he was the still center of the hurricane that was crackling around the room.

  They knew something I did not know.

  I found out soon enough. He stayed behind when the day ended and stood in front of my desk, almost at attention.

  “Yes?” I asked. “What is it? Sit down, please.”

  He considered that, then nodded and sat. “I tried to come tell you at lunch,” he said.

  “I was out of the building.”

  He nodded again, looking as if an enormous struggle was being waged inside him, something that needed airing; something that needed to be kept private.

  “What did you try to tell me?” I prompted softly.

  “I don’t want to bother you.”

  “You’re not. I’m sorry I missed you at lunchtime, but—what is it?”

  His cast was on the desk, and he seemed to be engrossed in the messages written on it.

  “Zach?”

  He raised his head and looked at me with no expression, then he looked away, staring at the chalkboard while he spoke. “I’m ah . . . not going to be here tomorrow.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up. Is something wrong? Are you ill?”

  He shook his head.

  “Getting the cast off?”

  He looked at his arm as if it were a completely new thing to him. “I . . . um . . . phoned the cops.”

  “Did you remember something?”

  “Kind of. Yes.”

  I nodded, as if I actually understood what was going on. “What did you . . . did you come in here to tell me what you remembered? Is that it?”

  He nodded.

  “Zach, you’re a verbal kid. Could you use that skill now? What did you remember? What are you trying to tell me? I’m here. I’m listening. It’s okay, whatever it is.”

  He looked almost angry with me before he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and, watching me intently, spoke. “I remembered that I killed my father.”

  “Your fath—Tom Sev—you—?” That was most definitely not okay. That was not even true. “Killed him?”

  He nodded.

  “What kind of crazy—you just now remembered?”

  “No, I just said that because you said that. I knew it last week. I hoped . . . I didn’t think . . .” He shrugged both shoulders as if he were trying to throw a weight off himself. His expression said that he hadn’t succeeded.

  “But you came to me—you said you hadn’t . . . I believed you.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have. You’ve always been straight with me. I was scared.”

  He still looked frightened. I leaned back in my chair, willing myself to think logically, not emotionally. My pulse rate was in the millions and I felt as terrified as if something tangible menaced me. “I don’t see how you could have. You were in assembly.”

  He shook his head again. “Mr. Summers fell asleep. It was so boring. He has no idea when I left—maybe even wouldn’t have known I left if I hadn’t told him. It’s not like he’s going to tell you or anybody that he was out cold. So was half the class.”

  That was possible, even probable, given the sedative effect of Maurice Havermeyer’s lectures. But still . . . “Tell me about it. Tell me what you told the police.” This is not true, I heard inside of me. Don’t even listen. Not. True. Not. Happening.

  “I, ah, like I said, I was having a smoke out back of the school, and I saw him coming up the street, and I couldn’t believe he was coming here because he never did. Never. I followed and saw he really was coming in, so I ran back around the building and in the back door and I came around, past the auditorium.”

  The same route I’d taken.

  “But he wasn’t there, so I went up the stairs and he was in your room—the door was open—standing there and sipping something like it was completely natural for him to be there. And I thought—this was stupid, because he wasn’t like that, but we’d just had our blowup about college, and
then he was here, in my school, so I thought maybe he’d come to tell me he’d changed his mind. That he realized he wasn’t fair, that this one time he was going to treat me like . . .” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Like I was his son. Like he cared about me.” He bit at his upper lip and shook his head. “I don’t know why I had such dumb thoughts, but I went in and tried to keep it casual, and I said something like, ‘Hey, welcome to my school. How come you’re here?’ And he wheeled around and looked confused and then angry. And he said, ‘Leave me alone. Get out. This has nothing to do with you.’ And I don’t know—I was so angry. He had left his cup on the windowsill, so I dropped the stuff in it—”

  “He didn’t see you doing that?”

  “My back was to him.”

  I stood up and walked to the window where I’d found the cup of tea. I backed away as Tomas supposedly had, which would have put me either smack into the chalkboard, the desk, or Zach, according to his scenario. “This is pretty difficult to envision,” I said. “Where was he when you were doing this?”

  “I don’t know—my back was to him.”

  I walked back to my desk, and leaned against it. “Are you saying you always have roofies in your pocket, just in case? In case of what? I remember what you wrote about that kind of seduction. You called it rape. You called it all sorts of things, so was that all a lie to make the teacher feel good?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Besides, you were here, on a Monday school day. Carrying drugs? How about the truth this time?”

  He looked straight ahead as if engrossed by the portrait of Lord Byron on the side board. And he spoke as if I hadn’t said a word. “And, like, I couldn’t shut up. I wasn’t shouting, but I couldn’t stop saying things—everything bad he’d done to me, all along, and then this, about college. Lied to me. That’s the worst. Lied like I was some kind of idiot, like it didn’t matter what promises he made or how hard I worked to keep them. And then he came out of the room after me, and he didn’t shout, either. That somehow made it worse. If he’d been angry back—if he’d cared enough to be angry back!”