Arcadia Falls

by Carol Goodman

  I sigh, exasperated at the fractured logic of teenagers. They often choose the most inconvenient times to follow the rules. Then I notice that Chloe still looks fidgety. It’s a look I know well from Sally.

  “Is there something else you’re not telling me, Chloe?”

  “It’s nothing really. It’s just … I thought I saw someone—another one of the girls—farther up the hill, but then she vanished and I thought I must have imagined it….” She looks embarrassed.

  “What is it Chloe? What did you see?”

  “It’s stupid…. It was just one of the girls in a white dress. But when she vanished I thought of the story about the white woman who haunts the woods and it kind of freaked me out. That’s why I didn’t try to follow Isabel. Pretty stupid, huh? I was trying to scare Isabel, but I ended up scaring myself.”

  After I send Chloe on her way, I start walking toward the Lodge, but halfway across the lawn I stop at the bench beneath the beech tree and sit down to think. Although Chloe’s pictures depicted a garbled version of Lily’s story, it bore enough resemblance to the real thing to make me wonder if Isabel had had access to Lily’s journal. I take out the paper now and read the first paragraph.

  Lily Eberhardt wrote in her private journal, “We carried the seeds of destruction into paradise.” She was referring to the romantic triangle between herself, Vera Beecher, and the painter Virgil Nash. In fact the seed of destruction that she and Vera Beecher brought to Arcadia was their assumption that motherhood and artistic creation were mutually exclusive—an assumption that was tested the first year of the colony when Lily Eberhardt became pregnant. Lily’s attempt to hide her pregnancy is what brought about her death.

  I put down the paper and exhale. How else could Isabel have learned about Lily’s pregnancy unless she read Lily’s journal. But how could she have gotten it? Then I remember: the week before I arrived Isabel and Chloe were cleaning Fleur-de-Lis … or at least they were supposed to be cleaning. Hadn’t Chloe said that she found Isabel with her nose in a book when she was supposed to be cleaning? Isabel must have found the journal behind the panel in the fireplace. She must have thought she’d struck gold and that the dean would be impressed when she saw the paper—but she hadn’t been. I imagine Ivy’s reaction to this first paragraph. Her first question must have been where had Isabel found the journal. Had Isabel realized then that she would be blamed for stealing the journal from Fleur-de-Lis?

  Chloe wasn’t the only one who caught a glimpse of a figure dressed in white on the night of the bonfire. On my way back to the cottage I saw someone in white flitting through the woods. I thought it was my imagination—as Chloe did—and then, later, when Callum told me about the wittewieven I thought I’d spied the white woman who haunted the clove. Now I wonder if it was Isabel Cheney coming back from Fleur-de-Lis after putting Lily’s journal back where she found it. It’s the kind of thing a teenager would do—repairing a wrong by hiding the evidence. Did she think the dean wouldn’t keep after her to find out where the journal was?

  I look up toward the dean’s office. In full sunlight the glass is an opaque surface reflecting trees and sky; it’s impossible to tell if anyone is looking out. On First Night, though, I saw the dean silhouetted against the dark windowpane. She’s always watching, Callum had said. Had she watched from her window on First Night, waiting for a chance to confront Isabel and take the journal? Was she the white woman Chloe had seen in the woods behind the Lodge? Had she followed Isabel into the woods and confronted her at the top of the ridge?

  I get to my feet, agitated by the picture in my head of Ivy St. Clare cornering a frightened girl on the edge of the cliff … but my mind balks. Ivy couldn’t want the journal enough to kill for it, could she? I wonder what Callum would think. If my cell phone worked I could call to tell him what Chloe’s told me, but as it is I can’t think of anyplace private enough to make that call. I’ll call after my last class, I promise myself as I cross under the copper beech. The thought of talking to Callum later—of seeing him again—sends a pulse of desire through my core so strong I have to stop and put my hand on the beech’s trunk to steady myself for a moment. Images from last night flood through my mind as steady as the fall of wine red leaves from the tree. Have I gone too fast? What do I really know about this man? The force of my desire scares me. I take deep breaths to calm myself, and then, recovered, I give the tree a farewell pat. Its bark is smooth and curiously warm. Then I walk briskly to the Lodge.

  I reach the Lodge, still deep in thought. Peter and Rebecca are in the lounge, dark heads bent together, whispering. They look up when I enter, four identical brown eyes staring at me like the eyes of deer caught grazing. I look from them to the paintings above their heads: Nash’s last three portraits of Lily.

  As I look at the paintings I think of a young Callum Reade, held spellbound by the force of Lily’s gaze. She was looking at me as if she saw right through me to my soul and knew all my secrets, he had said. Could the man who painted her like this have abandoned her in the snowstorm to die?

  I look back down at Rebecca and Peter, who are now exchanging quizzical looks at my behavior. “The first day we met you said it was fascinating that the man who did these paintings of Lily killed her. Tell me again why you said that,” I ask.

  “Everyone knows that she died on her way to meet him—” Rebecca begins.

  “—and that he left for the city without telling anyone she didn’t show up,” Peter finishes for her.

  “It was in the middle of a blizzard and he must have known that she was coming through the clove,” Rebecca adds.

  “But he didn’t even go back to check if she was okay.”

  “He must have felt guilty because he killed himself later.”

  I shake my head. “You’re right. It would have been as good as killing her not to look for her. But what if she came and then went back because she never intended to leave with him in the first place?”

  “Then it wouldn’t have been Nash’s fault at all,” another voice says.

  I turn and find Shelley standing in the doorway. She’s wearing her smock, which is spattered with white paint. As she comes into the lounge I see that her face and hair are also paint-splattered and her pupils are unnaturally dilated. She looks like she’s waking from a trance.

  “The tragedy is that everyone blamed him,” Shelley continues. “No one would have anything to do with him after Lily’s death. My mother, who had taken classes with him here at Arcadia and very much admired him, said she saw him in Europe the next summer. He was a drunken wreck, she said. He killed himself on the one-year anniversary of Lily’s death.”

  “That is tragic,” I say, thinking of Lily’s description of how full of hope Nash had been while making these last paintings.

  “Yes,” Shelley agrees. “Even more so if Lily didn’t die going to see him. Do you have some reason to think that she was on her way back from Nash when she died?”

  I start to answer but then remember the twins. “Peter, Rebecca,” I say, “would you mind if we canceled class today? I need to talk to Professor Drake.”

  Two identical heads shake in perfect unison. “No problem. We still have to work on our costumes. We’re going as the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.”

  “Wait, I know this,” I say, proud to possess this bit of esoteric knowledge. “They’re the twin children of Magneto.”

  Peter and Rebecca exchange one of their unreadable looks, and then reward me with identical smiles. “Pretty slick, Ms. Rosenthal.”

  Shelley, though, is staring at me. “I’ve never heard of them. What body of mythology are they from?”

  “Marvel Comics,” I answer. “One of the advantages of having a teenager.”

  On the way to Shelley’s studio I tell her about Isabel’s paper and my fear that the dean might have confronted Isabel to get Lily’s journal back. “What I don’t understand is why Ivy would want the journal so desperately,” I conclude.

  “I think I have an idea why
. There’s something my mother says in her letter….” When she opens the door, I’m so dazzled by a burst of white light that I don’t quite follow what she’s saying. At first I think the light must be coming from the windows, but the light at this time of day is still subdued. The glare is coming from the dozen or so high-powered spotlights arranged around the room. Shelley sees me squinting and apologizes.

  “Oh, my, let me turn these off,” she says, scurrying from lamp to lamp. “I borrowed them from the film department so I could paint last night. You know how it is when the muse hits you; nothing else matters, not even sleep.”

  I nod, but really, what do I know of that kind of single-minded devotion to one’s art? I’ve barely finished a thought—let alone a drawing—in the past sixteen years without being interrupted by something I had to do for Jude or Sally. I feel a bit envious looking at what she’s done. Clearly the source of her inspiration was the May Day photograph of Gertrude, Mimi, and Lily. She’s reproduced the figures of the three women on an enormous canvas. On such a large scale they look like goddesses—the Three Graces, perhaps. But she didn’t stop there. The white-clad women have wandered into her paintings of the woods where they slip in and out of the shadows like shrouded ghosts.

  “Wow, all this from one photograph?” I ask.

  “The photograph gave me the idea for the first painting, but it was my mother’s letter that made me decide to let the women wander through the woods.”

  “Her letter?”

  “I was just telling you!” She sounds annoyed and I realize that lack of sleep has made her irritable. “Here,” she takes a cream-colored envelope out of her smock pocket and shoves it into my hands. “You’ll see.”

  I slip the heavy pages out of the envelope and read.

  January 15, 1948

  Dear Mother,

  I apologize for not writing sooner, but the last few weeks have been very upsetting. You’ll have heard by now about poor Lily Eberhardt. A few days after Christmas, I found Ivy in the Hall foyer placing a statue Mr. Nash had done of Lily in a dark alcove. It was so beautiful—it depicts Lily as a water nymph standing in a pool of water lilies. I asked where it came from. Ivy said that Lily had left it behind when she ran away with Mr. Nash, but I didn’t believe a word of it. I thought Ivy was just jealous—why else would she hide the beautiful statue in a dark alcove as if it were some ordinary piece of bric-a-brac?

  A week later, a package arrived with three paintings of Lily that Nash had sent to Miss Beecher. It was clear from the letter Mr. Nash enclosed that Lily wasn’t with him. That’s when they began to look for her. It took three more days before they found her body frozen in the clove. I was in the Rose Parlor working on my portrait (you were right about staying here over the vacation—I’ve learned so much that I wouldn’t have if I’d gone with you and Father to Chamonix) when her body was brought into the main hall. I thought that a wild dog had gotten loose in the house, there was such an inhuman howling echoing through the halls, but when I went to find the source of the noise I came upon this most extraordinary tableau. The body was laid out on the big oak refectory table upon a red and gold tapestry runner. From her long blond hair that was spread out all about her, I knew at once that it was Lily. Her face was white as snow. Vera was knelt before her, and Ivy stood behind Vera with one hand on her shoulder. I came from behind so neither of them saw me.

  “She looks like she froze to death,” Vera said. “Are you sure the fall is what killed her?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Ivy answered. “Remember? I checked to make sure.”

  Today the medical examiner confirmed what Ivy said. He’s decreed that Lily died of a blow to the head, caused most likely when she slipped and fell in the clove and struck her head on a rock.

  I thought perhaps that the term might be postponed (and waited to write you until I knew), but when I went to Miss Beecher’s office to ask I found Ivy there—sitting behind Miss Beecher’s desk!—and she told me no, it was Miss Beecher’s wish that the school continue as usual.

  I wondered, though, if you would wish me to continue here as it was primarily for the sake of studying with Miss Eberhardt and Mr. Nash that you sent me, and now both of them are gone. I feel the loss of Miss Eberhardt, most especially as she behaved like a mother to me. Nor do I like the way Ivy is taking over. I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s better for me to leave here. I think I’ve learned all that I can from this place.

  Yours truly,

  Fleur Sheldon

  I look up from the letter and meet Shelley’s intense blue stare. “Do you see what’s wrong?” she asks.

  I’m tempted to say that what’s wrong is that her grandmother had clearly abandoned her daughter in this school and had such a stilted relationship with her that Fleur felt it necessary to sign her full name on a letter to her mother. But I know that’s not what she means.

  “Ivy says that she checked to make sure that the fall killed her. So she and Vera must have been in the clove when Lily fell.”

  “Maybe Vera went looking for Lily, saw her coming back through the clove, and then saw her fall.”

  “Then why wouldn’t she have gone for help?” Shelley asks. “Why would she have left her beloved Lily, lying in the clove and pretend that Lily had run off with Nash? Why did she wait for the searchers to find her body?” With each question, Shelley stabs her finger at her mother’s letter.

  “If it wasn’t an accident,” I say. “If Vera struck her …”

  “Or if Ivy did,” Shelley adds.

  “That would be awful.”

  “Why would it be worse than if Vera struck her?” she asks. “Vera was her lover.”

  “But Ivy was Lily’s daughter.”

  Shelley’s eyes widen. “She was? But they look nothing alike!” She points to the May Day painting. Shelley has perhaps idealized Lily’s beauty, but the lithe, blond woman in the painting is not far from the photographs I’ve seen of Lily—and she’s the polar opposite of tiny dark-complected Ivy St. Clare.

  I shrug. “Not all kids look like their parents,” I say. “Ivy didn’t know she was Lily’s daughter. If she did have something to do with Lily’s death, and she found out that Lily was her mother—”

  “It would destroy her!” Shelley’s tone is horrified, but there’s a gleam in her eyes that seems almost gleeful. I remind myself that she’s overworked and overtired.

  “There’s no telling how she might react. She might have already killed Isabel trying to get the journal back. We have to tell Cal—Sheriff Reade. Can I borrow your mother’s letter to show him?”

  I hold out my hand for the letter, but she holds it closer to her body. “Perhaps I should talk to the sheriff as well to back up your story.”

  “That’s generous of you,” I say, looking at her paint-splattered clothes, her tangled hair and wild, shadow-ringed eyes. She hardly looks like the most reliable person to have as an advocate. “But I think I can handle it.” She hands over the letter reluctantly. “I’ll be careful with it,” I say. “I’ll show it to Sheriff Reade when he comes here tonight to supervise the bonfire.” I look down at my watch, more to hide the blush that I can feel creeping into my face at the mention of Callum’s name, but then I’m genuinely startled by the time. “Damn! I’m going to be late for my class. Please don’t tell anyone what we’ve talked about. If Dean St. Clare thinks we’re on to her, she might completely flip and hurt someone else….” I falter, wondering if I should tell Shelley that Chloe saw someone in the woods that night, but Shelley’s already grasped the importance of protecting Chloe.

  “You mean if Ivy knew that Chloe read Isabel’s paper she might hurt her. Chloe’s in my drawing class next period. While you’re teaching your class and meeting with Sheriff Reade I’ll keep an eye on Chloe and make sure she’s okay. I’ll help her with her costume and stay close to her at the bonfire.”

  I hesitate for a moment, wondering if Shelley in her overexcited state is the best one for this job, but then realize I’
ve no other choice. I can’t be everywhere at once. “Okay, thanks. Just make sure Chloe doesn’t go anywhere near the dean’s office. Once I’ve talked to Sheriff Reade and he goes to see the dean, I’ll come find you.”

  “Tell Sheriff Reade that Dean St. Clare always has tea in her office at four-thirty. That’s the best place to find her alone.”

  “I’ll tell him. Just make sure you keep an eye on Chloe … and if you can, Sally, too. She’s in your drawing class, too.”

  Shelley gives me a reassuring smile. “Of course it’s natural for you to worry about your own daughter, but what possible reason could Dean St. Clare have to hurt her?”

  Throughout my last class of the day Shelley’s words echo in my head, but they fail to reassure me. If Ivy suspects that I’ve had Lily’s journal all along (and she did ask about the green book in my still life), she might be crazy enough to threaten Sally to keep me quiet. I only manage to keep myself from running to the Lodge by reminding myself that Sally is in class with Shelley. There’s no reason to think she’s anywhere near the dean. So I finish class as best as I can, then cross the sunlit lawn in front of Beech Hall and approach the site of the bonfire, where I see Callum standing with Shelley Drake.

  From his posture—head tilted to one side, one hand resting on his hip a few inches from his holster—I can tell he’s biding his time while Shelley, silver hair flying in the breeze, flails her arms and points at the wood piled high inside the stone circle. How strange, I think, that I’ve known this man only a few months and I can already read his body language. How strange that after only one night with him I feel an electric thread stretching from me to him as vibrant as the gold bars of late-afternoon sunlight sweeping the lawn. Before I reach him, he lifts his head and looks right at me as if he feels it, too. He smiles and I feel that thread pull tight inside me. Then he slants his eyes back at Shelley, who’s paused to see who Callum’s looking at, and turns his attention back to her, his face assuming the appropriate gravitas of a law enforcer.