Lake News (9 page)

“I knew you hadn't left,” Elizabeth Davis said straight out. She wore a T-shirt over biking shorts and had her
blond hair bunched in a clip. “I wasn't sure you'd open up, though. How're you doing?”

“Horrible,” Lily said with a glance at the newpapers folded under Elizabeth's arm. “Are those today's?”

“Two Boston, one New York. Want to see?”

“You tell me.” She wrapped her arms around her middle. “I'm hoping for a retraction.”

“You didn't get one,” Elizabeth warned. Unfolding the papers, she tossed them on the table one by one. “The
Post
reports that you drive a BMW and bought a slew of expensive furniture when you moved here.
Cityside
reports that you're big into Victoria's Secret shopping.
New York
reports that you favor upscale restaurants like Biba and Mistral, and that you spent a week last winter at a posh resort in Aruba that you couldn't possibly have afforded on your own.”

Lily was too stunned to be angry. “How do they
know
all that?”

“Any computer buff can get the information in five minutes flat.”

“But that's personal stuff!”

“Five minutes flat.”

“But that's
me. My
life.
My private information
. Where I shop is no one's business!” She had a chilling thought. “What else can they get?”

“Most anything.”

Lily swallowed. She had to believe that some things were safe. Her mind began to spin. “I bought the BMW used, I paid off the furniture over two years' time, I mail-order more from L. L. Bean and J. Crew than Victoria's Secret, and I booked the place in Aruba on two days' notice
through a travel clearinghouse. I'm being misrepresented. This isn't fair.”

But Elizabeth wasn't done. Holding up a hand, she crossed to the small radio on the counter by the stove. Within seconds, Justin Barr's arrogant tenor filled the room.

“… an insult to Catholics everywhere! Why, this woman is an insult to people of
every
faith. Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews—no matter the affiliation, we should all be thinking about the values we hold most dear, the people who embody them, and the ones who try to take them down. Is there any act of disrespect more blatantly offensive than smearing the good name of a beloved leader?”

“Me,
smearing a nnn-name?” Lily cried.

“No, my friends,” Justin Barr ranted, “the question is how a woman like Lily Blake was able to get close enough to a man of the stature of Cardinal Rossetti to spread the stain, even indirectly, and now, Lord help us, she teaches our children. Where does it end? I have Mary from Bridgeport, Connecticut, on the line. Go ahead, Mary, you're on the air.”

Elizabeth turned off the radio.

Lily was stricken. “I don't believe this.”

“Justin Barr is right-wing.”

“Justin Barr is syndicated. That show goes up and down the East Coast.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why?”
Lily cried, referring not only to Justin Barr but to Terry Sullivan, Paul Rizzo, and all the rest who were keeping the story alive. “Why this? Why
me?”

“Because they smell weakness,” Elizabeth said. “Wolves go after a wounded deer; it's the nature of the beast. You have to take a stand, Lily. A lawyer would be a great help.”

“I don't want a lawyer.”

“Then let me give it a try. I'll get dressed, the two of us will go down there, and I'll be your spokesperson. What do you say to that?”

Lily didn't say a word. She stood silently while Elizabeth read a statement unequivocally denying her romantic involvement with either Governor Dean of New York or Cardinal Rossetti of Boston.

The statement was simple. Elizabeth had advised her to tackle only the major allegations and leave minor misrepresentations alone for now, and much as Lily wanted to yell and scream in her own defense about the rest, she restrained herself. Public relations was Elizabeth's field. She was an experienced image shaper. Indeed, she coaxed and cajoled the media crowd into moving back and showing a little respect, and if she looked a bit too comfortable in her roll as spokesperson, a bit too pleased while working the crowd, Lily forgave her. Her own friends, mostly book people or music people, weren't equipped to help. Thanks to Elizabeth's prevailing upon the press, Lily was able to walk to school unmolested, thinking that maybe, just maybe, the scandal had begun its retreat.

Michael Eddy didn't think so. He knew exactly how much the school paid her and, even allowing for her work at the club, wanted to know how she could afford
Aruba and a BMW. She told him how, as she had told Elizabeth, and when Peter Oliver asked about Victoria's Secret, she explained that she bought jeans there, not lingerie. When people stared passing her in the halls, she simply walked on. When faculty members left her sitting alone in the cafeteria, she read a book. She might have taken her frustration out on Mitch Rellejik, only he didn't come in until late. Midafternoon, as soon as she finished work, she left school, genuinely happy to be done for the day.

She took heart when she saw that the press contingent remained lighter than it had been the day before, and once in her apartment, dared turn on the evening news. It was a mistake. The story was covered prominently on every channel, taking parts of the morning's stories and giving them lurid twists, and there were more photographs. In one she scowled at the camera. In another she hid her face. And then there were the glamour shots.

Lily had classy publicity photos taken shortly after she arrived in Boston. She also had older ones that were beautiful and dignified. Naturally, the media didn't use those. They were painting a picture of a woman who lived above her means and paid for it by sleeping with powerful men. So they chose the most lurid shots they could find, from her earliest days in New York, in which the skimpy leotards she wore emphasized slim legs, narrow hips, and full breasts.

She felt naked and exposed. She also felt furious—embarrassed—horrified!

Worst, she didn't know what to do, and told Dan Curry as much when she arrived at the club. He gave her
the name of a lawyer, which was small solace. More comforting, he had word from the Cardinal.

“He's sick about this, Lily. We're all sitting around wondering whether the Pope will reverse his elevation, and the Cardinal is sitting around worrying about you. As far as he's concerned, you didn't ask for this, you don't deserve it, you're a victim caught in the line of fire. His lawyers have told him not to be in direct touch with you, but he doesn't like it.”

That was fine, she thought. Still, a call from him might have been nice. Even one made from a phone booth. Or a friend's telephone. Just to make her feel less alone. But she understood. He was in a bind.

“He's thinking of you, Lily. He told me to tell you that he knows you have the strength to weather this and come out stronger and even more sure of yourself than before.”

Lily clung to those words through a difficult night of playing before an audience that stared and talked and crowded in on her. She went to bed praying that this was the worst, and after an on-again, off-again sleep, woke up feeling tired and tense. She was listening to a ponderous Tchaikovsky piece that reflected her mood when a somber Elizabeth appeared at the door with the morning
Post
. The headline read,
DETAILS EMERGE ON CARDINAL'S WOMAN
.

With a hard swallow, Lily took the paper, and at first there was nothing more than a recap of the allegations. Then, to her dismay, Terry Sullivan turned to Lake Henry.

Blake comes from a well-to-do family in the small, north central town of Lake Henry, New Hampshire. Her father was a major landowner until his death three years ago. Her mother lives in the family's large stone farmhouse and oversees the hundreds of acres of apple orchards that make the family business one of the region's major producers of apple cider.

The Post's Headline Team has learned that Blake grew up with a severe stutter that kept her apart from other children.

Lily sucked in a breath. Swallowing, she read on.

She turned to singing as a means of communication. Experts on speech defects confirm that this is common. “Our casebooks are filled with examples of children who are unable to complete a spoken sentence, yet can sing an entire song without fault,” said Susan Block, director of speech therapy in the Boston public schools. She also confirmed that severe speech defects may create emotional problems.

In Blake's case, these took the form of rebellion. When she was sixteen, she was involved in the commission of a felony. Apprehended and charged alongside a twenty-year-old accomplice, who spent six months in prison for the crime, Blake was put on probation. She completed that sentence shortly before graduating from high school, and left town soon after.

With a horrified cry, Lily dropped the paper. Devastated, she looked at Elizabeth. She started to speak, but
had to take a calming breath before the words would come out. “That file was sealed!” she finally said. “The judge told us no one would ever see it!”

Elizabeth couldn't hide her curiosity. “What did you do?”

What did she do?
She'd been dumb, was what she did. She'd been dumb and young and dying to be popular.

“The boy I was with stole a car. I didn't know it was stolen, and there I was, smiling and laughing, having the time of my life because Donny Kipling was so tough he was cool. I was sixteen. I hadn't ever been kissed. I had barely
dated,
so I went out with him in that car, and he just kept saying, ‘Don't worry, this is fun,' but he told the police I planned it, and witnesses said I looked like I was really into it. There was no trial. The case was continued without a judgment, and when I finished my probation, the charges were dropped.”

Numb, she picked up the paper again.

Blake rarely returned to Lake Henry after that. Sources who wish to remain anonymous have told the Post that she is estranged from her mother and her sister Rose. Another sister, Poppy, refused to comment on a recent conversation she held with Blake.

“How did they know I talked to Poppy?” she asked. Then, furious, she remembered. “Someone listened in on my phone. I heard that click.”

“Wouldn't surprise me,” Elizabeth said. “They'll do what they have to for a story.”

Hadn't Terry said as much? “But the judge
sealed
that file.
How could they learn about it?” She felt violated and exposed.

“Bribery.”

“That's not
fair.”

Elizabeth was suddenly apologetic. “Neither is this. I have to cancel you out for the Kagan fund-raiser.”

Lily stared at her, stunned.

“Campaign manager's orders,” Elizabeth said, gesturing toward the newspaper. “He called when he saw this. It's too inflammatory. Your being there would be an event in itself. Distracting from the candidate.”

Lily knew there was more to it. “She doesn't want to be associated with me.”

“Don't take it personally. It's politics. One bad connection can ruin a candidate.”

“But I'm not a bad connection. The picture they've painted is false.”

Elizabeth sighed. “It really doesn't matter, y'know? The fact is that this is on the front page of every paper in the state. It'd be suicide for Kagan if you play at her event. I can't do it, Lily. I'm sorry.” She backed toward the door as the phone rang. “Don't answer it,” she warned as she left, “and
don't
turn on Justin Barr.”

Unbeknownst to Elizabeth, her instructions were connected, and remarkably prescient. But she wasn't there to hear what Lily heard on her machine, the pompous voice of a guy who thought he was bigger than big. “Lily? Are you there, Lily? This is Justin Barr, and we're on the air. My listeners want to hear your side of the story—”

“They do not,” Lily muttered and turned off the machine.
She packed up for school, went down the back way, and ran off through the waiting crowd, wearing sunglasses so that no one would see if she cried—and if she did, it wouldn't be from fear or sadness. Her jaw was rigid. She was absolutely, positively furious.

Michael Eddy was waiting for her at the large wooden door of the school. He let her in and held up a warning hand to the press, but the warning shifted her way when he said, “My office, please.”

Putting the sunglasses on her head, she followed him there. He didn't offer her a seat. She didn't take one.

“I'm getting calls from parents and trustees,” he said, with one hand on the back of a chair and the other at the nape of his neck. His eyes were accusing. “They want to know how we could hire someone with a criminal record to teach their children. I told them we didn't know. I want you to tell me why we didn't.”

Lily's heart was pounding so hard it practically shook her blouse. With what little breath was left, she said, “I don't
have
a criminal record. The case was dismissed. The file was sealed. I was told that that protected me.”

“Who told you that?”

“My lawyer. The judge. It was very clear.”

“Didn't you think the parents here would care?”

She thought about how to answer, but the longer she thought, the more angry she grew. “What's there to care about? I've told the truth. I was never convicted of anything.”

“Then why the probation? And why a sealed file? You're teaching
children
here, Lily. You should have said something.”

She disagreed. But Michael wasn't in her shoes—and she wasn't in his. She looked at him, not knowing what to say.

He sighed. “I hired you, and I'm the head, so I'm on the hot seat. I mean, hell, Justin Barr is making us look like fools. He's riling up the same people we solicit for the annual fund.” His shoulders drooped. “I won't fire you. You've done too good a job. But I'm asking you to take a voluntary leave of absence.”