Long May She Reign (48 page)

He looked at her for a long minute, and then, she saw the tension leave his shoulders.

“Thank you,” he said.

28

PEOPLE HAD STARTED
coming in for lunch, and what had been a good place to have a serious conversation no longer was. Since it seemed like a reasonable idea, they ordered some more food and resolutely began to talk about the Red Sox, and the chances of her mother's new fuel emissions standards bill passing, and whether it made any sense at all to take classes which met at eight-thirty in the morning when there were other, perfectly nice, courses offered at more appealing hours of the day.

Reporters were wandering over to the table again, and civilians kept stopping by, too. Very nice people, who mostly just wanted to say hello, and tell her how hard they had prayed, or how happy they had been when they found out that she was safe. A few asked to take a picture with her, or get a—scrawled—autograph, which was, as always, weird as hell, but she was careful to be friendly and cooperative and patient every single time.

“Ginette's going to be here through Monday, at least,” Preston said, when they were waiting for the check, “but do you need me to stay, too?”

Wanting him to stay—just to have him around—and
needing
him to stay were two entirely different things. Meg shook her head. “I'm fine. Go back to Washington, you tired little fellow.”

He grinned. “What, and report to my new boss?

Meg grinned, too. “Absolutely,” she said.

Their good-bye was confined to a brisk handshake in the lobby, which felt strange, since they normally would have hugged, but that seemed like a really bad idea, given the number of people standing around watching them, especially since quite a few were taking extensive notes.

“Thank you,” she said. “I mean it.”

He winked at her. “See you in a week, pal.”

Right. Spring break ever so rapidly approached.

Her agents drove her back to the dorm, where she knew she should immediately start studying for her midterms, but taking a nap sounded like an even better idea. As she passed the downstairs security desk, Larry indicated an envelope with her name on it.

Meg reached forward, then pulled back. “Is it from a stranger?”

He shook his head.

She leaned back against the banister, so that she could put her cane down and open it, finding a sheaf of Xeroxed psychology notes inside, with “
Hope you can read my disgustingly neat handwriting. Jack
” written across the top.

“Poetry?” Larry asked hopefully.

Christ, had her agents been sitting around taking bets on her romantic prospects or something? Meg laughed. “Just some class notes I missed. Sorry.”

She was just pushing away from the banister when a football came flying in her direction. She managed to catch it, awkwardly, although she lost her balance and stumbled down a step or two in the process.

Khalid, who had just missed it—judging from the general noise level, most of her entrymates were in the middle of a pretty rowdy afternoon—looked guilty. “Hey, sorry about that. You should have ducked.”

No, hurled footballs were—always—meant to be
caught
. Being crippled wasn't enough to change that. She shrugged and threw it back.

“Hey, pretty good spiral,” a guy standing behind him, whose name she didn't know, although she was pretty sure he lived in Sage C, said. “Bet you can't do that twice.”

She might not be able to catch it a second time, without falling, but she could sure as hell throw it with no problem. “Five dollars,” Meg said.

“You're on,” he said, took the ball from Andy, and flipped it down to her as a few other guys from the entry, including Dirk, came crowding out to watch.

She gave a split second's thought to performance anxiety, but made sure she had a halfway decent grip on the laces and whipped the ball up to him with a little extra zip—the spiral tight enough to win her a few yells of appreciation of the “Sage women
rule
!” variety. Then, she very slowly hauled herself up to the landing, stopping to hold her good hand out to the guy she didn't know.

He grinned sheepishly, dug into his pocket, and gave her five dollars.

“Thanks,” she said, and stuck it in her jacket pocket.

“How about we go outside and see if you can throw it at least twenty-five yards?” he asked. “Double or nothing.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I'm saving my energy for the combine.”

The jock types all laughed, and the ones who were less sports-inclined nodded wisely, although she was pretty sure that Gerard, and maybe Eric from the first floor, had no idea what she meant. Of course, if they began to talk about organic chemistry or developing software programs or Latin translations of obscure tomes, she would have been equally puzzled.

She could hear unfamiliar adult voices in the second-floor common room, and was suddenly afraid that some reporters—or terrorists—might have charmed their way past her agents and inside the dorm.

Only, how likely was
that
? It was probably just people from the Dean's office, or maybe the campus police or fire marshals checking up to make sure none of them had candles and burning incense and stuff like that in their rooms. But, as she was about to go into the second-floor hallway and take the elevator up to her floor—instead of fighting the stairs, she saw a tweedy man with greying hair, and a chic, but conservative-looking woman about the same age, and realized that it was only someone's parents. There was also a girl, who looked about thirteen, with long, brown hair and—oh, hell—very blue eyes.

Susan's
family.

Great.

She thought about retreating—this might be a really good time to go outside and win herself ten dollars, after all—but the little sister had already seen her.

“Hey, wow!” she said. “You
do
look just like her. That is so cool.”

All right. Too late now. Christ, Susan's parents must absolutely hate her for having made their daughter's life miserable.

“Uh, hi,” Meg said. She should smile. Smiling was always nice. “You must be the McAllisters. It's very nice to meet you. I'm Meg Powers.” Which probably wasn't going to come as a great shock to them, but good manners still required the basic formalities.

While Mr. and Mrs. McAllister were introducing themselves, and the little sister, whose name was Wendy, Susan came out of her room.

“Mom, before we go, can Dad help me with the—” She stopped. “Oh. Hi.” She took in Meg's new immobilizing brace with one very sharp glance, but just frowned, instead of saying anything about it. “I guess you've—?”

They all nodded.

“Okay, good,” Susan said, and put her hands in her pockets, took them out again, and folded her arms across her chest. “That's good.”

So, at least she wasn't the only one who thought this encounter was strained.

“Susan was just showing us the President's letter,” Mrs. McAllister said.

Letter? But Meg smiled, inquisitively.

Susan shrugged. “The, um—your mother sent it up with Preston.”

Good—both that she had taken the time to write a personal apology, and that she had made the choice not to advertise having done so. “Well, if you were so inclined, I'm sure you could do very nicely with it on eBay,” Meg said.

Susan laughed. “That's exactly what Mary Elizabeth said.”

No big surprise there. “Were there any spelling or grammatical errors?” Meg asked.

Wendy looked shocked. “The
President
has trouble
spelling
?”

Thirteen could be a gullible age. “Oh, yeah,” Meg said. “It's a horror show to keep it covered up. Normally, I try to proofread everything, and do some revisions for her, but since I went away—well, she's really fallen upon hard times. Frankly, I often fear for the country.”

“She's kidding,” Wendy said to her mother, sounding almost sure, “right?”

Mrs. McAllister nodded.

“I knew that,” Wendy said. “Yup. I did.”

One of the many moments when she was reminded of how much she missed being able to goof around with—and sometimes, goof
on
—her brothers. “And there's also the little matter of her drinking problem,” Meg said, mostly to herself.

Wendy's eyes widened, and she looked at her mother, who shook her head.

Susan came over and stood next to her. “I want to spend some time with my family,” she said in a low voice. “So, call off your attack dog, okay?”

Meg stared at her. “Hannah Goldman's been coming around and bothering you?”

Susan looked confused. “Who's Hannah Goldman?”

Oh. Right. Hannah was a shark.
Ginette
must be the attack dog. “You mean, Ginette, then,” Meg said. “Okay. But if you change your mind, all you have to do is—”

“If anyone bothers us, I'll just tell them that they're bastards, and your agents are going to shoot them,” Susan said.

Always an effective strategy.

It developed that Mr. McAllister had some new software he wanted to install on Susan's computer, and while this was being discussed, and Wendy wandered towards Dirk's room—obviously, Susan's family had been here before, and they all knew one another—Meg took the opportunity to nod politely, mumble that it had been very nice to meet everyone, and resume her limp upstairs.

She was about to open the door to her floor when Susan's mother caught up to her.

“I wanted to invite you to come along with us to brunch tomorrow,” Mrs. McAllister said. Although she was also quite small, Susan didn't really look very much like her, and seemed to take after her father's side of the family physically. The hair, the serious eyes, the general mien.

“Um, that's really nice of you, ma'am,” Meg said, “but I don't think it's a very good idea. I mean, with everything that's been going on.”

Mrs. McAllister flashed a smile, and now Meg
did
see a vivid resemblance to Susan. Friendly, but authoritative. No-nonsense. “We'd be delighted to have you come. Surely, you won't make me insist.”

Hmm. A parent voice. Sort of a command-performance voice. “I have a lot of security, ma'am,” Meg said. “It tends not to be—fun.”

Mrs. McAllister shrugged that off. “It'll be fine, Meg. We'll just go over to the Inn, or down to Le Jardin or someplace.”

Meg was going to argue, but— “This is what normal parents do when they come to visit their children at college, right? Invite their—” Could she say “friends?” It might be presumptuous—“dormmates out for a meal?”

Mrs. McAllister nodded.

Okay. She was a little foggy on the concept of conventional parental activities. “Then, thank you, ma'am,” she said. “I'd like that.” Getting to do something completely ordinary would be a treat. Of course, running it by Susan, first, to make sure she didn't mind, might be a good idea, too. “I'm
really
sorry about everything that's been going on for the last couple of days. I didn't know about what happened to Susan's friend, and—I'm sorry. I hate it that she had to be hurt that way.”

Mrs. McAllister shook her head. “It's all right, don't worry about it. Unfortunately, it resurfaces fairly frequently, in various ways. But, Susan's very good at regaining her equilibrium.”

So it seemed. “Did she always have—” What was the right word? “—gravitas?” Meg asked. “I mean, before.”

“That's an interesting question,” Mrs. McAllister said, and considered that momentarily. “No, I guess I would have described her as being happy-go-lucky in the same sort of way her sister is.”

Impossible to imagine. Which was sad as hell.

“You have more than a touch of it yourself,” Mrs. McAllister said.

Not bloody likely. “Loose cannon” was more accurate. And maybe she'd better do a little damage control, while she was at it. “I don't want you to think that I was going out of my way to be disrespectful to my mother,” Meg said. “I was just—” Being injudicious. “Sometimes, I think I'm a lot funnier than I actually am.”

Mrs. McAllister nodded solemnly, although Meg was left with the strong impression that she had found
that
funny.

Well, she'd gotten it on the record, anyway.

“Your mother seems like an extremely nice woman,” Mrs. McAllister said, sounding a little surprised.

And therein, all too often, lay the tragedy. She was an extremely nice woman who was leading a life which somehow kept managing to swallow up everyone and everything around it.

“Yeah,” Meg said quietly. “She is.”

*   *   *

SHE SPENT THE
rest of the afternoon and evening studying, although she agreed to accompany Juliana to the dining hall for dinner, since whatever friendship it was that they had still needed some repairs. They were a little stiff with each other, at first, but by the time Simon, and then Andy and Khalid, had seen them and come over to sit at their table, with trays piled high with pork loin and roasted potatoes, they had calmed down enough to have something very close to a normal conversation—mostly about the fact that they, in contrast to the others, were likely to enjoy protracted good health, due to their prudent choice of vegetarian entrees and near-daily embrace of the salad bar.

“Unh-hunh,” Andy said, and went back up front to get himself a second piece of blueberry pie.

Hours of concentrated studying had only made her realize how far behind she was, and after supper, it was a terrific struggle not to give up, lie on her bed, and watch television for a while. Jack's psychology notes were excellent—much more comprehensive than hers tended to be, frankly—and after considering, and nervously rejecting, the notion of finding his number in the campus directory, and calling him up, she sent an email—using her Williams address, not any of the private ones—to thank him.