Suddenly (5 page)

“Dr. O’Neill had disappointments. We all do. None of us makes it through life without some. If she did commit suicide, it was because those disappointments got the best of her, such that she lost her ability to cope.”

From behind came a quiet, “So what makes one person able to cope and another not?”

Paige turned to face her runner, Sara Dickinson. She had a backpack slung over a shoulder and was among the last of the girls passing through the lounge. “I can’t give you a definitive answer to that. The person who copes may have an inner strength, or a distinct reason for coping, or a support system that helps her cope when she has trouble doing it herself.”

“Didn’t Dr. O’Neill have those things?”

Paige was asking herself that. She struggled to understand and explain. “She may not have put them to use.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was independent. Too much so, sometimes. She didn’t ask for help.”

Another girl spoke up, Annie Miller, a junior, sounding frightened. “My brother swallowed a whole handful of aspirin last year.” There were gasps from the group. “They pumped his stomach. He was okay. It wasn’t enough to kill him anyway. My dad said it was a cry for help.”

“Probably,” Paige said, terrified that one of the girls listening might contemplate a similar stunt, “but that’s a tough way to get it. Overdoses of drugs can cause physical damage that the person who survives then has to live with for the rest of his life. It’s a foolish way to get help. A
dangerous
way.” She went from face to face. “The thing is that when something like Dr. O’Neill’s death happens, we have to learn from it—the lesson being to speak up when we’re upset.”

“To who?” Sara asked from behind.

Paige looked back. “A family member or a friend. A teacher, a coach, a doctor.”

“That’s the support system you mentioned?”

“That’s it.”

“What if you can’t talk to people?”

“Everyone here can talk to people.”

“I mean, what if you can’t
trust
people?”

“There’s always someone you can trust.” But Sara remained doubtful, so Paige added, “If not the people I mentioned, then a minister. There’s always someone. You just have to open your eyes and look around.”

Sara looked past her, her expression suddenly stony. Everything about her spoke of resentment, though she didn’t say a word.

There were murmurs from several of the other girls. Paige followed their gaze to the door, through which was striding a man she had never seen before. He was tall and lean, wore gray slacks and a pale blue shirt that was open at the neck and rolled at the sleeves. His skin was tanned, his jaw square. His hair, which was long enough to hit the back of his collar, was the color of sand and either sun-streaked or shot with gray, Paige couldn’t tell which. Round, wire-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of his nose.

He was a spectacular-looking man.

She glanced at the girls. If they were struck by his looks, they didn’t show it. They were sitting straighter, with nothing remotely akin to the adoration she might have expected to see on their impressionable teenaged faces. Oh, they knew him, no doubt about that, or about the fact that they didn’t like him.

“Study hall?” he prompted in a way that was at the same time soft-spoken and steely.

The girls remained silent, but Paige sensed in them defiance rather than meekness. A confrontation was imminent. Given Mara’s death and the upset they were all feeling, she wished to avoid that.

Leaving the arm of the chair, she approached the man. “We blew it, huh?”

“Slightly,” he said in that same deceptively soft voice.

“Study hall?”

“Seven to nine, Sunday through Thursday.”

“Something new?”

“Very.”

“Ahhhh.” She bowed her head, thinking. When she looked back up, he hadn’t budged. Quietly she said, “The girls are upset over Dr. O’Neill’s death. So am I. I had hoped we could talk it out.”

“The girls have free times, but this isn’t one. They were supposed to be in study hall ten minutes ago.”

“Study hall can wait a few more minutes, can’t it?”

He shook his head slowly.

She lowered her voice even more. “That’s a rigid stance, given the circumstances.”

He didn’t blink.

In little more than a whisper, but one tinged with anger, she said, “Mara O’Neill meant a lot to these girls. They need time to grieve.”

“What they need,” he said in nearly as low and angry a voice, “is the assurance that there is some sort of order in their lives. They need routine. That’s one of the things the evening study hall is about. The other is about incredibly poor grades.”

Paige was getting nowhere. The man might be gorgeous, but he was as sensitive as a stone. She could imagine him a math professor or a dorm parent from hell. Mara would be incensed to find such a creature on the Mount Court payroll.

“What these girls need,” she said with a steeliness of her own, “is understanding. Clearly you aren’t in a position to give it. Hopefully the new Head will be.”

“I am the new Head.”

He
was Noah Perrine? Paige had trouble believing that. She had known two Heads in the five years that she had affiliated with Mount Court. The first had retired after twenty-three years, which was twenty-two years more than the second had survived. Both had been stuffy, white-haired, and preoccupied in the way ivory-tower minds could be.

This one was nothing like that. He was too focused to be the new Head. He was too young. He was too
attractive.

But the girls weren’t denying it, and then Paige remembered what they had said during practice earlier that week about the new Head being a stickler for rules. And it fit. Which meant that continuing the argument would be futile, even harmful if it was done in front of the girls. The last thing Paige wanted was to make a bad situation worse.

She returned to the girls, putting a hand on Deirdre’s shoulder. “We’ve been preempted. But this talk is important. Why don’t I come back tomorrow afternoon”—she would have preferred the morning, but it was her turn to do the Saturday shift—“let’s say one o’clock, same place?”

Their voices were low and resentful.

“This is absurd.”

“Like we’ll really be able to study.”

“It’ll be a total waste of time.”

Paige said, “Try. For me. Better still, if you don’t want to do assigned work, write me a letter about what Dr. O’Neill meant to you. That would help me a lot. I’m having trouble with her death, too.” Just when she thought she was in control, her eyes filled with tears. She wrapped her arms around Sami.

Tia wrapped her arms around them both. Several of the others came close and joined in. Paige was touched by their warmth, and grateful.

But the new Head was standing there, watching and waiting. One by one, with more than a few bitter looks shot his way, the girls left.

Paige recomposed herself. She was tired—exhausted, if the truth were told—and feeling hollow inside. She was also beginning to ache. It had been a tense day, a
few
tense days. Though Sami weighed next to nothing, Paige could feel the straps of the baby carrier pressing her T-shirt into her shoulders. She curled an arm under the child’s bottom to ease the weight.

Assuming that the new Head had left with the girls, she herself turned to leave, only to find that she hadn’t escaped after all. He stood there studying her, making her feel suddenly ugly and pale.

“Are you sure you don’t want to escort them?” she asked tartly. “They may walk right past the study hall.”

He allowed his mouth a tiny twist. “That’s the most perceptive thing you’ve said yet. The kids at this school will do just about anything to test the limits we set, and they’ve been able to get away with it, until now. I may not be the most popular guy on campus—”

“To put it mildly.”

“—but I’ll be damned if I’ll be run ramshod over.”

Paige marveled at the man’s coldness. “My partner
died
. If ever there’s a time to be flexible, this is it, don’t you think?”

“What I think,” he said, “is that
you’re
very much affected by your partner’s death, and that while some of these girls may be saddened, they’re using the situation to their own ends.”

“If you’d known Mara, you wouldn’t say that. She was a dynamic person. The girls adored her.”

“At least one of those girls never even met the woman. This is her first year here, and the term is barely five days old.”

Paige gave a quick shake of her head. “The discussion may have started with Mara, but it had broadened. We were talking about loneliness and the remedies for it, which is something girls this age obsess about. From the questions Sara asked, I’d say she has genuine concerns about the people around her. If she’s new here, she’s probably feeling alone and frightened, and she will, until she settles in with a group of friends. If, on top of that, she has parents who could care less—”

“Her parents care.”

“Well, she sure doesn’t know who to trust, or who to talk to if something’s bothering her, and that scares the living daylights out of me. If
I
had a daughter—”

“What’s that?” he interrupted with the jut of his chin.

The baby chose that moment to move against Paige, who drew the heavy corduroy aside. Sami’s eyes were closed. One small fist was by her mouth. Paige gently unfurled the tiny fingers and put her thumb inside. “This,” she said with a sigh, “is the baby Mara was to have adopted. She arrived a few hours ago.”

“The woman killed herself right before
that?”

It didn’t make sense to Paige, either. Then again, she thought with great reluctance, maybe it did. Mara had been foster mother to five children over the years. Tanya John had been the latest. Taken from abusive parents, she had lived with Mara for nearly a year, during which Mara had believed she was happy, coming out of her shell, growing more confident. Then, out of the blue, she’d run away. When found, she had been placed in another foster home. Mara had been heartsick.

Paige wondered if Tanya’s running away had been such a blow to Mara’s confidence that she had doubted her ability to mother Sami.

But you didn’t say anything, Mara. Right up to the end, you talked with enthusiasm about adopting the baby. You went through all the preparatory work, bought everything you needed, decorated the baby’s room. You were on the verge of bliss.

Could she have gotten cold feet? It didn’t seem possible.

Wearily Paige said, “Something happened. I’m going to have to find out what.”

“And the baby? What happens to her?”

“She’s mine until better parents are found.”

“Are you married?”

She looked him in the eye. “Nope.”

“And you’re a practicing pediatrician?”

She felt suddenly lightheaded. “Yup.”

“What’ll you do with her while you work?”

Her voice went higher. “Beats me.”

“You must have plans.”

“Actually”—her lightheartedness rose to vague hysteria—“this has all happened so fast, I haven’t had time to make any.”

He looked away in disgust. “You’re some role model for these kids.” His eyes recaptured hers. “Do you always do things so haphazardly?”

“I
never
do things haphazardly,” she cried. “I didn’t ask for this. It just happened. I lead an orderly life. I
like
leading an orderly life. But what was I supposed to do, send the baby
back?
”

“Of course not, but you can’t just haul her around wherever you go.”

“Why not?” Paige asked with a flash of belligerence.

“Because it isn’t good for the kid, for one thing, and for another, it isn’t appropriate. If you’re going to be coaching cross-country—”

“Then you do know who I am?”

“Damn right,” he said. “It’s my business to know. But I didn’t know you had a baby, and now that I do, I question the wisdom of your bringing her on campus. These kids have problems enough of their own. They need the full attention of everyone who works with them.”

“I can give them my full attention.”

He sighed. “It’s a matter of discipline, don’t you see? For years life at Mount Court was totally unstructured. Classes were held some days and not others; attendance was rarely taken; curfews were ignored; dorm behavior was unruly. These kids know nothing about delayed gratification or, God forbid, abstention. What they want, they get. What they can’t have, they sneak. They were brought up that way, and the school did nothing to set them straight. So there have been scandals galore—incidents of alcohol poisoning, drug abuse, near warfare with the townies—and I’m supposed to clean it all up.”

He thrust a handful of fingers through his hair. “For that, I need to establish discipline. We’re talking rules here.”

Paige waited for him to go on.

He looked pained, almost uncomfortable with what he was saying, and for a minute she wondered if indeed there was kindness in the man. In the next breath he dashed the possibility. “Rules can’t apply to some people and not others. People leave their children home when they come to work.”

“I’m not here for work. I came to talk to the girls as a friend.”

“Then when you come as their coach.”

“That’s not work, either,” she argued because she believed she was in the right. “It’s fun, which is why I do it gratis. I love being with these kids. I care for them. I would have thought that if you’re in this field, you did, too, which is why I’m amazed you wouldn’t let me talk with them tonight. They needed someone to ground their thinking. They needed an adult. Before I got here, they were working themselves into a frenzy, or doesn’t that bother you? Are grades all that count? Are you simply here as a paper pusher?”

He made a sound of disgust, cocked his hands on his hips, and looked out the window at the campus. “The damn place is in ruins. Our endowment is next to nothing, we can barely make ends meet, and that’s without a single one of the physical improvements that are years overdue. The Board of Trustees is terrified that we’re going down the tubes, and just when we need to raise money, our alumni are deserting us in droves—so, yeah”—he looked back—“to some extent, I’ll have to be a paper pusher, but that isn’t to say I don’t care about kids. Of
course
I care about kids. I wouldn’t be in this godforsaken town if I didn’t. Hell, I was a teacher myself for years.”