River Road (7 page)

“ ‘Writing is a very sturdy ladder out of the pit,' ” I quoted. “Alice Walker said that.”

“Yeah,” Aleesha said. “You always made me feel like I could talk about anything—” Her lip trembled. I plucked the last Kleenex out of the box and handed it to her.

“I guess this class was closer than I realized,” I said.

Aleesha blew her nose and looked up. Her eyes were bloodshot, her light brown skin sallow in the bright sunlight pouring through the window. She was wearing a SUNY Acheron sweatshirt and torn jeans. All semester she'd come to class in bright, swingy skirts and soft blouses—styles I often recognized from the Target in Poughkeepsie—and always alert, excited to talk about the story I'd assigned even when she thought it was “messed up.” Today, though, she looked dazed. I felt a pang that Aleesha Williams, who had enough on her plate already raising a child on her own, was so upset about Leia.

“I didn't just know Leia from class. You know she spoke up for my cousin Shawna at her parole board.”

“I didn't know that.”

“Yeah, they met in that class the college runs down at the prison in Fishkill. At first I was kind of mad, Shawna getting to take classes for free after she got arrested for dealing while I'm working two jobs to pay for my classes . . .” Aleesha's lip trembled again. “But then Shawna only got in trouble because of that no-account boyfriend of hers, so I guess it all evens out in the end and I don't begrudge anyone a chance to make something better of themselves, right?”

“Right,” I said. “So Leia went to Shawna's parole board?”

“Uh-huh. She even read aloud from some paper Shawna wrote. I think it impressed them—a nice college girl like Leia speaking up for Shawna like that—it was a really decent thing Leia did. I wrote about it in that paper I left for you.”

“Really? Professor Janowicz is putting together a reading series about Leia's work at the prison. I could pass it on to her.”

“Oh, I don't know about that,” she said, looking uncomfortable. “There's a lot in there about the drugs Shawna's done—”

“But she's clean now, right?” I asked, remembering a poem Aleesha had handed in a few weeks ago about seeing her cousin for the first time after she got out of prison.

“As far as I know . . . tell you the truth, I haven't seen Shawna in a few
days. . . . Anyway, I wouldn't want to jinx her, you know?” She'd twisted the Kleenex in her hand into a knot. I tried to think of something reassuring to say.

“Maybe if she saw how proud you were of her recovery it would help.”

Aleesha bit her lip, which was chapped and peeling. “Yeah, maybe, only—” She stopped at the sound of a deep, booming male voice in the hallway.

“Oh, there's Professor Ballantine,” I said, getting to my feet. “I really do need to talk to him . . . about something to do with Leia . . . do you mind?”

“No problem,” she said, quickly grabbing her backpack off the floor and getting to her feet. “I'll see you at the vigil thing?”

“Sure,” I said, although I had no intention of going to it.

Ross was just passing my door when Aleesha opened it. “Thank God!” I said, more dramatically than I'd meant to. “I need to talk to you.” At the sight of him—the strong, clean line of his jaw, the touch of gray at his temples that only made him look more professorial, the hooded eyes that seemed to convey an intimate knowledge of grief even on good days and that now looked haunted—I wanted to rest my head on his broad, oxford cloth–covered chest and weep. All the anger I'd felt last night had fallen away.

“Nan,” he said, managing to inject a wealth of sympathy into the single syllable. “I know how awful this must be for you. I've been looking all over for you.”

He had? I was about to tell him that I'd been right here waiting for him, but he took my elbow and angled his body so I could see the two people behind him. Although the man was large, he was hunched over in a way that made him seem small, his broad, pale face ghostly in the fluorescent hall lights. He was leaning protectively over a tiny brunette.

“I'd like you to meet Marie and Chad Dawson,” Ross said. “Leia's parents.”

I
could only hope that the Dawsons thought the horror on my face was at what had happened to them—not that I was being introduced to the parents of the girl the police suspected I had killed.

“I'm so sorry for your loss,” I said woodenly, recalling how empty those words had sounded when people had said them to me. As if I'd misplaced Emmy. Carelessly. “Leia was a remarkable young woman and a talented writer.”

Marie dabbed her eyes, which were red but still lovely. “You must be the writing teacher she was always talking about . . . Ms. Lewis?”

“Nan,” I said. “It's been a great privilege to teach Leia, Mr. and Mrs. Dawson. She was an extraordinary young woman. I can't imagine—”

“Leia said you lost your little girl when she was only four,” Marie said, clasping my hand. “So you
do
know. You know that we have to be grateful for the time we had them.” She drew in a shaky breath and I suddenly realized how little was holding this woman together. Chad put his arm around her and murmured her name. “I bet you see your little girl's face every day of your life, don't you?”

I nodded, unable to speak, and clutched the barrette in my pocket until it dug into my skin.

“Well, Leia's with her now,” Marie said. “I just know my girl will be looking out for her.”

Whenever well-meaning sympathizers had reassured me that Emmy was in heaven I'd wanted to scream at them that even if I believed in heaven it was no comfort to think of Emmy there. Now, however, I thought of Emmy and Leia both killed on the same spot and thought maybe there was something to it. Maybe that's why I had found the barrette. Maybe it was a sign that Emmy was with Leia.

“That's a lovely thought, Mrs. Dawson,” I said. “I can see where Leia got her generosity.”

Marie squeezed my hand and looked up at her husband, whose bland, washed-out face lit up with love for his wife. For an awful moment I almost envied them. There would be no recriminations between them, no accusations that Marie hadn't been watching when her daughter had strayed down the hill and wandered onto the road—

“Will you walk with us to the candlelight vigil?” Marie asked. “We can say a prayer for Emmy too.”

The candlelight vigil was the last place I wanted to go. I could almost hear Anat's voice yelling in my ear,
No! Tell her no! You shouldn't even be here!
But how could I tell this lovely grieving woman that I wouldn't go to her daughter's vigil? “Of course,” I told her. “It would be an honor.”

*  *  *

As we walked from the faculty tower toward the Peace Garden, the Dawsons relived their terrible morning. I had the feeling they had been telling this story all day and that they would be telling it for the rest of their lives.

“When the call came this morning,” Marie said, “I thought it was about Tad. He's our eldest and he's serving in Afghanistan. I'd been up since four. I knew something was wrong.”

“Marie gets these feelings,” Chad said. “She knew when Leia had appendicitis before the doctors did. And when Lucy tore her ACL in soccer Marie called me on the cell before I'd even crossed the field and gotten to her.”

“Chad coaches the girls' soccer team,” Marie said.

“I suppose that Tad and Travis won't be able to come for the service,” Ross said, smoothly segueing from soccer practice to funerals and just as smoothly recalling the name of their other son. “Leia told me that Travis was in the Peace Corps. What about your . . . Lucy . . . ?” He'd been about to say
your younger daughter
and caught himself. They only had one daughter now. It was a tiny slip, but one I was surprised that Ross would make.

“We left her with Chad's sister. She's making the arrangements at our church and the boys are coming stateside for the funeral,” Marie answered. “I made the calls from the train.”

“Marie runs a tight ship,” Chad said with a look of pride. “We were stationed overseas for twelve years—switched countries every three years.”

“Leia mentioned that you lived abroad,” I said. “She said it was one of the things that made her a writer.”

“She said you'd made her a writer,” Marie said simply.

I was unable to speak for a moment. Marie, seeming to understand, remarked on the candles set alongside the path in paper gift bags printed with ladybugs. Dottie's idea, I imagined. “Why, they look just like the goody bags for Leia's Sweet Sixteen!” she exclaimed. “I can tell how much Leia was loved here.” Chad took his wife's hand and together they walked forward on the path, leaving Ross and me alone together. I realized that this might be my best opportunity to talk to Ross before the vigil.

“Look, Ross, there's something I really need to tell you. The police brought me in today—”

“The police,” he said, looking disgusted, “are clueless. They asked me a bunch of questions, too, about Leia's and my ‘relationship' as they called it, implying that there was something untoward about it. As if that would have anything to do with some drunk mowing Leia down on the river road.”

I stared at him, shocked at his venom; he so rarely allowed himself to get rattled. He was always the strong, reliable one who stayed calm when all around him were losing their heads. Being accused of having improper relations with a student, though, would be the one thing that would unhinge him.

“I'm sorry, Ross, that's preposterous. I'm sure they're just casting about. Still, I think you should know—”

“Later, okay, Nan? I can't take on one more thing today. I just need to get through
this
.” He flung his hand toward the crowd that waited at the end of the path in the Peace Garden and I noticed that he was shaking. It took a lot of strength to look as strong as he always did. He had once told me that he was exhausted after his classes. I'd been surprised because he always made teaching look easy. He was known for his relaxed, affable style in the classroom. When I had said that to him he laughed. “It's a performance. That's the only way to engage these students. You have to
emote
. Sometimes it just drains the life out of me.”

He looked now as if he'd been drained. I couldn't burden him with my own situation—at least not until after the vigil.

We walked the rest of the way in silence on the candlelit path that meandered through a snow-covered field and a pine copse toward the Peace Garden. Before Acheron was a teaching college it had been part of the Blackwell estate. When the Blackwells lost their only child to a tragic drowning accident—and Charlotte Blackwell killed herself—the estate had lapsed into disrepair and was eventually sold to the state to become a teacher's college and then a state college. The mansion had been turned into a classroom building, linoleum laid over hardwood floors, and acoustic tiles dropped under ornate plaster. Utilitarian brick buildings had sprung up around it in the 1930s and then even uglier cinder block constructions in the fifties.

The one place on campus that retained the feel of the old estate was in the gardens. Most of the statuary was gone except for a few chipped goddesses and satyrs, which students dressed up in graduation robes
at commencement and sometimes moved around as pranks. The rose beds and perennial borders had grown wild and unkempt for years. “It was a popular make-out spot where everyone went to get high in the sixties,” Dottie had told me. “In the eighties a group formed to save the garden.” Although it hadn't been restored to its Italianate splendor at least you didn't find cigarette butts and condoms in it anymore. (The Blackwells' old boathouse on the river had replaced it as a favorite make-out and pot den since then.) And under a coat of snow, with the sun setting over the mountains across the river and candles glowing, it looked like it belonged at a fancy private school, not a state school.

There must have been a hundred people gathered already. As the Dawsons came into the garden Dottie gave them each a candle protected by a white paper shell. She was wearing a heavy purple cape that made her look like a Druid priestess, the candlelight turning her face pink. As if by prearranged signal, the group parted in half for the Dawsons and then formed a loose circle around them. A lectern had been set up at the center of a colonnaded apse that stood at the end of the garden overlooking the river. Abigail Martin, the college president, came forward to shake the Dawsons' hands and give them each a chilly embrace. Abigail was an able administrator, but not the warmest woman. I'd noticed over the last year that she often called on Ross for support at public events. Ross was so much better at making people feel important. I could understand why she'd sent him to collect the Dawsons but I hoped that they didn't see it as a slight. She said a few words now—bland words of condolence—and then turned the lectern over to those who knew Leia better.

Ross took the lectern first and spoke movingly of his impressions of Leia. He told a story about how Leia had taken over reading aloud a memoir piece for a girl who was crying too hard to read it herself. “Leia was always willing to speak up for others, to give voice to the silenced. I cannot believe that Leia's voice has been silenced with death. I must believe her voice will live on in all of those she would have spoken for.”

One by one, Leia's classmates and teachers came forward and read poems and told stories about Leia. Joan Denning told a long rambling story about how Leia said she believed in ghosts because she'd seen one when she was twelve and so Joan knew Leia's spirit would always haunt Acheron. John Abbot read Leia's favorite passage from
Wuthering Heights
. Cressida talked about how Leia had been so dedicated to her students at the prison that she'd gone to some of their parole hearings. Listening to the moving tributes, it was easy to forget that the police had questioned me, but when Ross motioned me to the dais, I hesitated. How could I stand up there and talk about Leia while a forensics team labored in a police lab scraping Leia's blood off my tire? But everyone was looking at me, waiting. It would look worse, I realized, if I refused to speak.