Ruin Falls (17 page)

“He
had
?” Liz could hardly imagine it. A carefree, irresponsible Paul who didn’t always maintain his hold on the righteous position?
Was this what Matthew’s note referred to, the drunk-driving accident that had killed Paul’s best friend? Liz shivered again. The sun was lost down here, and it was cold in the basement.

The secretary seemed to be following her thoughts. “Michael didn’t die in the crash.”

Liz turned to her.

“He survived the accident. He might’ve survived indefinitely, or at least for many years.”

Liz nodded, although she wasn’t sure how to parse the meaning. “Well, that’s better than what I was thinking,” she began.

“It’s worse than what you were thinking,” Marjorie said sharply. “Michael was paralyzed. Completely. He couldn’t even blink. His eyes ran and ran with tears. They gave him a drug to stop the flow, but that caused terrible dryness. Eventually he had to be blindfolded.”

Liz flinched at the image.

“And that was the least of the horrors he had to endure,” Marjorie went on. “Or would have had to endure if he had lived.”

“What happened?”

The secretary took a breath. “Someone put him out of his misery. Michael was smothered to death the day before he was to be moved to a rehab unit.”

“Oh my God. Oh no.” What a cascade of tragedy to descend on boys so young, kids really, just ready for the prime of their lives.

Marjorie’s mouth compressed. “The team lost its star player that year and also its coach.”

“Why the coach?”

Marjorie reached out and took Liz’s hand in her own papery one. “This is why I felt the need to tell you this now.”

Liz stared down at their entangled grips.

“It was Coach Allgood who supplied mercy, to the extent that that’s what it was. I suppose he felt responsible in some way.” The secretary gripped Liz’s hand harder. “Coach killed Michael Brady. He went to prison for it. And Mrs. Daniels, he was just released. His sentence ended on August twenty-second.”

Liz looked up and realized that Marjorie had also put it together.

August twenty-second was the day they had left on vacation.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“D
o you have a little more time?” Marjorie asked. “There’s something else I think you should see. The end of the story, so to speak.”

But Liz had the feeling it would only be the beginning.

They climbed the stairs, Liz feeling the secretary’s laborious step in her own tread, and went outside through the grand set of doors. The library lawn was lush, with a scattering of fallen leaves upon it. Students as bright as the leaves dotted the ground, plugged in to various degrees. Some hunched over laptops; others texted on phones; a few seemed to be doing nothing except enjoying the placid scene, until you noticed the tiny cones in their ears.

“Two hundred people and they’re all completely alone,” Marjorie observed.

It was true. The expected sound track when this many people were gathered in one place was damped. You heard more clicking and beeps than hellos or shouts of traded laughter.

A trio of boys came pushing and clobbering out of the library. They veered around Liz and Marjorie without so much as a glance. Liz wondered when she had crossed that valley, making the switch from college guys sizing her up to picturing Reid as one of them.

Reid. Ally.

Marjorie approached what looked like a solid barricade of trees,
showing no intention of stopping. A small path became apparent at the last moment, threading its way through the woods. The sundappled column of greenery ended, and they came out in a shallow cup of meadow at the bottom of a hill.

How had Liz never discovered this part of campus? Ally would’ve loved it here, she thought with a pang. The grasses were wild and tangled, dotted all over with merrybells, Dutchman’s breeches, and azure bluets. A veritable song of color of the sort that Liz and Jill had labored to duplicate at Roots. The perfection of blooms, the intensity of their tints, distracted Liz’s eye for a moment.

Marjorie had come to a stop several yards ahead. A mixture of bluegrass and rye had been planted there, and mowed in a carefully kempt circle. The sight, amidst all this wildness, was like finding a gemstone in a bed of gravel. The secretary stood in the center of the greenery, her body arched over, and her head lowered. Liz crept closer, leaving the meadow behind to enter the emerald sphere.

In the middle of the green circle, a half-moon shaped piece of granite had been placed. Michael Brady’s name had been carved into the stone. There was also a football helmet that matched the one in Paul’s closet. It had been camouflaged momentarily by the intense green of the grass, but this too looked to be oft-tended, its dome polished to a high shine.

Liz looked at Marjorie.

“Paul tended this memorial,” the secretary explained. “Every year, week in and week out, since Michael Brady died.”

For the first time since Paul had done what he did, drilling down and scooping everything inside her out, Liz felt a flicker of pity. The guilt Paul must have borne for what in the end was a terrible, tragic accident.

Riotous color blurred before her eyes. Liz wiped away a screen of tears.

The secretary spoke again. “Paul was driving Michael’s car.”

There was a shimmer of anger in the statement.

“I don’t think anyone knows why they switched. If they hadn’t, then perhaps they wouldn’t have crashed. Or else …” Marjorie
trailed off before mustering breath. “Perhaps Paul would’ve wound up in the condition poor Michael did.”

It took a second for the horror of the alternative to unspool. Marjorie delivered a brief pat to Liz’s shoulder, signaling goodbye. Liz watched her retreat into the woods.

The silence out here was pressing, intense. Through a barrier of trees lay a shaded grove in which older stones, gray and ivory rectangles, thrust themselves out of the ground like a ring of teeth. The faculty cemetery, where a few of Eastern Ag’s somewhat illustrious members had been laid to rest.

Liz drifted in its direction, her footfalls quiet upon the soil. She slipped through a stand of knotty trees, making her way to the open maw of stones. Much of their lettering had been rubbed off, although some dates were still visible, along with names, even an epitaph or two. A few of these headstones dated back to the eighteen hundreds, sway-backed, leaning over.

Liz crouched and read the carving on one.

To life’s unending cry, I say
There is no end but comes too soon
When ruin falls
The rest comes down
We wish we could but weep again

A scrim of tears blocked her vision.

The cemetery felt unnaturally hushed. Liz squinted to try and catch a glimpse between rutted trunks, but she couldn’t make out even a sliver of light, so closely crowded were the branches and undergrowth. The woods seemed to reach out, beckoning, their twigs like forked fingers. Liz stepped forward, curious to see the effect of so much darkness. It would be like entering a cave, or a mouth.

A hand settled around her wrist.

“Marjorie?” she cried out.

No one answered.

Liz sucked in her breath and whirled.

It wasn’t a hand on her, but the soft and tender edge of a leaf. Liz should’ve been the last person to mistake plant life for a human touch, and she would’ve laughed at herself if she hadn’t been so rattled. She drew air into her chest and turned away from the awful reach of the forest, which more than a century’s worth of Ag students hadn’t been able to tame, or even penetrate.

The word Liz had applied to Matthew and Mary’s farm—
sinister
—arose in her mind like smoke. The harshness of the note Paul’s father had written. But this place was spooked, too. Paul had concealed the fact that he’d played football from her for a reason. He had brought about his best friend’s paralysis, caused Michael Brady’s football career and ultimately his life to be snuffed out, in one moment of abandon. As far as Liz could tell, that night in the car had been the last time her husband had ever been carefree.

Of the cast of characters back then, the first was missing and the second was dead.

Which meant that Liz had better track down the third.

CHAPTER THIRTY

A
text from Tim arrived as she hurried to her car.

that site u found is sealed like a grave. i know an IT guy i can call

A late summer wind was kicking up again. Humped mountains of clouds had gathered in the sky, and leaves slapped against one another, fleshy and thick.

Liz drove back to the house whose emptiness now cast such a pall.

Only it wasn’t empty.

Liz caught a glimpse of the gate, swung partway open, and heard voices coming from the gardens. She nearly wept when she spotted Lia squatting beside the high-bush blues, and Jill checking on a cage of predatory mites, one of Paul’s experimental pest-management strategies.

Liz headed over to both women, gladness pumping in her heart. The ground was a welcome cushion as she walked, a medley of earthworms and topsoil and newly deposited compost. Lia looked up as she drew near.

“Liz. Hi.”

Would Jill detect any awkwardness in Lia’s greeting? It wasn’t really fair to blame the girl for how little help she had been. Paul kept his own counsel with Liz, with his students, with everyone.

“Thanks for getting on top of this.” Liz gestured to the raised beds, now clear of weeds.

Jill began walking over, pulling off her pair of gloves. “We’re not on top of it yet. At this rate, we’ll be at it till after dark.”

“It’ll go faster with all of us working,” Liz said. Then she added, “Andy?”

Taking care of her son since his injury had cut into the hours Jill was able to put in at Roots. It was one of the reasons Lia’s assistance had been welcome.

Jill’s face bloomed. “At a party. With lots of reminders to take things slow, and instructions for the chaperones. But he’s going to try.”

“Oh, Jill.” Liz felt a terrible burst. Happiness streaked with envy, like dirt through a dish of food. “That is just great.”

Jill was watching her carefully. “But what about you? What have you been up to?”

Liz looked over her shoulder at the house, recalling the task with which she’d left the students, and also the one Marjorie had inadvertently assigned her. Where had the old football coach gone after he left prison?

“Give me a few,” she said. “Then I’ll come back to help and I’ll tell you.”

Jill looked about to argue, but Liz was already walking off. “And watch out for that wind,” she added, glancing skyward. High-up branches were twisting back and forth, their foliage getting snarled. The temperature was dropping. “There are jackets in the shed.”

“Liz!” Jill called, and she turned. “You watch it, too. Okay? I mean it. You watch out.”

Liz raised one hand in acknowledgment, but the wave felt more like dismissal. It was too late for her to watch out.

In the mudroom, she kicked off her shoes, then went upstairs to Paul’s study. His machine exerted a magnetic pull, and Liz switched it on. The History button brought up the three preserved tabs, and Liz clicked the one with the letters
PEW
, getting that same blank homepage.

Only now she had passwords to try.

Paul’s username was easy to figure; he always used the same one. She typed in
Professor
, then let her fingers hover over the keyboard. The cursor flicked in the second blank slot.

c-l-o-s-e-d-l-o-o-p Liz typed swiftly.

I
NCORRECT PASSWORD
.

w-a-t-e-r-s-h-o-r-t-a-g-e

She hit Enter.

Same message.

What had Tim’s text said? This site was sealed like a grave. The police worked with an IT guy, but that guy didn’t know Paul, the esoteric bank he would draw on for a password.

t-o-p-g-r-o-w

It was a new system of raised beds for roofs, which Adoring Girl had been looking at on her tablet.

I
NCORRECT PASSWORD
. Y
OU HAVE NO TRIES LEFT
. P
LEASE RETURN LATER
.

Liz clenched her hand around the mouse and refreshed the screen. Paul’s three tabs blinked, and for a moment, it wasn’t PEW that drew her attention. She clicked on the page for Eastern Ag, letting her eyes drop from the fall course schedule to the scrolling line of this season’s football games.

She skidded the mouse back over to the PEW page, and entered Paul’s username in a series of rapid clicks.

In the password box she struck an entirely new series of keys.

m-i-c-h-a-e-l-b-r-a-d-y

The screen changed and she was in.

At first glance, PEW was organized in much the same way her gardening boards were. Whenever Liz had a question or just wanted to chat online she went to a site called The Thumb. Most people hung out in The Shed, and there were a few less frequently visited rooms: Exotics, Keeping It Real, The Last Layer.

She had no context to understand the titles of the PEW pages. Road Less Traveled had the most threads and posts, while ones like Playdate, Ingredients, and Pitchfork had fewer. There was a thread
specifically for lurkers. Liz decided to start with Road Less Traveled, staring at a long, glowing chain of threads. Thousands of them. This site had to have been around since the Internet came into broad use.

She chose the most recent, which had the heading
HOW ARE WE
? Liz scrolled, looking for Paul’s avatar and, when she didn’t find it, trying to get a sense for the cast of characters who were here. But it was like arriving at a party where everybody else already knew one another. Liz couldn’t make sense of statements that read: T
HIS ISN
’
T COMPARING BRANDS OF HUMMUS, PEOPLE
. Or, S
OME OF WHAT WE GIVE THEM AMOUNTS TO LIFE OR DEATH
.

Give who? Liz rubbed a hand across her eyes, reopening them to see a stream of avid remarks. You couldn’t start a chat with the most recent thread; you had to go back to the beginning. There Liz would find an appearance of the Professor, get to know the people Paul had been chatting with.