Ruin Falls (21 page)

Liz wandered blindly back into the house. Walked in circles until the smell of coffee lured her toward the kitchen. Tim was standing there, wiping his hands on a dishcloth and watching the dark brew drip.

He took a cup from a shelf and offered it to her.

Something in Liz seized up and she snatched the cup away. “Isn’t this my job?” she snapped. “I can make coffee in my own damn house.”

“Of course you can,” Tim said, his voice hoarse. “You just looked as if you could use someone—”

“What?” Liz broke in. “To do it for me? Do I need everyone to do everything for me?”

“Just make you a cup of coffee once in a while.”

Liz turned around, hunting milk and sugar, and Tim reached for her. She whirled. His fingers felt like brands upon her shoulder, and his eyes were dark coals.

“Liz,” he said. “I’ve never been the one who doubted you.”

Something in Liz began to move and break up. Portions of time, relationships shifting like tectonic plates. She was the one who had found PEW, even if the chance that it might contain any relevant information was uncertain. She’d discovered the tragedy that had assailed Paul long ago, and the link it might hold to today. She had a key now, a literal one.

Liz and Tim seemed to realize at the same moment that his hand was still gripping her. He let go, averting his gaze. Liz thought about the glass that had been punched in last night, and wondered why, of all people, Tim had been the one to open this window into herself.

“So you do think there’s a connection,” she said when she could trust herself to speak. “Between the things that happened here and Ally and Reid going missing.”

Tim responded swiftly. “As I mentioned before, I don’t trust coincidences.”

Liz nodded toward the table. “Please. Have some coffee.”

Tim took a seat and drank from his mug.

After a moment, Liz joined him.

“So, do you investigate?” she asked him.

Tim hesitated.

“I mean, this is criminal, right? Destruction of property? Trespassing?”

Tim tented his hands. “Normally I’d submit a report and we might have a man drive by your house a few times over the next couple of days. Make sure the guy doesn’t come back.”

Liz nodded. “And abnormally?”

Tim began drumming his fingers upon the surface of the table; they made a steady beat. She watched his hand move rhythmically.

“Look, I could do a more thorough search for a company called Crane’s. If I come up with anything, I’ll take a trip out to see if anyone matching your description works there.” Tim paused. “This guy sounds like he’d stand out.”

Liz could still see that sweeping wave of hair, the sheen over the man’s eyes that masked any feeling. He’d spoken with exquisite precision, yet he’d just been crawling around on her roof in order to smash
through the window while Liz sat at Paul’s computer, blithely unaware. Jill and Lia had been working right nearby, also unwitting. Liz’s insides gave a slow heave.

She fought to keep her voice level. Emotion still churned inside her, a mix of many things, only one of them her nightmarish last night. “Thanks, Tim. I really appreciate that.”

He stood up, coffee cup empty, and came to a halt behind her chair. Liz closed her eyes, listening to the sound of Tim’s breathing. It was slow and even, strangely comforting.

“I hope that I …” he said from above.

But his words tapered off, and Liz was left listening only to the firm retreat of Tim’s boots and wondering what he had decided not to say.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

S
he looked up a glazier, a real one, and arranged for an emergency appointment that morning. Liz tidied up the study, then the rest of the house. She stood by while the window was repaired, no word or notice paid to which glass was chosen.

There was only one place to go after that.

Liz drove through the gates and parked in Paul’s faculty spot. Security wouldn’t be too voracious about checking stickers before the start of the semester, and Liz wanted to get close to her husband’s office. She was tired, sleep largely lost to her now.

Paul had gone to school here in the mid-nineties, coming up from Junction Bridge, while Liz herself had been downstate at SUNY Binghamton. Liz had once expected to be a Lit professor, or maybe a writer, and Binghamton had a great English department. Funny how things ended up. Liz had met Paul during their senior years while she was home on break. After they started dating, she’d seen the struggle he went through as academia began to close in on itself. Even after getting a master’s degree—which Liz helped pay for, working mostly pointless admin jobs—Paul hadn’t been able to find any position besides a non-tenure track at his alma mater. But those early years of their marriage had served a purpose. They’d exposed Liz to Paul’s preoccupation with matters of the earth, and she had discovered a
deep vein within herself that connected her to the outdoors. It made any life of the mind feel imprisoning.

She tried Paul’s office door, not surprised to find it locked. Backtracking down the hall, she was relieved to see Marjorie at her desk.

The secretary looked up, such a light of hope in her eyes that Liz almost pitied her.

“He’s not back,” Liz said.

Marjorie closed a window on her computer. “I suppose you wouldn’t be here if he were.”

“No,” Liz agreed. That had been the problem, hadn’t it? Her willingness to let life proceed largely at Paul’s direction, and unseen by her? She took a breath. “Marjorie, do you know if Paul kept a lockbox of some sort? Maybe in his office?”

“Not that I know of.” Marjorie rose. “But you can certainly check.”

The two of them walked down the hall so that Marjorie could unlock Paul’s office door. This room was neater and more spare than his office at home. The bookshelves contained the popular texts that Paul used in his courses—
Bet the Farm
,
Garbology
,
The Humanure Handbook
—but no teetering rows of journals. The desk was bare; Paul had simply brought his one laptop back and forth. And most of the drawers were empty. Here at school, Paul had demonstrated his philosophy of small living. There certainly was no lockbox. Liz felt something inside her deflate. She reached into her purse, reassuring herself that she still had the key, even though there seemed no place to make it fit.

“Thanks, Marjorie,” Liz said, watching the secretary read resignation in her eyes. “I think I’ll go try to catch Lia.”

She could thank their intern for her help last night, and apologize for the tension coming from Jill. Although part of her wondered what her best friend meant by
untrustworthy
. Jill had been right about the charges she leveled at Liz. Maybe she was on to something where Lia was concerned, too.

Liz steered toward the students’ workspace. She got twisted around in the halls and had to walk through an adjoining department. Urban Planning and Design didn’t seem to fit the scope of Ag,
but as Liz walked, she realized that dividing walls were coming down. There were now farms on high-rise rooftops, and city dwellings had postage stamp–sized gardens. Liz’s eye was drawn to the display of one student’s work. Jeffrey Matters seemed to be interested in the transformation of gray water. His model contained a tiny stand of cattails: invasive phragmites that filtered contaminants so that only pure drinking water remained.

Liz could’ve remained there a while, studying the minuscule grouping of carp in a circle of glossy painted water and reading how they fed on shrimp the size of rice, but she wanted to try to catch Lia. She sorted out the skein of hallways, coming at last to the retrofitted closet. Liz knocked, but nobody answered. She tried to swivel the knob, but it was closed up tight, and she found herself backtracking to the football display case, staring at its sorrowful contents.

Liz turned at the sound of footsteps. Adoring Girl—Sara—wore a long, flowered dress, and was knotting a blond dreadlock around her finger as she meandered along.

Liz called out, and the girl stopped.

“Is Professor Daniels back?” Sara dropped her eyes, but couldn’t hide a flush that deepened the color in her cheeks. “I mean, I just had a question to ask him. About getting into one of his classes.” The flush had gone from a ruddy pink to something that looked almost blistered.

What kind of teacher had Paul been? Liz wondered for perhaps the first time. There seemed to be tiers between students, cosseted favorites who got to make use of that room, then further elevated ones, like Jake, whom this girl appeared to admire almost as much as she did Paul. As a teacher, Liz realized, Paul created the same structure as had arisen in his family. There was Ally, on the surface seeming to share Liz’s love of the earth, but really putting her wares on display for her dad. Reid, taking anything, everything, he could for himself, and literally afraid of the ground, the final resting place it posed. And Paul, always, always at the center of everything.

“No,” Liz said. “He isn’t.”

The girl began shuffling forward again, sandals flapping on her feet.

“Sara?”

She stopped.

“I came in through Urban studies,” Liz said.

Sara nodded.

“There’s a student in that department—Jeffrey Matters? He seems to be interested in some of the same things Paul is.”

The blush, which had never entirely faded, flared again on Sara’s cheeks. “Tree.”

“He’s interested in trees?”

She let out a snort. “Um, for sure. But also, he calls himself Tree.”

“Really?” Liz said.

“I know,” Sara replied. “Can you say
pretentious
?”

“Did he and Paul know each other?”

Sara’s face went redder and angry. “
Know
isn’t the right word. He was positively awful to Professor Daniels. Really made an ass of himself.”

“What happened?” Liz said. “When?”

The girl faced her. “It was the night of the faculty dinner. This guy shouldn’t even have been there, it’s not like he’s faculty. But he’s sainted for whatever reason and so he came.”

Liz nodded patiently. “What did he do?”

Sara gave a sharp thrust of her shoulders. “Said awful things. About how Professor Daniels should climb back into his ivory tower and let the real men climb trees.”

“Real men climb trees?” Liz repeated, baffled.

“I told you he’s an ass.”

“But—” Liz broke off, knowing how Sara was likely to take this. “It sounds like it was Paul who was humiliated. It sounds like this guy made a fool of him.”

“No one could humiliate Professor Daniels,” Sara told her, eyes shining.

No one ever had, that was probably true. Paul had been in command when it came to environmental politics for as long as Liz could remember. The vacations they took, or didn’t take. His desire to control waste and contaminants, even where the children were concerned. Especially where the children were concerned. For a long
time, Liz had seen this as a result of Paul’s need to be revered. But that wasn’t entirely fair. Paul truly had an investment in more responsible living. How could this guy have said otherwise?

Sara was still speaking. “He thinks his department’s so much better than ours, new and shiny, and Ag is for a prior century,” she said. “Well, I don’t see him making inroads in New York City either. We can’t even start county-wide composting up here.”

Liz nodded, distracted. “Do you know how I’d find him?”

“Not sure why you’d want to, but he lives right off campus. You know that road you come to if you don’t turn in at the gates? But don’t look for a house—he has a grant.”

“A grant that allows him not to live in a house?”

Sara snorted again. “You’ll see.”

THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

A
bby woke before the sun came up. Finally, the heat had broken, and the bed she inhabited felt cool, not warmed even by a whole night’s tossing and turning. Cold breaths of air emanated from the other, empty side of the bed.

She hadn’t expected to be here still.

A text had arrived, giving an address where she and Cody would be met. Apparently their destination was all but impossible to access: a tangle of overgrown passages, hardly roads, led in. The only other way was more difficult yet and needed to be traversed on foot.

Abby had gone to the meeting point immediately. In hindsight, poring over the sparse words in the message while dark descended and she and Cody continued to wait, Abby realized that she hadn’t been given a time or a date, just the place.

She had jumped the gun in her urgency to get away.

She texted, asking if there was any way they could be picked up that night, but no one was able to get away.

She and Cody were creeping around behind the house like characters in a spy movie. Then the owner had come out, clearly perplexed, distraught even, and Abby had really felt like someone in a movie, running away with her son.

She pulled the covers up to her throat.

This couldn’t take too much longer. Bill was closing in. Abby knew
it, like she’d always been able to intuit Bill’s presence, his endless wants and needs and demands, even those he never made explicit.

Bill had never abused her physically; he was far too buttoned-up for that. But Abby had always sensed a potential for violence simmering like liquid beneath a lid. If a man like Bill—straitjacketed by regulation—ever blew, it would be a volcano. Even without physical force, Bill had made a zombie out of her, a reflection of his every vision. Abby had to dress as he demanded, keep her hair and face and body to standards he set, read about subjects he deemed worthy, fill her days with the activities he decreed, and worst of all, the camel-breaking straw, raise Cody as Bill dictated. Only in the lightness of her new state could Abby feel the full weight of the orders her husband had issued every day and the rules she’d had to follow.

Which brought her to the frigid state of this bed.

Abby kicked back the sheets and got up.

Today Cody was going to start school.

Abby decided to make French toast. Despite the fact that she lived at a slow boil of fear these days, Cody deserved to have his special day marked. Abby hurried with the mixture and the soaking, then fired up the stove. She flipped a piece over, slapping it back down in the pan. She should be dressed already, a dash of makeup on, smiling at Cody as he ate breakfast. She had fallen behind; the rigid schedule Bill set served some purpose. If Abby didn’t hurry—
run around like a harridan
, she heard Bill accuse—Cody would be late his first day.