The Black Hour (11 page)

I sat on the edge of my couch and eased back into the cushions. In less than twenty minutes, I’d have to move to a straight-backed chair or to bed, or I’d be stuck here until someone found me. Twenty minutes spent staring at the TV? Flipping through an academic journal? Or a celebrity magazine Cor had left? Calling my ex-boyfriend to ask him about his wedding? I wished I had a book. A page-turner. A trashy mystery.

Except—did I really need more lurid whodunit in my life?

Leonard Lehane. His name came to me like the image of his hand rising out of the dark hallway. All I knew was that name, the spare bits they’d published in the few articles I’d been allowed to read, sitting up in the hospital bed with a series of titanium rods holding me together. A chemistry major or engineer or something. Not a religious zealot, not an activist, not a peep out of the kid as far as any hatred toward me or women or academics or anyone else.

And yet he’d been willing to wait. He’d been willing to kill, and willing to die instead of facing the consequences. What had his mother said in one article I’d read? A quiet boy, shy, troubled. I didn’t care about any of that—what else could she say? Why had he wasted his trouble on
me
?

My mind drifted to Doyle. What was he doing now, nine-thirty on a school night, first week of the semester? New wife, new beginning. I imagined her a blonde and tall because I was neither. What did Doyle’s kids call her? Were they at the wedding? The family photo presented itself: Doyle and his bride and Sarah, eleven, the maid of honor, and Ty, eight, holding the rings on a pillow at his dad’s side. The best man. I was nobody’s mom, but I missed the sound of my name coming from their mouths. I’d never see them again, unless Doyle brought the family to campus.

Oh, God. What if he brought her to campus?

What if she worked at the university?

What if I knew her?

What if she started hanging around Dale Hall all the time? Dropping in between classes, bringing over little boxed lunches from the gourmet grocery to share with him, laughing with her mouth wide.

I could see her head thrown back, hear her bawdy laugh, and I had no idea who she was.

Would they have more kids together? The blonde, sitting in Doyle’s cozy office with her feet in his lap, caressing her own swelling stomach.

And what did she think of me? The poor ex-girlfriend, hobbled and alone.

Barren. Ruined.

I couldn’t stop. I had two trains of thought—gunshot, Doyle, Doyle, gunshot. They were wires, crossed, tangled—spliced. Gunshot, Doyle. That was all there was.

If I didn’t figure this out, I didn’t know if there’d ever be anything else.

I leveraged myself out of the couch with my cane, my leg and hip already stiff, and staggered to my office. This space wasn’t tidy. It didn’t have to be. I hadn’t done any work since—
the accident
, my mind supplied. Ausra was under orders to leave it alone, but the room embarrassed me. My life embarrassed me. I couldn’t believe I’d let Cor hire a housekeeper. Every time she came, I let myself spiral into guilt and self-loathing, wracked by the social class implications of a woman who’d grown up poor having a cleaning service—no, a cleaning
woman
, another human who had to deal with the details of my day-to-day mess.

The desk had grown a layer of debris: the few news clippings that had been Corrine-approved and delivered on her visits, sympathy cards, and the other strange but inoffensive correspondence I’d received.

One of the things I’d so carefully filed away in the pile was a note left on my car a few weeks ago. I hadn’t even been driving my car at the time, but, left sitting alone with its sad blue wheelchair hangtag in my building’s parking lot after everyone else had gone to work, my car provided an easy mark.

That was the day Corrine had come with more magazines and found the kitchen trash heaping. When she came back from taking it out, her cheeks were pink from two minutes in the sun.

“Do you know someone named—Rory?” She handed me the note and dropped into the couch next to me. “It was on your windshield.”

“No. What do you think? Man or woman?”

“Does that really say Rory?”

“Rory McDaniel,” I read. The name and a number, that was all. “Lawyer. Or reporter. They’re the ones who leave cryptic notes.”

“Have you—would you talk to one of them?”

“And say what?”

“Don’t you want—” She’d grown pinker. “It’s infuriating. Someone can just—attack, and there’s nothing you can do to get your life back.”

I hadn’t quite given up my life yet, but I didn’t say so. “I think I’ve had all the publicity I’ll ever need in one lifetime.”

“If you’re sure.” She hadn’t pushed me, which I always appreciated about Cor. She saw my side.

Publicity I didn’t need. But a reporter, someone connected, someone out there gathering information, might be useful. I didn’t have much to give in return—but the reporters didn’t believe that.

The article Corrine had clipped for me from the
Willetson Courier
lay near the top of the desk debris. In the center of the clipping was a large cut-out for what must have been an alarming photo. I was grateful not to know what I was missing. Then my faculty photo, looking pretty good. Leonard Lehane’s blurry student ID photo. I studied his face again. He looked into the camera, fierce, determined. He could have been anyone, and yet he wasn’t anyone I thought I’d ever met. I skimmed over the article, an even-keeled write-up, just the early facts and nothing sensational. Cor wouldn’t have let me keep it otherwise.

Byline: Rory McDaniel.

I hesitated for another moment, and then picked up the phone and dialed the number on the note. An automated voice-mail system picked up, a robot voice inviting me to leave my information. “This is a message for Rory McDaniel,” I said. “Amelia Emmet.” I added my office phone number and hung up. There. We had shared the same information with each other. If that didn’t entice him, her, whoever Rory McDaniel was, I didn’t know what would.

I stared at the phone until the object itself grew strange and the regret kicked in. What door had I just opened?

Corrine had a coffee waiting for me when I arrived at the office the next morning. She sat behind her desk with her phone to her ear and hung up when I came in.

“You are an angel,” I said, slinging myself into place behind my desk and taking a sip. “And I don’t even believe in celestial winged beings.”

“None of them came to visit you in the hospital?”

“Only you.”

“Thought I’d save you the trip over to Smith.”

I hit the power button on my computer, nibbling at the cup’s plastic lid. The trip to Smith wasn’t that difficult, now that I’d given up on the stairs. “My doctors do want me to walk around,” I said.

“The same cranks who told you not to drink with your pain meds? Are we listening to them?” Corrine’s phone began to ring. She tapped at her keyboard, shaking her head so that her ponytail swung side to side.

“I’m just saying. You don’t have to save the trip—we could walk over together.”

“I was over there early.”

Cor was no more a morning person than I was. I started to say so, but then I saw the two of us inching our way across the knoll between the two buildings, and everyone pretending not to watch. Being stared at wasn’t my favorite pastime, but how did Corrine feel, dragging her feet along after me?

“Thanks. Early bird catches the beans for us both,” I said. Cor’s cheek turned red. Her phone rang and rang. “Are you going to get that?”

“Students,” she said.

“Trying to get into your classes.”

“Or out of them.” The phone finally stopped. “You had a call earlier. And your student stopped by already.”

“Which one?”

“Collar buttoned up past the point of being able to breathe?”

“Nathaniel,” I said. “My graduate assistant.”

“How’d you get a grad assistant?”

“I believe I’m being pitied.”

She looked away. At least she hadn’t called me lucky again. Sometimes, when she said things without thinking, Corrine seemed younger to me than she was. We were nearly the same age, but she really could pass for one of the students. She had long, messy hair, baby-faced pink cheeks and freckles. We’d been friends the minute she’d joined the faculty. A true friend like I hadn’t enjoyed since childhood, she knew my doubts, knew where I’d grown up and how. I could be myself with Cor—my real self, not the face I put on when I walked into the rarified air of Rothbert’s country club training ground. The real Amelia Emmet, who wondered if I belonged, who wondered if I would ever feel as though I did.

Sometimes, though, she got things incredibly wrong. Like with Doyle.

When Doyle and I were together, there’d be small slights, little digs and jokes that didn’t need to be made. I’d started wondering if Corrine had designs on Doyle, but she didn’t seem to see him that way. “Your boyfriend,” she’d say, her voice contemptuous. Worried that I’d get some form of nepotism within the department? None of the other faculty showed signs of concern, and, as Joss had pointed out, they’d all known.

“Maybe she’s jealous of me, not you,” Doyle said once, and I had to think about that long and hard—she hadn’t liked Joe much, either—before I dismissed it. I decided the jealousy stemmed from my being in a relationship at all, when she wasn’t and, as far as I could tell, hadn’t ever been. Cor had grown up in an ivy-covered house far up the lakeshore, a place I’d visited once over winter holidays when I couldn’t argue that Christmas Eve alone sounded more fun than hot cider with her family. The opulence astounded me. I spent the evening sneaking away to count bathrooms and trying to justify that Cor, my dearest friend, turned into a petulant teenager in the presence of her parents. And in the presence of my boyfriend. I’d learned to take it in stride. And now it didn’t matter.

Her phone started ringing again. She pulled her ponytail tighter and ripped the phone off its cradle. “Hello,” she said, her voice flat.

I tried to direct all my attention to my computer. In an office as tight as ours, we had to try not to hear each other’s conversations. If my phone rang and it was Doyle calling from off campus, Corrine might choose that minute to walk down the hall to the bathroom or to take a trip to check our mailboxes downstairs. Sometimes her mother called—she always rolled her eyes in the exact same way—and I took my turn giving privacy.

This sounded like a student call, so I stayed put and fired up my e-mail. What with the party and the impromptu happy hour, and then last-minute prep for my classes, I hadn’t cracked it yet this semester. I had a plan: Delete everything sent to me prior to a week before this semester started. Anyone who had tried to contact me over the last ten months probably knew by now why I hadn’t gotten back to them. Or they were trying to get in touch with me for reasons I didn’t care about.

Pages and pages of e-mails disappeared at the click-click of my mouse, but then I reached the files from last fall, then October, then October 11. Messages I should have received along with the rest of the campus—reports of gunshots, emergency alerts to stay inside, high-priority alerts to the inhabitants of Dale Hall to close and lock their doors, not to emerge from their offices no matter what they heard. Bulletins to keep students away from this corner of campus. Alert. Alert.

One e-mail from Doyle, my name in the subject line.

I couldn’t read it. I deleted it with the others.

That left me with a manageable amount of correspondence to ignore. I picked up my phone. I had managed to clear out the voice mail in a similar slash-and-burn fashion the day before, but I already had another message. A man’s voice.

“—stop—” I heard Corrine say, her voice throwing me for a second. I missed part of my message but caught the name. So Rory McDaniel was a man. The things you learned in college. Mr. McDaniel seemed to be giving his phone number again, along with information to meet him. Today, the Mill, at a time I might be able to make if I left the moment my class ended. He didn’t seem to be asking but telling.

I hung up my phone and thought about that. I wasn’t even on the fence: I wanted to stand him up.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Corrine said under her breath but didn’t hang up.

I grabbed my files and textbook, my coffee, my cane. “Class,” I said, and ducked out, closing the door behind me, although I was dying to know about Corrine’s call. It hadn’t sounded like a call from a student after all but sounded, in fact, like a lover’s spat. Doyle was married, and Cor had a boyfriend? What else had happened while I was gone?

Outside in the hall, I was met by the pale-lipped co-ed from the past. If these walls could talk—

I didn’t finish the thought. I didn’t want to hear what these particular walls could say.