The Dead Place. Rebecca Drake

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СКАЧАТЬ the brisk walk across campus to the beautiful Beaux Arts building that housed the offices for the College of Arts and Sciences.

      His office was on the fifth and top floor in a suite at the end of a long hallway tiled in squares of ocher and black. The brass nameplate on the solid wood door was new, and Ian felt a peculiar mixture of pride and embarrassment, flashing back to his first day as an undergrad, so glad to be there and yet so self-conscious about being the new guy on campus.

      His secretary sat behind a boxy wooden desk that he knew to be a smaller version of the one in the inner office, as if she were in training to be dean.

      Mildred Wooden was small, round almost to the point of being cherubic, and of indeterminate middle age. Ian could have been convinced she was forty-five or sixty-five. Her bob of perfectly smooth ash blond hair was cut too short to flatter her round face, and she favored boxy suits in harsh colors like puce and orange. She moved her small, bejeweled hands when she spoke, and reminded Ian of a tropical bird.

      “You have fifteen calls already this morning, Dean Corbin,” she said in greeting, bobbing up from her seat to wave a handful of papers at him.

      Ian took them from her into his office while she flapped along behind him chattering on about a faculty meeting and other commitments. He barely heard her, focused instead on the view out the two large windows that dominated the back wall of the office.

      Here was the University of Wickfield depicted on postcards undergrads sent home to their parents. The rolling green lawns and massive brick and stone buildings, the bell tower where generations of students had carved their names, the avenue of stately elm trees that had been saplings when President McKinley visited Wickfield, and the gentle curve of the river just visible at the farthest edge of campus that Ian could see. He knew that at this very moment more than one pencil-thin scull was slicing cleanly through its silver surface.

      In the far right corner of his window he could see an edge of the field where the new Performing Arts Center would be built. This was why he’d been wooed, and allowed himself to be wooed, away from NYU. The chance to be part of something like this center came once, if it came at all, in a career. The building would be a design masterpiece, something that would stand for generations, and he would be part of the creative process.

      Of course, it was still in the planning stages. They wouldn’t break ground, wouldn’t even be able to name the place, until funding was secure. Finding the money and convincing the rest of the university community to back this project would be his biggest challenges this year, but just the thought of being able to look out this window and see the product of his hard work excited him.

      “Would you like me to call Mrs. Corbin to let her know about the reception?”

      The question doused his sense of satisfaction like a splash of dirty water. Mildred Wooden paused in the doorway waiting for an answer, fidgeting now with the chain of multicolored pebbles supporting her reading glasses.

      Ian turned his bark of startled laughter into a cough just in time. Ask Kate to attend two events in one week? The old Kate, yes, she’d loved socializing, but not the new one.

      Ever since the assault, she couldn’t bear to be around crowds. She also couldn’t bear to be touched. He understood this rationally. It had made complete sense to him after what happened, and he’d been so careful in those first few months not to so much as brush casually against her.

      But that was eight months ago. Eight damn months and he couldn’t even move his hand toward Kate, much less touch her, without that shuttered look coming over her face and her body stiffening in a way that told him without words that he wasn’t wanted.

      It was hard not to take that personally. It was hard not to think that this withdrawal from the world was also a withdrawal from him.

      The secretary he’d inherited from his predecessor was still fidgeting in the doorway. “No,” he said at last to Mildred Wooden. “I’ll call her myself.”

      Chapter Three

      A new semester meant a fresh start. Barbara Terry repeated this like a mantra as she walked along Penton Street, killing time before her class. Last semester was a thing of the past and she couldn’t change it, couldn’t make those C’s into A’s, couldn’t go back in time and choose to study instead of attending those frat parties.

      A new year meant a new beginning. She’d let herself get distracted last year, new to college, new to an independent life. Saturday night parties became Friday and Saturday nights and even Thursdays sometimes. She’d told herself that she’d catch up on studying, that everybody’s grades slipped their first semester, that she had time to make things right.

      Time had crept up on her along with ten extra pounds. It wasn’t “freshman fifteen” no matter what her brothers said. As if it hadn’t been bad enough going back home with crappy grades, she’d had to put up with them making fun of her. “Some guys like a girl with a little extra meat,” Brad said, poking her in the side, and Jim laughed right along with him.

      She tugged self-consciously at the waistband of her jeans, which was digging uncomfortably into her stomach. It was why she was walking through town. Part of her new plan to cram in exercise where she could, which, coupled with ridding her diet of fat, sugar, and anything yummy, would have her shedding pounds so fast that Brad and Jim would just have to eat their words.

      They were just jealous because she’d gotten as far as college, and when she had a degree and a good job they’d still be squeezing cow teats and kicking manure off the soles of their boots.

      She sighed as she passed Corner Bakery. The smell of freshly made muffins and doughnuts didn’t help her resolve. There was already a queue of people in the shop and she hurried past, determined not to indulge. She wouldn’t yield to temptation, not this year.

      A smiling face looked out at her from a faded poster taped to a lamppost. Rain had washed out the word MISSING printed in caps under the picture. Red ink streaked through the plea for information below.

      There were dozens of these posters when Lily Slocum first went missing, but now they had faded or simply vanished, torn from telephone poles or covered up by new signs.

      Still, it wasn’t as if Lily had been forgotten. There were new security warnings on campus about leaving dorm doors unlocked or walking unescorted late at night, even though everybody knew that Lily disappeared in broad daylight.

      It was warm outside, but Barbara shivered anyway just thinking about it. It wasn’t as if she’d known Lily well, not really, but they’d taken Geo Sci 146 together. Sitting in the same row of the lecture hall for an entire semester counted as some sort of bond even if they never said more than hello outside of class.

      Lily had been friendly during Geo Sci, but she was a junior so naturally she didn’t want to hang out with a newbie freshman. That was what Barbara tried to think, but a part of her always suspected that the real reason Lily never suggested getting together outside of class was because she didn’t want to hang out with someone below her standards.

      Lily was one of the beautiful people, those lucky few who beat the genetic crapshoot. She could sit there mainlining M&Ms in class yet never gain a pound, and even when she showed up for class without makeup and with her long blond hair pulled back in a messy knot, guys would still turn to look at her.

      The truth was that Barbara had been sort of jealous of her. She’d felt bad about that after Lily disappeared. It was weird, thinking of someone just vanishing like СКАЧАТЬ