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.Sally turns out to be wrong.At breakfast, in the Dining Hall, Shelley—or Dean Drake, as she likes to be called now—announces that since it is the last day of the term, classes are canceled.“I don’t want anyone falling into the clove,” she says.She doesn’t have to add like Dean St.Clare, like Isabel for those names to reverberate in the silence that follows her announcement.The only one who does speak is Dymphna, but it’s a muttered whisper that only I hear because I’m standing next to her by the tea urn.“Dean St.Clare would never cancel classes for a smidgen of snow like this.”Surprised by the edge in her voice, I glance at her.Her round dimpled face is pink with suppressed anger.She may be the only one at Arcadia who really misses Ivy St.Clare.“It’s probably Dean Drake’s inexperience that makes her a bit overcautious.I’m sure she’s just doing what she thinks is best to keep the students safe.”“Are you saying that Miss St.Clare didn’t have the children’s safety in mind, then?” she asks, turning an even brighter shade of pink.“Don’t tell me you believe that nonsense about her hurting Isabel Cheney? She’d never do something like that.”“But she confessed to killing Lily Eberhardt,” I say as gently and softly as I can.I notice that Shelley, while outlining the guidelines for how the dorm rooms should be left, is glaring in our direction.“Well, yes, I wasn’t entirely surprised to hear that.My mother always said that Miss St.Clare couldn’t abide Lily—that she was horrible jealous of her from the day she set foot here.But that was something altogether different.Arcadia was everything to the dean.She wouldn’t do anything to harm it—or one of the students.”I could point out that she might have thought killing Isabel was her way of protecting the school or that it was an accident, but Clyde Bollinger has come up to the urn, holding his mug out for a cup of tea.“Arcadia blend?” he asks.“Sorry, love, it’s all gone and the new dean says we’ve got to serve decaffeinated beverages from now on,” Dymphna informs him.“So it’s chamomile or raspberry leaf, the latter being most beneficial in the toning of the uterus.”Poor Clyde blanches.“Uh … no thanks.Could I have a word with you, Ms.Rosenthal?”“Sure,” I say.“Why don’t we go up to the Reading Room? It should be empty while everyone’s here.”Clyde nods gratefully and precedes me, giving a wary backward glance at Dymphna in case she might be planning to “tone” any other of his organs.I have to hurry to keep up with his long-legged lope out of the Dining Hall and up the stairs to the Reading Room.“If you’re after me to fix the tea and coffee situation, I’m afraid I can’t help,” I tell him when we get to the lounge, “but if you come by my cottage I will brew you a strong cup of Earl Grey.” It occurs to me that it might be a nice gesture to invite some of my students to the cottage since Shelley’s decision to cancel classes on the last day has robbed me of a chance to say goodbye to them.“It’s not about the tea, Ms.Rosenthal.It’s about Chloe.”“What is it?” I ask, motioning for him to sit down on the couch and pulling a chair in front of him.He folds his long lanky body awkwardly down onto the low couch and crouches forward, elbows on knees.I can’t help but feel a pang of guilt.I was worried about Chloe when I learned that she was not going home after the dean’s death, but I’ve been too busy tending to Sally to keep more than a cursory eye on Chloe over the last few weeks.She’s seemed subdued, but not overly upset.She handed in her assignments on time, answered questions in class, and even looked like she’d put on a few pounds, although that might have been a trick of the heavy sweaters and baggy corduroys she started wearing when the weather grew cold.“She doesn’t still blame herself for Isabel’s death, does she? I tried to tell her that it’s likely the dean pushed her and that she couldn’t have done anything to stop her.”“I don’t think she buys that,” Clyde says.“She says that if she hadn’t played that trick on Isabel she wouldn’t have run up to the ridge.And now she says it’s her fault, too, that the dean died.She wants to perform some kind of purification ceremony on the winter solstice to stop the cycle of guilt and retribution.”“I think we’ve had enough ceremonies,” I tell Clyde.“And besides, the solstice is tomorrow.Everyone will be leaving for winter break.”“But she’s staying here for the break.She’s asked Ms.Drake—I mean Dean Drake—if she can stay on in the dorms and Dean Drake’s said yes.”Getting up to my feet, I tell Clyde not to worry.“I’ll talk to Chloe.If I can’t convince her to go home, I’ll have her stay with me and Sally.We can observe the winter solstice together.”It’s not hard to find Chloe.As soon as breakfast is over, the students abscond with the dining hall trays and run to the hill above the apple orchard for sledding.I pass Sally and Haruko heading back to our cottage.“We still have Dad’s old sled, don’t we?” Sally asks.“You didn’t give it away, did you?”Did I? I wonder with a stab of guilt.I’d gotten pretty ruthless by the end of packing in Great Neck, and I dimly recall placing a price tag on Jude’s old Flexible Flyer in the garage.But then I also remember going out in the middle of the night and taking the price tag off.He’d had it from the time he was eight and he’d pulled ten-month-old Sally on it around the backyard the first year we lived in Great Neck.“I’ll take her sledding when she’s older,” he’d said.Long Island winters being mild and most of our vacations being spent in Florida, the sled didn’t get much use over the last sixteen years, but at the last minute I couldn’t bear to let it go.It felt freighted with all the things we hadn’t gotten to do with Jude.“I think it’s in the garage,” I tell Sally.“I told you,” she says to Haruko.“My mom saved all the important things.” Then she turns and gives me a small smile that nearly breaks my heart [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]