Unleaving Read online

  Sam inhaled sharply. He tapped the brakes hard. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  Bewildered, Maggie sat up from her slouch and followed his gaze to a faded grayish-green house. On a front porch step sat a young woman, blond and voluptuous, pale hands folded in her lap—obviously waiting. When Sam parked on the side of the road, she smiled wryly and, without unlinking her thumbs, raised both hands for a wave before tucking them against her chest. Her expression turned inquisitive when she switched her attention to Maggie.

  Sam stared. “Linnie.”

  Hard to believe this was the infamous Linnie. She looked angelic. Had the landlord gotten in touch with her as well? “I’ll just stay in the truck for a bit. Give you guys time to talk.” Maggie didn’t want to get involved. Twisting the curling ends of her ponytail, she added, “I don’t mind hanging out here.”

  He cracked the door. “Come on. She won’t stick around. Kyle’s waiting for her.” With a jerk of his chin, he indicated a blue Saab in the driveway.

  A man was sitting in there, sleeping perhaps. His head was tilted, propped up by the car window. Maggie was surprised Linnie would bring a new boyfriend to an old boyfriend’s place. Would Sam confront him? Would they fight? She bit her lip. “I think I’d better … stay out of it. She doesn’t know me.”

  “Actually, she does. Well…” He widened the door. “She knows about you.”

  Maggie absorbed this.

  He shut the door and strode around the truck to the sidewalk. Linnie had gotten to her feet. She murmured a few words in response to something Sam said, but she was still mostly focused on Maggie. She beckoned with a wave. Alarmed, Maggie pretended she hadn’t noticed and slid lower in the seat.

  A moment passed, and then her door was opening.

  “Hey, hi, come on out.”

  “Oh! That—that’s okay. I’m fine in—”

  “Seriously. Join us.” Linnie crossed her arms—blond-haired, brown-eyed implacability. “I’ve wanted to meet you.”

  With a sinking sensation, Maggie unfastened the seat belt and slid out of the truck. Linnie backed up toward the house. Maggie trudged onto the grassy strip by the curb.

  Without warning, Linnie grabbed her hand, pulled her along to the sidewalk, and after Maggie stumbled forward, seized her other hand, too. Her smile widened to a grin. “You’re gawking.”

  She closed her mouth.

  “Margaret Arioli. I have heard all about you.”

  That didn’t bode well, and the teasing quality in the young woman’s tone was provoking. Maggie straightened. “And I’ve heard all about you.”

  Linnie breathed a laugh and released her. “I bet you have.” To Sam: “Kate’s off today. You didn’t bring her?”

  “To clear out the apartment? No.”

  “That’s too bad. I was thinking Kyle and I would take her out to eat.”

  “You could always swing by Dad’s place and just kidnap her.”

  Her laugh was sharp this time. “Can a mom picking up her kid from school be a kidnapper?”

  “Kind of, when you don’t tell anyone beforehand that’s what you’re going to do, when you involve that”—he indicated the man in the Saab with a flick of a hand—“person and take her away without warning, without thinking about things like homework and a healthy supper and the next day of school and—”

  “What you’re saying is, I’m a shitty mother. You don’t need to tell me that.”

  He immediately looked chagrined. “I know you love Kate.”

  “I’m awful for her.” Her smile had turned brittle. “That’s why I’m keeping my distance as much as I can bear.” Her voice cracked on the last word. She tossed her head and continued tersely, “I am who I am. You used to like me this way.” To Maggie, she explained, “I was the genuine dragon, but he didn’t mind clinging to my tail and going along for the ride. We practiced being angry together in high school. Then he turned nice.” She glanced at Sam and shrugged. “You should know by now scolds won’t change me.”

  “You don’t want to change.” Glumly, almost sheepishly, he said to the sidewalk, “Dad was telling me about a new program through the college, a theater therapy—”

  She hooted, grabbed his arm, and swung her laugh against his shoulder. “Theater therapy! What’s next? Come on, Sammy. Please. Don’t start on that again. Just don’t start. Let’s not talk about it.” Clutching her forehead, she turned fast, as if she couldn’t stand looking at him any longer, and settled a fierce gaze on Maggie. “So. No more Carlton College?”

  Uneasiness rippled down her spine. “Not for now.”

  “Hmm.”

  Maggie stepped back toward the truck.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  No. Maggie knew from experience what it would be. “Did they really do that to you?” or “Did that actually happen?” What people meant was “Are you a liar?” Variations on the same question—all painful. Sort of like asking a discharged veteran, “Did you kill anyone over there?” Maggie had mastered the blank face, had learned to ignore the questions.

  But she was out of practice. She took another backward step toward the truck.

  Sam put a hand on Linnie’s arm.

  She shook him off. “I just want to know why she left.” To Maggie: “That’s the only part I didn’t like. Everything else…” She splayed and closed her hand in a conjuror’s way. “Perfect. Those boys”—she shook her head—“they didn’t see you coming, did they? I mean, look at you. A skinny thing.” She smirked. “They probably thought, this is going to be so easy. But you called them out. Every fucking one of them. I read about it, how the police blew you off and the prosecutors didn’t want to file charges, so you reported it to the university. Then the assholes, one after the other, punted out of college.” She whistled. “You were so strong. Determined, you know? I can’t imagine having the guts to do that. I just can’t imagine.” She shook her head again, bemused.

  Maggie stared. She wasn’t used to hearing support. “They should have gone to prison.”

  Linnie nodded. “They should have. But you. You should have stayed right where you were. Why did you leave?”

  Because she hated being hated. And recognized by everyone. A notorious spectacle. “Enough people wanted me to.”

  “Fuck them. You shouldn’t have run away.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Sam muttered. “You run away all the time.”

  She glanced at him coolly. “Away? Away from what? A home I’ve never had? I just run.”

  “You had Kate and me.”

  Linnie swallowed and ground the toe of her sneaker into a crack in the pavement. “You’re better off without me.”

  He shook his head but didn’t argue. He looked defeated. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he frowned over his shoulder. “I’ve got to pack up the place.”

  “Moving in with your dad?”

  “Yeah. Want to get your things?”

  She peered up at the ugly house, distantly, as if she hardly recognized it. “No. Toss it if you don’t want it.”

  “You sure?”

  She folded her arms and nodded. The small smile she gave Maggie was wistful. “I’m glad I got to meet you. You make me think of that poem. Remember the one by Hopkins, Sam? The one Mrs. Michaels had us memorize junior year? ‘It is the blight man was born for, it is Margaret you mourn for.’ I loved that poem.”

  “And Mrs. Michaels,” Sam said. “You liked her a lot.”

  “Oh, I did. She taught twelfth-grade English, too. I might have gotten her again if I hadn’t dropped out.” She drifted toward the car in the driveway, raised a hand, and said without turning, “Good-bye.”

  * * *

  Sam and Maggie drove back to Wren’s a couple of hours later. Between the two of them, there had been a lot of heaving, hauling, and packing but little conversation. Now, though, Sam burst out with, “Linnie says and does plenty that pisses me off.” He glared at the road. “But some of what she told you wasn’t true. Like how I
wanted her for how she used to be—angry and nuts. Not true.” He gave his head a furious shake and slapped the steering wheel. “She’s hell on my feelings.”

  Maggie caught her lower lip in her teeth. She didn’t know what to say. No doubt Sam liked Linnie for all sorts of reasons, good and bad. The woman was smart, beautiful … and what else?

  Unreliable, unpredictable, unchecked.

  She mumbled a sympathetic, “I’m sorry, Sam,” and turned to gaze out the window. The truck whipped past maples. She absently noted the colors in the foliage: yellow, orange, red. The hues of a blaze.

  Linnie. Not what she expected.

  6

  MAGGIE STUDIED THE shifting darkness in the loft. She was sore. Sam’s furniture had weighed a ton. Her arms hurt. Her back hurt. Some of her thoughts hurt, too.

  Linnie had called her strong, determined. Gutsy. Maggie exhaled a short laugh. She wasn’t. She couldn’t even face her own phone.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. I know something similar happened to you, I know something similar happened to—

  “Fine,” she growled, kicking down the blankets. She felt around for the switch on the bedside lamp.

  The cardigan was still on the floor. She shoved it aside and picked up her phone. Before she could lose her nerve, she unplugged it, thumbed the password, and began to mentally compose a response to Jane, strumming up suggestions for responsible people the girl could go to for help. Anyone but me.

  Sitting cross-legged on the bed, she scrolled down through the unread emails to find the old one from Jane but spied something in passing, backed up, and gasped.

  There was another email from Jane. A new one! Maggie hadn’t expected this—had never guessed Jane would write again when her first message had gone unanswered.

  “Shit.” With a horrible sense of foreboding, she opened the email.

  Jane Cannon

  To: Margaret Arioli

  Hi

  October 2 at 11:02 PM

  Hi, Margaret. I’ve been worrying I pissed you off with my last email, since you don’t know me and since I’m bringing up something you most likely (if you’re anything like me) are trying hard to forget, but today I heard you left school on a leave of absence. I don’t know if you got my last message. Maybe CC suspended your email account. Anyway, if you are receiving this, I just wanted to tell you I don’t blame you for going away. I want to go away, too. I hate it here. I can’t concentrate, and I’m already failing half my classes, even conservation bio, and that’s for my major. I avoid everyone. I’m scared all the time. How did you make it through last year? I don’t think I’m going to last a month. And I still don’t know if I should tell anyone about what happened. I heard you were put through the wringer, and not just by the police, but the college, too. Was it even worth it?

  Was it?

  Maggie let go of the phone. It landed in her lap. She dropped her head in her hands. Her skin was damp with sweat. Is it worth it? How many times had she asked herself that question? She dried her face with the bottom of her shirt.

  Jane was right: Even the college disciplinary proceeding had been a nightmare.

  She drew the covers over her head and tried not to think about it. Breathing fast, she scrambled out of bed and paced around the loft. Don’t think about it.

  But it rushed back to her.

  * * *

  “Where’s the evidence?” The college’s chief legal officer threw up his hands. “Until the police release their statements—”

  “Mr. Rhine, you know full well Dean McGrath has a duty to investigate this independently,” the court chair said. “The Police Department can pursue its own investigation. It doesn’t have any bearing on this occasion.”

  He slapped the table. “Well, that’s just stupid. We’re pushing this off. We need to. We’re talking about expulsion here, Sue; we’re talking about something pretty damn big. We have an obligation to consider anything in the police statements that might influence the final decision.”

  Susan Brown gave Maggie an uneasy glance, then scowled at Ted Rhine. “Margaret wouldn’t be here today if the police had handled her situation in an appropriate manner.”

  He dismissed this with a wave. “It’s my job to guarantee that all parties comply with the law, and I’m telling you, we need to hold off until we get those statements.”

  The court chair pointed her pen at him. “And I’m telling you, Ted, to stop talking. Your job, in this context, according to the rules of the university court, is to silently observe the hearing. Legal counsel are allowed to confer with their respective parties. What they can’t do is address us.”

  “Can we just wait until—”

  Dean McGrath ran a palm over his bald head. “We are not pushing this off.”

  Susan Brown nodded. “We’re taking care of it today.”

  “With one shitty-ass afternoon hearing? That’s not fair.” Ted Rhine folded his arms and settled a glare on Maggie. “This girl gets the better bargain. She’s holding all the aces.”

  Maggie glared back. She wanted to cry out, “Better bargain? This hell isn’t a good deal for me. And I don’t hold all the aces.” Or any aces. She was only trying to do the right thing. Outside of finding a shred of justice, what did she hope to win by retelling the most painful and humiliating thing that had ever happened to her?

  She took a deep breath and looked away—and then realized she didn’t know where to look. There were too many people in the room. People who hated her and who’d hurt her. People she’d never wanted to see again. She settled on staring out the window and wished herself out there, anywhere that wasn’t here. Just … gone.

  * * *

  Perched on the edge of the counter and twirling the ends of her ponytails, Ran Kita glanced toward the door when Maggie entered the bookshop and grinned. “Yay!” Her hands, still holding the ponytails’ ends, flew up over her head. Then she flung back the hair and shouted toward the back of the store, “She came! Marge is here!”

  Marge. Maggie winced.

  “Ye gads, Ran,” a low voice scolded.

  Maggie whirled around.

  A trim man with silver threading the hair at his temples stood by a front window, arranging the novels on display. Smiling apologetically at Maggie, he straightened, then nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose and collected a stack of books. “You’re hurting the poor girl’s ears,” he told Ran, and brought his armful to the counter.

  “Sorry, Dad,” she said cheerfully, and slipped to the floor, “but I was excited. I’m so glad you’re here, Marge. I was waiting to see if you’d come. This way!” She hooked an arm through Maggie’s and steered her through the bookshop. “You’re all out of breath. Did you run here?” She nodded at a customer flipping through an enormous cookbook.

  “Oh, no. Just from the parking lot to the store.” She hadn’t thought about how dark it would be at seven o’clock in the middle of October. Or how silent and empty she’d find the streets. Truthfully, for a week, she hadn’t thought about much of anything. After that sleepless night eight days ago, she’d somehow tamped down the memories Jane’s second email had stirred, but just barely. It was as if she’d chinked her mind with feathers, newspaper, and glue. That barrier had fallen apart this morning. She’d woken up from a nightmare and immediately suffered a panic attack. That was why she was here. She needed a distraction. A place to go.

  Ran looked at her funny and steered her toward the reading nook. “Here we are!”

  Three girls sat in a row on the overstuffed couch. Maggie recognized them from her first visit to the shop.

  Ran presented a chair with a wave, waited until Maggie sat, then threw herself into the last available seat: a rocker. It pitched back quickly and alarmingly, then creaked forward. She planted her feet on the floor to brake the motion. “Five of us,” she said with satisfaction. “Five! Now this is a book club.” She kicked back the chair again.

  “You’re going to tip over that rocker and crack your head open,” the g
irl with the many piercings said gloomily. She ran a hand over her shaved head, rubbed the tattoo on the side of her neck, and slumped into the corner of the couch.

  “You sound like my mother.” Like a ballerina, Ran stretched out a leg and indicated with the toe of her shoe the friend who’d just spoken. “Hope.” The foot swung to the girl with the bob—“Colleen”—then toward the last one on the couch, a pretty girl hugging her legs to her chest and smiling shyly. “Julia.”

  Maggie didn’t think Ran would manage the foot-pointing feat with her, but she did, executing a half split. “Marge.”

  Hope laughed grimly. “You’re crazy.”

  “That’s why you love me. Now say hello to Marge.”

  Greetings were exchanged, then Maggie looked around the reading nook, uncomfortable with the curiosity in the other girls’ faces. “So do you all go to the same college?”

  “Yeah,” Hope said. “Kesley Community College.”

  “We didn’t go to the same high school, though,” Colleen said.

  Julia lifted her chin up from her knees. “We’re from all over the county.”

  “But you don’t go to the community college,” Ran observed.

  Maggie treated it like a question and shook her head.

  Ran smoothed the arms of the rocking chair. “Didn’t think so. I never see you around. You must go to Allenport then.”

  “No…” She gave the book in her lap a fluttery tap. “I’m taking a year off.”

  “A gap year,” Julia said reverently.

  “Awesome,” Colleen breathed.

  “You are so lucky,” Ran said. “I wanted to do that, but my dad wouldn’t let me—said I could figure out what I wanted to do with my life while I was taking care of the basic coursework at the community college.” She scowled toward the front of the store.

  Maggie wasn’t exactly taking a gap year. She chewed on her lower lip, thought about correcting the girls’ assumption, but decided against it.