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“I just think it would be a bad idea,” Tremblay had said over the phone.

“But why? I want to see Jason.”

“I don’t want to deal with it, that’s all. Your mother’s not well and it’s hard for Jason to get settled down.”

“Is Dolly drinking?”

Tremblay didn’t respond, which answered Jessica’s question well enough. She could almost see him leaning back in his black leather chair in the den, staring up at his golf trophies. “I just don’t want you here. I don’t think I can trust you . . .”

“Please, Tremblay, you said I’d be able to come . . .”

“I’ve already made up my mind.”

“Then let me talk to Jason for a minute.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Our deal was for you to stay away and not bother anybody.”

“But you said Thanksgiving would be all right.”

“I said maybe. It’s just not convenient at this time.”

“Have you been messing with Jason? Let me talk to him.”

“He’s perfectly all right. And if I were you, I’d watch my tongue.”

After hanging up, Jessica had broken three windows, but she was careful not to let anybody know who had broken them and she hadn’t cut herself. Then she’d heard that that old guy—Evings—had killed himself; she didn’t really know him, but once he had asked her if she was happy and she’d told him that what the hell, she was okay, and Evings had said, “Well, we can’t ask for much more than that, can we?” Jessica neither liked him nor disliked him but she didn’t want him dead. She didn’t want anybody dead except Tremblay. And she almost felt hurt by Evings’s death. She almost took it personally, as if he had done it to make her feel even worse. So she had decided it was time to clear out, plans or no plans.

As for LeBrun, he frightened her, making her drink the tequila and dance and go over to the headmaster’s, where she did God knows what. She didn’t see why he had made such a big thing of doing it, like it was more than a joke. He still said he would help her rescue Jason. Actually, he seemed eager, but even his eagerness frightened her. So she had put some stuff into her backpack and left. She still had her money and maybe she could rescue Jason by herself. But every step she took down the road made her increasingly nervous. That chubby cop from Brewster had passed twice, and the state cops had gone by and the rescue squad’s ambulance, and she knew very well that every single one had stared at her and wondered what she was doing walking along the side of the road. She didn’t have the nerve to stick out her thumb and hitchhike. She realized that she would never be able to get away from Bishop’s Hill by herself, that she needed LeBrun’s help after all. It was then that she found the kitten. If she had ignored it, if she had just kept on going, the kitten would have been killed for sure. And so Jessica had come back.

Now she was getting ready to write to Jason and tell him about the kitten, how it seemed to love her already and purred extra loud when she scratched its neck. And she would tell him that she wouldn’t be able to come at Thanksgiving, that Tremblay wouldn’t let her, but that didn’t mean the rescue was off, because one day in the next four weeks it would happen. LeBrun had promised. When Jessica had come back to her dorm room a little after eleven, some kids had seen her and they might have seen the kitten, although she had tucked it under her coat. Students weren’t allowed to have pets. She’d already been told this ten times. And so Jessica was half expecting a visit from Mrs. Grayson, the housekeeper, or Ruth Standish, who was in charge of Jessica’s cottage. And if either one of them tried to take Lucky away from her, she would scream holy hell.

It was only ten minutes after that, when Jessica was already writing her letter to Jason, that there was a heavy knock on the door. Jessica ignored the noise, of course, but the kitten stirred in its sleep. Carefully, she drew a corner of her blanket up over its marmalade body. Then she heard a key in the lock. Jessica hated passkeys, unless she had them—they were a total violation.

The door opened and there stood pudgy Ruth Standish with her face arranged in an annoyed pout. Jessica tried to imagine her dancing topless and the thought made her laugh. Behind Miss Standish were several students, probably the ones who had told her about the kitten and who now were feeling virtuous.

“Why didn’t you open the door?”

“I didn’t feel like it.”

“Do you have a cat in here?”

“It’s none of your business.” Jessica remained on her bunk with her knees up and her sweatshirt pulled down over them to her ankles.

“Of course it’s my business. Having a pet violates school regulations. Give it to me this instant.”

It was then that Jessica began to scream. She didn’t care that she woke the kitten. She didn’t care if she woke everybody alive.

Downstairs in the common room, Scott McKinnon was sitting with some other students in the ten minutes between the end of lunch and the beginning of classes. Scott would have liked to be someplace smoking a cigarette but he had no cigarettes and no money and no one would lend him a cigarette, even though he almost always paid them back. Scott was talking about Evings’s suicide with Ron French, Adam Voigt, and Helen Selkirk, Jessica’s roommate. The others tried to talk about it as if it were nothing out of the ordinary but Scott knew they were shocked. Even Scott was pretty shocked, though he’d had an uncle who had committed suicide because he had cancer. Offed himself—Uncle Bob had offed himself. But there had been nothing wrong with Evings that anybody could see, except that he was old and ugly, and that didn’t seem like a good enough reason. Ron French didn’t see how a person could just back out, as he put it, just call it quits. And Adam thought it might have had something to do with Jessica and how she had been caught in the headmaster’s rooms and maybe she’d been involved with Evings as well, even though Evings was a fag, because it surprised you what some people would do. And Helen Selkirk had no opinions at all but she thought the whole business was a shame.

That was when Jessica began screaming. Scott knew it was about the kitten, since he had seen her bring it into the dorm but hadn’t told anyone.

“She’s got a cat,” he said, “and old Standish doesn’t want her to keep it.” He enjoyed being the person with all the answers.

“A cat?” said Helen, who knew nothing about it.

“Well, a kitten, sort of tiger-striped.”

“How cute,” said Helen, getting interested.

“She won’t be able to keep it,” said Ron French.

“If they’re going to kick her out of school,” said Adam, “then they should let her keep it. I mean, she can take it with her.”

“You think they’ll really kick her out?” said Helen. She didn’t like Jessica—she was scared of her—but she also didn’t want her to get in trouble, not too much, anyway.

Ron French made a scornful noise. “Getting drunk and fucking the headmaster or whatever she did. She’ll be lucky to stay out of jail.”

Scott disliked the way the conversation was drifting out of his control. “The main trouble with having a cat is that someone might kill it. Look what happened to Mrs. Grayson’s cat. When I saw it hanging from the branch, I knew we had a crazy person right here at Bishop’s Hill. Somebody who liked torturing animals. You don’t think that kitten’s safe, do you? It’ll get hanged as well. As for Dr. Hawthorne, he never fucked her. She was drunk, that’s all, and Hawthorne called the nurse.”

“Do you think Evings fucked her?” asked Adam.

“No way,” said Ron French.

“No way,” said Scott.

“Personally,” said Helen, “I hope they let Jessica keep the kitten. I love cats.”

—

When Hawthorne heard about Jessica’s kitten later in the afternoon, he decided not to take it away from her, at least for the time being. Having the kitten might be good for her. Jessica would have to take care of it and she needed to have the consent of her roommate. But if those details were worked out, then Hawthorne didn’t see the harm.

Fritz Skander felt differently. Pets, he said, were nothing but trouble. They were dirty, they carried fleas, and they made the students quarrel with one another. Skander and Hawthorne were in the headmaster’s office and it was shortly after three o’clock. In less than thirty minutes the faculty meeting to discuss the students in the lower school would begin, but Hawthorne and Skander had other business first. They had been going over Evings’s memorial service. Skander thought it should be very modest. In fact, he would have been happier with no service at all.

“We can’t just pretend that Clifford never existed,” Hawthorne had said.

And while Skander had agreed, he hadn’t agreed entirely. He was distressed by Evings’s suicide—he truly felt sorry for the man—but one couldn’t deny that it had been, at least to a relative degree, a solution to their problem, although a deplorable solution.

Hawthorne had been shocked. “Are you saying we’re fortunate he’s dead?”

They were interrupted by a telephone call from Ruth Standish about the cat. Both Jessica and the kitten were now in the infirmary, where Alice Beech said they would remain until the matter was resolved. And she made it clear that she herself stood firmly on the side of Jessica’s keeping the cat.

“We’ve always had clear rules about pets at Bishop’s Hill,” said Skander after Hawthorne got off the phone.

Skander sat on the couch picking lint from the sleeve of his blue blazer. Hawthorne was pacing back and forth on the rug. He was still upset by Skander’s suggestion that Evings’s death was somehow convenient. It reminded him of how insensitive Skander could be, as if his world were made up of numbers and not people. Hawthorne himself had begun to see the death, among other things, as a personal failure—he’d been unable to convince Evings that his job was safe.

“I think it would be good for her to have the kitten,” said Hawthorne, “as long as she takes care of it and her roommate agrees.”

“Then they’ll all want pets.”

“I don’t think so. But a few pets, what’s the harm?”

Skander leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and rubbed his hands together as if washing them. He looked worried and his thick gray hair trembled slightly as he shook his head. “The trouble with your giving Jessica permission to keep the kitten is that some people—perhaps more than some—will think you’re granting her permission to break an established rule because you had relations with her.”

Hawthorne paused in his pacing. “I can’t believe they’d think such a thing.”

“It’s how people’s minds work. You can’t deny human nature.”

Hawthorne and Skander had already spent some time discussing the events of Thursday evening—Jessica’s appearance, Hawthorne’s phone calls to the nurse and Kate Sandler. The issue seemed to be that Jessica had been observed going to Hawthorne’s quarters at least an hour before he had phoned Alice Beech. The night watchman swore to it and the Reverend Bennett had seen Jessica walking in that direction. All Hawthorne could do was to deny that it had happened. But soon, Burke had said, the county prosecutor would learn of it, and then it could easily be turned over to the grand jury. Hawthorne had told Skander he would welcome an investigation.

“I’m certainly not going to take away the kitten because I’m afraid of gossip.”

“I’m sure you’ll do what you think best,” said Skander. “I’m just thinking of what’s best for the school itself. Even that girl’s staying in the infirmary will cause unpleasant talk.”

“What do you mean?”

Skander shifted his position, as if the couch were uncomfortable. “Naturally Alice Beech is one of my favorite people and she does a wonderful job, but what if she has some other sort of interest in Jessica?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“There are her own personal preferences to consider,” said Skander stuffily.

Hawthorne could hardly believe that Skander was serious. “Are you saying that she might have a sexual interest in Jessica?”

“Of course not, of course not, but I’m just trying to show you how people’s minds operate. Jessica spent Friday and most of Saturday in the infirmary and now she’s gone back again—and she’s not even sick. You know how people are. They see an action and they think it exists simply to hide another action. They’ll think Alice has a less than professional interest in the girl.” Skander gave a resigned smile.

Hawthorne looked at Skander angrily. “The girl doesn’t have to stay in the infirmary. She can return to her room and she can take the kitten with her.”

“Then they’ll all be getting kittens. There’ll be fleas and cat messes in the closets and the cats will be dragging in dead birds and rabbits. I really wish you would rethink your position. The wisest course, I believe, would be to expel the girl from school for that unfortunate business with the tequila, et cetera. Then all this talk about the two of you having a relationship would disappear. We certainly don’t want a police investigation.”

Hawthorne sat down on the edge of his desk. He told himself that he was mistaken to feel anger. What Skander was expressing was no doubt the common view, and the only effective way to deal with it was to stay calm. And it occurred to him that if there was an investigation, then he could tell the police about the portrait and the phone calls and the bags of food. But why should they believe him? Why wouldn’t they just think he was crazy?

“I’ve told you what happened on Thursday night. The more important question is where the girl got the tequila, but she refuses to talk about that. If the police get involved, then so be it. I’d certainly prefer that to the alternative of expelling Jessica from school. Surely you can see she needs our help.”

Skander finally agreed, but Hawthorne realized that he hadn’t been convinced and was just dropping the subject for the time being. Later that day or the next he would bring it up again. Hawthorne could see he was bothered by loose talk, how it might affect enrollment and the school’s reputation. Skander wanted to stop the gossip as quickly as possible by whatever method was most expedient. But Hawthorne doubted that silence and truth could ever be reconciled, that drawing a zipper across one’s lips was better than talking about what had happened. Hilda rapped on the door. It was nearly three-thirty and they had to get to their meeting.