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LeBrun took a step closer, lowering his voice. “I sure as hell am not going to have a cat in the truck when we’re driving down to Exeter, I can tell you that for damn straight.”

“Please, Frank, I want to take Lucky.”

“No way. The cat stays here. If you take the cat, I’ll throw it out the window. I can’t drive with a cat in the truck. Get serious.”

Now Jessica felt like crying, even though she hadn’t cried about Scott, but she wasn’t going to cry and have LeBrun make fun of her. She swallowed and looked up at him crossly. “Why aren’t we going tomorrow like we planned?”

“I got too much work. Larry took off, I don’t know if you heard, and I’m in charge of the kitchen. If we go tomorrow, who’ll make dinner? If we go later in the week, I’ll get the chance to cook something ahead of time that can just be warmed up. I don’t want to make trouble for Hawthorne. I’ll be getting some more help in a day or so. And who knows, maybe Larry’ll come back.” LeBrun laughed abruptly, then stopped.

Jessica didn’t like it but it made a kind of sense. The best plan would be for LeBrun to drive her to Exeter, help rescue Jason, then drive them to Boston, drop them off, and return to Bishop’s Hill. That was a lot of driving, maybe seven hours all told. But LeBrun could come back in the night and nobody would know he’d been gone. But if he took off tomorrow and missed dinner, then everybody would know and they’d see she was gone as well. They probably wouldn’t even get as far as Exeter before the police were called.

“Okay,” said Jessica, “but don’t do anything to Lucky. Promise me.”

LeBrun reached out with the kitchen knife and slowly drew it a few inches down the red fabric of Jessica’s parka. The fabric separated and white feathers pushed through the opening. “Don’t tell me what to do. You hear what I’m saying? You don’t want to make me upset.”

—

Most of the students began coming back to Bishop’s Hill from Thanksgiving break on Sunday afternoon, arriving by car with their parents or taking buses to Plymouth and getting picked up. A few flew into the small airport in Lebanon, then were driven to the school in a hired van. The snow made everyone late, though by evening most of the roads had been plowed. When the students arrived, they heard that Scott McKinnon had been found drowned in the pool on Saturday. A dozen or so had been friends with Scott, many liked him, all had known him. Coming so close after Evings’s suicide, his death was especially upsetting and there was the question whether Scott hadn’t committed suicide as well. Many theories went around and the students were agitated and disturbed. The homework that had been put off to the last minute didn’t get done and students stayed up late talking. Those who had remained at school over the break couldn’t remember exactly when they had seen Scott last, maybe Wednesday or maybe Thursday morning, but he had cut his math and English classes on Tuesday and he hadn’t trailed anyone around trying to bum a cigarette.

At an assembly in the chapel during first period on Monday, Hawthorne talked about what had happened. He didn’t talk about how Scott was found and he said nothing about the kitten. He spoke about grief and how it was a painful but necessary emotion. He said they all had every reason to be upset and the best thing they could do for Scott was to grieve for him, but they should also remember him and celebrate him and recall all that was good about him. The Reverend Bennett said several prayers. Many students wept and even several of the teachers wiped their eyes. Then Hawthorne canceled classes for the rest of the day and the students broke into groups to discuss their feelings. Many said how they were still upset about Mr. Evings, that he had been so unhappy that he had to kill himself, and they spoke about Bobby Newland’s accusations and how distressing those had been. Then the students began to realize that Mr. Newland wasn’t at the school. He had been there for Thanksgiving dinner but had left either on Friday or on Saturday. According to the boys living in his dormitory cottage, the door to his small apartment was open and his clothes were gone.

As for Hawthorne, he was kept too busy to think about his conversation with Kevin Krueger. On Saturday he had begun trying to call Scott’s parents, although he hadn’t been able to reach the father in California until Sunday. And then he had to explain that he didn’t know exactly what had happened or why Scott had been in the pool. He said the police were investigating. The father was angry and asked Hawthorne why they hadn’t kept the damn place locked. And he said he meant to call his lawyer. The mother told Hawthorne that she would take care of the funeral arrangements. She wanted to get the body right away and she was upset when Hawthorne told her there had to be an autopsy. She said she didn’t want her boy cut up, and Hawthorne could do nothing but give her Chief Moulton’s phone number. And she, too, talked about lawyers and how she’d thought she could trust the school, when obviously it turned out that she couldn’t. Hawthorne knew their anger masked their guilt—why, after all, had Scott had no place to go on Thanksgiving?—and he tried to be gentle with them and let them express their resentment and outrage.

Hawthorne’s discovery that Bobby Newland had packed his clothes and disappeared was especially disappointing and made everyone’s task more difficult, since Hawthorne needed him to talk to students. Bobby had the knack of making students feel at ease and express their emotions without constraint. He would have been useful that Monday when the students were saying how they felt about what had happened. All day Hawthorne went from one group to another, listening, for the most part, but also assuring them that their grief was necessary and natural. But it was more than grief. They all sensed that death was coming too close. First Evings, now Scott. Who would be next? A tenth-grade boy by the name of Skoyles asked if the locks shouldn’t be changed and a twelfth grader, Sara Bryant, recalled that Gail Jensen had died at just this time three years earlier.

The notices that Hawthorne had written advertising for a new psychologist had begun to appear in the journals in November and already a few letters and resumes had arrived, despite the low salary. Hawthorne recognized several names and one man had been a student of his in Boston. He realized that some applicants were responding to his own reputation, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Fritz Skander also talked to students but he wasn’t good at it and appeared stiff. The crying upset him and he told several students that they had to be brave, till Hawthorne explained to him that it was better to let them be emotional. It was Skander’s idea that Scott had broken into the pool in order to swim and had accidentally drowned. His death was the grievous effect of a reckless cause. “It should remind us all,” he told one group, “that we need to act like grown-ups.” To another group he said, “A person who breaks into a cage of tigers must face the consequences.”

A few faculty were helpful. Kate, of course, and Alice Beech. But also Betty Sherman, Gene Strauss, and Ted Wrigley. Bill Dolittle organized a reading of poems and other texts on grief and loss. The nurse went from dorm to dorm, just saying a few words; Kate came over to Jessica’s dorm and talked to the girls in the living room, and she went to other cottages as well. But at least half the faculty stayed out of the way, though they, too, were shocked. Herb Frankfurter, for example, used the time to go hunting. Roger Bennett was also absent. Throughout Monday, Hawthorne hoped that Larry Gaudette would return and take some of the burden off his cousin, but there was no sign of him.

During the afternoon the Reverend Bennett told Hawthorne that Bill Dolittle was moving furniture into the empty apartment in Stark Hall. “And I hear him pacing above me,” she said. “I didn’t realize that you had given him permission to move in. I hate to think of the racket he’s going to make.”

Hawthorne went to look for Dolittle in the library and found him organizing the bookshelves. Dolittle’s face lit up when he saw Hawthorne. “Have you heard something from the board?”

Hawthorne said that he hadn’t. “I’ve heard you’ve been moving furniture into the apartment.” They stood among the stacks. All the books looked dusty and old.

“That’s not quite accurate. I only took a single chair, not even a comfortable chair.”

“Why?”

“Well, you see, there’s no furniture in the apartment and after I clean I like to sit a little and look out the window. There’s a wonderful view, especially at sunset. Did you know there are three rooms as well as a kitchenette: I can walk from one side to another. It’s not roomy, of course, but there’s lots of space.”

Hawthorne thought of Dolittle living in his small apartment in Latham for eight years. “Really, Bill, none of this is settled. We’ve no idea what the board will say. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t move anything else up there.”

Monday night Hawthorne telephoned Kate around eight-thirty, asking if he could come over. He had seen her during the day but they had exchanged only a few words. It had even occurred to Hawthorne that she was avoiding him.

He listened to her breathing. And he could hear a television somewhere in the background—a burst of artificial laughter.

“I think it’s a bad idea,” said Kate. “I’m still trying to think through some stuff.”

“Is it what I told you when I was at your house?”

“I’m just not sure how much I want to complicate my life.”

“I’d like to see you.” Hawthorne meant to say that he needed to see her, but he couldn’t let himself be that explicit. He stood in his living room and thought how empty it was. There were still small feathers on the chairs and rug.

“I’d rather you didn’t. At least that’s what I think right now. I don’t know, it’s all very confusing. Your life’s full of ghosts.”

After hanging up, Hawthorne put on his boots and heavy coat, grabbed a flashlight, and walked for several hours through the snow until he felt exhausted. He thought of the ghosts that populated his head. And wasn’t one of them the person he used to be, the ambitious and self-confident clinical psychologist who believed he could do no wrong?

On Tuesday Hawthorne worked steadily in his office except for the hour he taught his history class in the afternoon. There were parents he had to write to and accounts he had to go over. In class, Scott’s absence made everybody somber and little attention was paid to the Byzantine emperors. Hawthorne also had to telephone the trustees, and it seemed there might be a meeting. The school was supposed to close for Christmas vacation on Friday the eighteenth, and several trustees thought it might be wise to close earlier so that students could deal with their grief at home.

One of the trustees was a dean at Dartmouth, Carolyn Forster. Hawthorne had met her a few times at conferences when he had lived in Boston and it was Dr. Forster whom he had called from San Diego to say that he was interested in the position at Bishop’s Hill. She was a humorless woman in her early sixties who had never married. Her father had graduated from Bishop’s Hill in 1924 and she had worked hard to keep the school open.

After talking to her about Scott’s death and the possibility of closing the school early, Hawthorne asked, “When the board decided to initiate a search for a new headmaster, I gather it wasn’t a unanimous choice. What were the other alternatives?”

Dr. Forster was silent for a moment. “It wasn’t certain that the problems at the school could be solved by a new headmaster, no matter how good, or by an increased financial commitment. Some of the board felt we were merely putting off the inevitable.”

“And what did they suggest instead?”

“They believed we should look into the possibility of selling the school.”

“Who thought this?”

“I expect many of us, though those members of the board who are alumni were the ones most solidly against it. And several others believed the school could still be saved.”

“Do you remember who in particular wanted to sell the school?”

Dr. Forster cleared her throat. She had a deep voice for a woman and the practiced manner of someone with more than thirty years of experience in academic meetings. “You realize, of course, that once we decided to go ahead with the search and you were selected, then the board was entirely unanimous in your behalf.”

“Yes, but earlier, who spoke in favor of selling?”

“There were three, maybe four. I don’t know how strongly each one felt, but the most critical, I expect, was Hamilton Burke. He said that you don’t treat a terminally ill patient with Band-Aids and Mercurochrome.”

After his class on Tuesday Hawthorne spent several hours on the computer in his office going over school expenses and revenues. There seemed to have been payments for purchases that hadn’t been received, or at least there was no sign of their having arrived—a commercial toaster for the kitchen, athletic equipment, office materials, even a trombone for the band. Hawthorne tried checking the paper files in the file cabinet but he still couldn’t find an answer. Three times he called Skander to ask about certain discrepancies, but Skander was in conference or had gone home. When he finally called back, he said he would check his records and talk to the bookkeeper in the morning.

“I must say that I’m pleased that you’re such a stickler for detail,” said Skander, cheerfully. “It makes me far more optimistic that we’ll all still be here in ten years’ time.”

“That’s a five-hundred-dollar toaster. What do you think happened to it?”

“Oh, it will turn up,” said Skander breezily. “Things always do.”

Not for the first time Hawthorne regretted the absence of Mrs. Hayes, who had known so much about the workings of the school. Even though she hadn’t handled school finances, very little had escaped her notice. Hilda Skander, while she knew about computers, didn’t know much else, although she took calls, answered letters, and made sure that the office was stocked with Bishop’s Hill stationery.

Shortly after five o’clock on Tuesday Hawthorne went looking for Roger Bennett, first going to his office, then checking the teachers’ lounge, then the Dugout, and finally Stark Hall, where the Bennetts’ apartment took up five rooms on the first floor. It was already dark and the sky was clear. The moon was cresting the mountains to the northwest.