fiber of my being rebels against the idea of putting Rudy in danger. “Thank you,” I say. “I promise I won’t let you take the blame for this.”
He squeezes my hand. “I know you won’t.” His assurance touches me; I just wish I knew how I’m going to make good on my promise.
I GET TO campus later than I meant to. Maryanne is already at her desk, glaring at a row of blinking lights on her phone.
“Is she in?” I ask.
She sighs. “She just got off the phone with Chelsea Whittenberg. I was giving her a moment before telling her about the six other calls waiting for her.”
“Are they all blaming Jean?”
Maryanne wheels back in her chair to scan the hallway for lingering students, but it’s empty. The whole campus feels eerily empty, I realize, as if we were living in the aftermath of an apocalypse. She motions for me to come closer and whispers, “The board’s asking her to resign. They want her to fall on her sword, as if the lot of them hadn’t known what kind of lech Woody Hull was all along.”
“That’s awful,” I say. “Do you think she will?”
“I don’t know,” Maryanne says, eyeing the door to Jean’s office. “A week ago I’d have said she’d fight it, but the fight’s gone out of her. I haven’t seen her look like this since Tracy was alive.”
“You mean since Tracy died?” I ask.
Maryanne shakes her head. “No, I mean, of course that was terrible, but Jean was actually amazing after that. She came in a week after Tracy’s funeral and asked me to get her all the stats for drug addiction in teens and all the studies that identified risk factors for addiction and self-destructive behavior. ‘We’re going to keep this from happening to other children,’ she told me.” Maryanne wipes away a tear. “She was a warrior. You know when my Ben got addicted to pain pills after he tore his rotator cuff, Jean got him into the best rehab treatment in the state and made sure the school’s insurance policy paid for it.”
“I . . . I didn’t know . . .” I stammer, thinking of all the times I’ve envied Maryanne’s picture-perfect family.
Maryanne laughs while reaching for a tissue. “We told everyone he was at soccer camp in Michigan. Jean was the only one who knew. Anyway, what I meant before wasn’t that Jean was okay after Tracy died, but that she went back to work. There were times, though, when Tracy was alive that Jean would get a call from her or from the police or her parole officer, and you could see the stuffing get sucked right out of her. Those were the only times I’d see her look like she didn’t know what to do . . . until now.” She looks up at me. “Maybe you can help. After all you’ve been through . . . maybe you can help Jean find the strength to fight this.”
The idea that I might be able to help Jean find strength almost makes me laugh, but when I walk into Jean’s office I don’t feel like laughing. Even though she’s facing away from me, looking out the window, I can see by the slump of her shoulders that she’s given up. I’ve never seen her like this. I want to turn around and flee—there’s nothing I can do for her—but then I remember who’s brought her to this and it makes me angry. Luther doesn’t have a right to tear down someone as good as Jean.
“This isn’t fair, Jean,” I say, approaching the desk. “They can’t blame you for Woody’s crimes.”
She turns to me and for a moment I think I’ve made a mistake; this isn’t Jean. It’s a waxwork dummy that’s been propped up in her place. Even her voice when she speaks sounds like that of one of those computer-generated avatars.
“But you see, the thing is, I knew.”
“What do you mean? You suspected—”
“I didn’t suspect; I knew. I knew about the three girls he got pregnant when Haywood was a refuge, about how he made them disappear, and that he killed Noreen Bagley.”
I sink down into a chair. “How—?”
“When I was his assistant he used to send me down to Portland to help out Ms. Rockwell—or ‘that old bat,’ as he used to call her. We became quite close, Cora and me. She explained the ‘deal’ she had with Woody. She was really a very clever woman. In another age