the drone of the helicopter as it flew away, the sound of voices from the common room. She put on headphones to muffle them. The information was traveling and soon everything would be chaos. She had to get her thoughts together now. When she was sure she had recorded all she knew, she ripped out the page. Then she got up, removed her red coat from the closet, and put it on, taking refuge in the stiff vinyl. She put one Ativan in the left pocket and the folded list in the right. Then she sat on the edge of her bed, hands on her lap, until Larry came for her.
It was maybe an hour later. Stevie wasn’t sure. Time was slippery now. Stevie passed through the common room like a ghost, not looking at the others. Outside, there seemed to be red and blue lights everywhere, winking through the trees, echoing into the sky and throwing strange shadows all around. The temperature felt like it had dropped about ten degrees. Nate was waiting outside with Pix. He looked blank and gray.
Larry drove Stevie and Nate to the Great House. He and Stevie sat side by side behind Larry in the cart, taking a bit of warmth from each other. A state-police cruiser was parked under the portico and the officer inside was entering information into the computer. There were more officers inside. Several faculty members were crowded on the balcony, looking down. Maris and Dash were already in the hall, sitting by the massive fireplace. Maris was sobbing and Dash was glazed over, staring at his phone.
“I think I may throw up,” Nate said.
“Deep breaths,” Stevie said, taking his hand. “With me.”
She sat down with Nate on the bottom step of the grand staircase.
“The trick,” Stevie said, “is to make the exhale longer than the inhale. So we’re going to breathe in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. Do it with me. I’ll count. One, two, three, four . . .”
Nate breathed with Stevie, slowing the response, slowing the fear.
This was the funny thing about Stevie’s anxiety—when she encountered someone else who felt more anxious than she did, she leveled out. She’d first made this discovery a few years ago, when she got trapped on an elevator with another person in a hotel on one of the few Bell family vacations. The hotel was twenty stories high. Stevie and another woman got on at the eighteenth floor. The doors closed and the elevator went down, then the car dropped suddenly about a story, juddered, and stopped. Stevie’s heart almost flew out of her mouth, but when she saw the woman cry out and sink into the corner of the elevator in panic, something new set in. The woman spent the next half hour sitting on the floor in the corner, half in tears, shaking. Stevie talked her through it, and when they were rescued, the woman had nothing but good things to say about Stevie and bought her a giant cupcake and a coffee from the café in the lobby.
This might be her future—talking to people who had just witnessed traumatic events. She would have to work with them, calm them, get them to a place where they could talk.
“Nate,” Stevie said, taking his hand again, “what’s your favorite book?”
“What?”
“Just tell me your favorite book. Don’t think about it too hard. Just name a book you like.”
“The Hobbit.”
“What do you like about it?” Stevie asked.
“I like the whole thing.”
“But name one thing. Close your eyes and think about The Hobbit for one moment and tell me what you like.”
Nate closed his eyes. His face smoothed just a bit.
“The round door,” he said. “On Bilbo’s house. I read it when I was little and I always thought about the door.”
“That’s great,” Stevie said. “Keep that door in your mind. Keep Bilbo in there. Let’s breathe again. Four in. Seven hold. Eight out.”
After another moment, Stevie saw Nate settle a bit more. His shoulders relaxed a bit, and the strain of trying not to be sick let up. He exhaled one last time, opened his eyes, and looked at her.
“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Okay. What’s going to happen? What’s happening? Stevie, what the hell is happening?”
“They’ll ask us what we saw,” Stevie said.
“I didn’t see anything. I don’t even know what’s going on. They said Hayes is dead?”
“I mean how the day went,” Stevie said. “They need to establish the facts.”
“But what happened? How did Hayes die?”
“I don’t know,”