The Clairvoyants(26)

“No,” she said. “He’s not my boyfriend anymore.”

I thought about the Firebird guy, Randy, but decided not to mention him. I didn’t know if Del had continued to see him. Often when I left for class she’d be asleep, and when I returned the apartment was empty, and she’d be gone for hours. If I questioned her she only half-answered, and William would call, and I’d get distracted. I hoped she hadn’t been visiting Sybil Townsend in the encampment. I’d made it clear that she shouldn’t go back there, that it wasn’t the best thing for her. Some days I’d get out of class and she’d be waiting for me on campus.

“Surprise!” she’d say. Her roots had begun to grow out—her true blond showing through, and she often looked out of place in her faded purple parka. Students passing her would eye her, though Del never seemed to notice or care.

“We need to get you a new coat,” I said.

That day in the bakery she had on a dark green wool duffle coat she claimed one of her Milton friends had given her. “You remember Alice, right?”

She tore sugar packets and dumped the crystals into her coffee. The shop window steamed up behind her, the people beyond it on the sidewalk blurred shapes trundling past.

“How do you get to Milton?” I asked her.

“The bus?” she said. She raised the large mug up toward her face. “Or someone picks me up.”

In my preoccupation with William I’d lost track of Del. I pushed her éclair on its china plate toward her.

“It’s a nice coat,” I said.

“It’s Mary Rae’s,” Del said. “She left it at Alice’s house.”

She set her coffee down and picked up her éclair. At the table next to us a man blew his nose, and she set the éclair back on the plate without taking a bite. I’d never thought she’d wear a dead girl’s coat, though there wasn’t any proof yet that Mary Rae was dead.

“Well,” I said. “It’s warm and new-looking.”

“There’s nothing in the pockets. No clues. I checked.”

I sorted through the sugar packets spread on the tabletop. “That’s a relief.”

“We want to find out what happened to her,” Del said.

I lifted my cup to my mouth and the coffee was bitter and hot. Del had used all of the sugar.

“You know, all of us,” she said. “The girls in Milton, and Anne.”

The bell on the door rang as people came in—husbands and wives with small children for doughnuts, couples with their arms linked.

“What about your friends in Connecticut?” I said.

“I should just stay here. I can get a job,” she said, her voice sounding almost plaintive. Del, as far as I knew, had never held a job before. The cars sped past us in the new slush, their tires wet and churning. I wondered if life at the Manor was dispiriting and lonely. Once, I’d driven by the place—an old house with a porch and a newer addition with large plate-glass windows where everyone gathered for Ping-Pong. Del twirled her hair. She told me she could stay with Sybil in the encampment.

“I don’t think that’s an option,” I said.

“Or with Alice. She lives with her grandmother, though. Her mother might move back from Florida and then I’d be in her room—sort of awkward.”

Del told me the whole story about Alice and her mother, whose name was once Hester, and who’d changed it when she turned eighteen to Erika. Alice’s mother had moved to Florida when Alice was little, and she arrived home every so often to “recharge.” Erika had a tan, and long, dark hair, and wore beautiful clothes that made her seem like a bright bird against the backdrop of gloomy Milton. Summers, she set up lounge chairs in the backyard and she and Alice spent hours there sunbathing, planning when Alice would move to Florida with her, planning the name Alice would change hers to when she turned eighteen: Vanessa, Brooke, Tiffany.

“But Alice never changed her name?” I said.

“I guess not.”

Then, with a mischievous look, Del confessed that Professor McCall, who lived downstairs next to Professor Whitman, had gone out of town on leave and was looking for someone to sublet her apartment. Geoff had told her this.

“But you’d have to talk Mother into it,” she said.

My immediate reaction was irritation that Geoff hadn’t consulted me first. But I knew he saw Del as an independent adult.

“When did Geoff tell you this?”

Del spun her coffee cup in circles on the tabletop. “He saw me yesterday and he told me about the professor. She’d left to take care of her sick mother in California.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted Del so close by, but I couldn’t have her living in some encampment with a self-proclaimed medium named Sybil. She picked at the chocolate on her éclair and stared out the window.

“You’ll have to talk Mother into it,” I said.

Del wore her sly look.

“Well, she’s a big pushover,” she said. In our childhood years, our mother had relegated Del to my care. “Watch out for your sister,” she would remind me. “Include your sister,” she’d say when I had friends over swimming, or if I went bike riding into town. To my mother Del was always in need of watching, and part of my job had been to pretend that was true, to hide the fact that Del had been off on her own for years, doing whatever she wanted to do, and keeping much of it a secret.