A Lesson in Vengeance(89)

Dear Clara…

The calligraphy is a poor imitation. The content of the note itself doesn’t read like it’s in Ellis’s voice. I rip it up and start over—two times, three, before I decide it’s good enough. Not a perfect match, but then again, no one knows Ellis like I do. No one else would be able to look at these words and tell they’d never fall from Ellis’s mouth.

There’s a chance I’ll never need to use this letter anyway, I tell myself. Missing isn’t dead. No one has any good reason to suspect me.

Not yet.





Most missing persons are found within the first seventy-two hours, or so I’ve heard.

I’m not sure why that is—if it’s because the evidence trail is easier to follow closer to the actual moment a crime was committed or because most missing persons cases don’t involve any kind of violence at all. Maybe most missing people come home eventually, a little smudged perhaps, a little blurry-minded or tattered around the edges, but safe.

The police discover Clara’s car abandoned on the side of the road; her prints were the only ones on the wheel. “Maybe she left it there herself,” Leonie says, picking the polish off her bitten-down nails. But the suggestion only brings the other possibility into sharper relief: Or maybe the killer wore gloves.

Ivory gloves, purchased from a local antiques shop and still smelling like lavender.

Clara’s parents arrive, elegant people who speak very little and blow through Godwin House as if they find its existence unsavory. Perhaps they should. The sinking, uneven floors and faded rugs look shabby and dangerous juxtaposed with anyone from the outside. Our visitors seem out of place and out of time. I find myself wondering briefly if we at Dalloway have clipped ourselves out of the usual dimension and found a new one. If we exist on a separate metaphysical plane from all the rest, and these interlopers are mere trespassers. If Dalloway will reject them like a host rejecting its parasite.

I should tell someone. Kajal, perhaps, I think as we sit alone together at the breakfast table, Kajal pushing her eggs around the plate and eating none of them. Only Kajal is pieced together as fragilely as I am these days. If I apply the slightest pressure, she might crack.

I could tell Hannah Stratford, who has latched onto me in the wake of Clara’s disappearance. Hannah appears at my side every time I venture out to class or the library, or make an appearance in the main dining hall, always with her face stitched in a perfect expression of concern.

“What does Ellis think?” Hannah asks me one day as she’s accompanying me across the quad—because I so clearly need a chaperone. “Does Ellis think Clara was”—her voice drops to a stage whisper—“murdered?”

No. I’m not telling Hannah Stratford.

MacDonald, then. I could sit in her office, like I’m doing now, and open my mouth and confess it: Ellis Haley killed Clara Kennedy. Her body is buried in Alex Haywood’s grave. I saw it myself. It sounds unbelievable even to my own ears. No matter what pulp novels would have one think, high school students are not known for their malevolent cunning. Ellis has no reason to kill Clara. She certainly has no reason to frame me.

The story sounds just like that: a story.

“Are you all right, Felicity?” MacDonald asks, her eyes huge and owl-like behind her wire-rimmed glasses. “I know how close all you girls are. Have you been hanging in there okay?”

“We all miss Clara,” I say. In the past week I have gotten very good at choosing my words. I use the present tense. I blend myself in with the larger group—no individualism, part of a faceless whole.

MacDonald nods, and for a moment I think she’s going to let me leave. Only then she shifts forward, reaching across her desk to clutch my hand, squeezing hard enough that I flinch.

“I’m so sorry,” MacDonald tells me. “I know she’s your friend. What a year for you….No one should have to lose two…two…” She breaks off, tears welling in her eyes.

“I’m sure Clara’s fine, Housemistress.”

But we can both tell neither of us believes that’s true.

MacDonald sniffs and, producing a handkerchief from her jacket pocket, dabs at her nose. “Well,” she says. “You’ll let me know if you need any support. Won’t you? Perhaps…perhaps you should call your mother and have her come….”

“I’m quite all right,” I say as firmly as possible. “Thank you. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

I go upstairs to my room, and I find the letter I wrote in Ellis’s handwriting. I bring it downstairs and slide it under Clara’s pillow.

Wednesday the police show up with a subpoena to search Clara’s room.

Godwin House is a mess: crime scene technicians and officers, yellow tape bracketing off Clara’s door, strangers tramping through our sacred halls.

I don’t have to wonder what they make of us. I hear Liu and Ashby talking outside the front door as I lurk in the common room, doing my best to overhear.

“A thousand bucks says that girl’s dead by now,” Liu is telling Ashby. “We’ll find her body floating in the Hudson in a few days, bloated up and half-rotten.”

I think about where Clara’s body really is: buried six feet underground, pale and bloodless. Still preserved, perhaps, by the cold and snow.