Before She Knew Him(5)

“I’m off,” Matthew said. “Should I wait for you?”

“No, that’s okay. I have plenty to do here. How long are you going to be?”

“Not long at all,” he said, grabbing the car keys and his sunglasses. He stood for a moment in the foyer trying to think if he’d gotten everything. Standing there, he realized that Hen or her husband, Lloyd, might be out in front of their house, or looking out the window. They’d said they were going somewhere, but what if they were back and saw him leaving with a box? Would it be obvious he was getting rid of the trophy? Fortunately, his driveway was on the opposite side of the house from theirs. He’d be visible to them for all of about ten seconds as he left the front door and turned toward his car. He could risk it.

It was warm outside, more like a midsummer day than early in September. Across the street Jim Mills was mowing his lawn again, even though it had been only a few days since he’d last done it, and the smell of cut grass and gasoline filled the air, making Matthew slightly ill. It had been one of his jobs as a kid, mowing the back lawn of his parents’ house. His nose would run, and his hands would itch from the vibration of the push mower, and on wet days, the cut grass would clump underneath the mower and stick to his shins. He got into his Fiat and turned on the air conditioner. He put the box next to him on the passenger seat. Because of the smell of the lawnmower he’d barely even thought about Hen or Lloyd spotting him with the box. Probably a good thing that he didn’t cast a guilty look toward their house.

It was a twenty-minute drive to Sussex Hall, a private high school with about seven hundred students, half of whom boarded and half who came from the surrounding wealthy towns of this part of Massachusetts. Built on a hill, all the buildings of Sussex Hall, except for the newish gym, were constructed from brick at the turn of the previous century. Matthew did not always love being a teacher, but he did love the Sussex campus, with its Gothic dormitories and its nondenominational stone chapel. He parked in a faculty spot even though it was Sunday and he could park anywhere. He entered Warburg Hall through the back door, using his own set of keys, and went straight down the narrow stairwell to the basement. As one of his extra duties, Matthew had taken on stewardship of the history textbooks, most of which were shelved in one of the closeted storage spaces in the finished basement. But he also had a key to the older section of the basement, filled with the extra lawn chairs used for graduation ceremonies and, behind those, the discarded furnishings—blackboards, mostly, and old school chairs. There was also a stack of boxes in the far corner that contained the original cutlery from the dining hall. It was there that he slid his box of mementos, sure that they would never be disturbed or found, even if someone were looking for them. And even if someone did find the box, he’d made sure to wipe any fingerprints off all the items, and he’d checked that his name was not in any of the old textbooks.

Back upstairs, after washing his hands in the faculty bathroom, Matthew went to his classroom to work on his lesson plans for the week. Most of his classes were ones he’d taught dozens of times, but this semester he’d agreed to do a senior seminar on the cold war, and he needed to brush up. This week they were focusing on postwar reorganization. He’d been at his desk nearly an hour when he heard the loud metallic screech of the back door opening, then a timid “Anyone here?”

He stepped out of the room into the dim hallway and shouted, “Hello.”

Michelle Brine came up the stairs, said, “Thank God. I hate being here alone on weekends. It gives me the creeps.”

He wasn’t surprised to see Michelle here. It was her second year teaching, and he was amazed she’d survived the first. Timid, mousy, and imbued with the honest belief that her students cared about history, she had faltered, frequently crying, through her first year. Matthew had taken her under his wing, offering up his lesson plans, his strategies for discipline, and then, toward the end of the spring semester, his thoughts on her personal life as well, coaching her through her relationship with her asshole of a boyfriend.

“I’m so glad I’m not the only one panicking and coming in here on a Sunday. I’m so behind already.” She had followed Matthew back to his classroom. She wore jeans, something she never did while teaching, but he recognized her black blouse, buttoned to the top button, as something she sometimes wore with a skirt while teaching.

“It’s nice in here on weekends, don’t you think?”

“I hate it when I’m the only one. How long are you staying?”

“I was getting ready to leave, actually.”

“Oh no,” she said, unzipping her backpack. “Can you look at something real quick? It’s something I’m planning with my sophomores.”

After he’d gone over one of her lesson plans that had the students creating their own mock Constitution—“Maybe teach them the actual Constitution first,” he’d suggested—she’d instantly launched into a new story about her boyfriend, Scott, how he’d played a gig with his band two nights ago and didn’t get home until three in the morning. She went to look at his phone while he was sleeping in, and he’d changed his passcode.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Matthew said.

“I know. I know. He’s cheating on me, isn’t he?”

“Tell me exactly what he said when you called him out on it.”