Cold Springs(22)

Chadwick heard the edge of panic in her voice. He wanted to reassure her. He wanted to warn her that Mallory could smell her nervousness like a piranha smells blood. But he couldn't say any of that—not with Mallory there.

“She's cuffed,” he said. “Just lock the doors, wait for me.”

“Who the hell is Katherine?”

He left her staring over the top of the car, her fingers splayed across the black metal, grasping at the reflection of the street lamp.

On the playground, half a dozen kids were still waiting for their parents to pick them up. Two little girls spun on the tire swing. A trio of middle school boys played basketball; the yellow floodlight above them swirled with moths. A sleepy-looking after-school attendant sat on a throne of milk crates, reading a college textbook. She didn't look up as Chadwick walked in.

Once inside, he was immediately disoriented. The doors weren't where they were supposed to be. The walls were too white, the linoleum floors too shiny. Even the smell was different. The old odors—decades of peanut butter apples, dried Play-Doh, burnt popcorn and peeled crayons—had been replaced by the industrial lemon scent of an office building.

The first phase of Ann's expansion plan, Chadwick remembered—to remodel the interior of the existing building to maximize space.

The basketball dribbled outside.

In a way, Chadwick was relieved to look around and see almost nothing he remembered. On the other hand, the changes in the school seemed uncomfortably like his own changes—shuffling interior walls, laying down new carpet to conceal old floors, making everything look as different as possible. Yet the underlying structure was the same. You couldn't change the size and shape of the foundation.

He was still trying to get his bearings when a young man came down the stairwell. He was in his mid-twenties, short blond hair, navy business suit. A kindergarten parent, Chadwick assumed.

“Mr. Chadwick?”

It took a moment for his features to resolve themselves in Chadwick's mind—for Chadwick to see the boy he had been, an awkward zit-faced kid, waving a red handkerchief to spot the high bidders.

“David Kraft?”

David grinned. “This is awesome. What are you doing here?”

Chadwick shook his hand, tried not to look like a man on his way to the rack. “Don't tell me you have a child . . .”

“God, no. I mean, No, sir. Ann—Mrs. Zedman—hired me to help in the office. I'm assisting with the capital campaign drive.”

“You're out of college.”

“Yes, sir. Working here part-time. Working on my MBA.”

Chadwick felt like he had needles in his eyes. Of course David was out of college. He would be twenty-four now. An adult. He had been in Katherine's class.

He tried to swallow the dryness out of his throat. “Congratulations, David. That's wonderful.”

David blushed, just as he had in eighth grade, trying to recite the Declaration of Independence in front of the class. And in high school, when he'd taken the BART train all the way from his house in Berkeley and shown up at Chadwick's doorstep, asking to see Katherine—advising Chadwick in a heartbreakingly awkward, gallantly honest way that he was here to—you know, see her. Not just like a friend, anymore. Was that okay with him?

David looked down, pinching at his silk tie. “Listen, Mr. Chadwick, I never got to tell you . . . I mean, after the funeral . . . I wanted to write, or something.”

“It's all right, David.”

“No, I mean . . . You were the best teacher I ever had. This place wasn't the same after you left. I just wanted to tell you that.”

Chadwick felt as if he were standing in the loop of a snare. If David said one more thing, if he spoke Katherine's name . . .

“Thanks, David,” he managed. “Listen, I really should get upstairs.”

“Oh. Right.” David pointed behind him. “You know Ann is meeting—um—about the campaign, right? With Ms. Reyes?”

“I'll try not to keep them long,” Chadwick replied. “Good to see you again, David.”

He left David Kraft's waning smile—the look of a pupil who'd just gotten a B+ on a project he'd put his heart into.

Upstairs, Chadwick's classroom had vanished, the space it had occupied filled with a computer lab and a faculty lounge. The doorway, where he and John had stood talking at the auction so long ago, was a blank wall.

The old student cubbies, which Katherine had so despised, had been replaced with a row of red metal lockers. Chadwick wondered which was Race Montrose's. He tried to imagine Ann opening that locker, finding a gun—at Laurel Heights, where the kids weren't even allowed to play with water pistols. The kindergarteners downstairs, singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” The rainbow parachute being spread on the playground for PE.

Ann's office was right where it had been, still dominated by a giant window, the same Japanese curtain hanging over the doorway. Ann's byword: Openness. No closed door between her and her school.

She was standing behind her desk, Norma leaning across it, showing her something on a laptop screen. Baguette sandwiches on wax paper and bottles of water were spread out between them.

Chadwick parted the curtain.

Norma sensed his presence first. She turned, and her face shifted through several phases, like a projector seeking the correct slide.