Good Girls Lie(65)

The line goes dead, leaving Ford to wonder what, exactly, just happened.

A condolence call that ended up with a lawsuit threat. Intimations against Ash.

Who is this girl she’s brought into her school?

And on cue, a knock on Ford’s door. Jude Westhaven, draped in cashmere and pearls, perfectly power-bobbed and highlighted, stands in her doorway.

“Well. Isn’t this quite a mess?” she says.

“Mother. What are you doing here?”

Her mother’s face is unreadable, but her words are not. “My goodness, darling, I’m here to comfort you. I am so, so sorry. There is nothing worse than losing a student. I came because I know how you feel. I came because I’d like to offer my help getting things back on track. I came because I thought you might need me. And perhaps, you’d let me help.”

Ford lets the words wash over her like a benediction.

“It wasn’t my fault, Mom.” And then she collapses into tears, and her mother’s arms are around her.



48

THE BITTERSWEET

Glee. It’s such a funny word.

So many meanings. The thesaurus is full of synonyms, all implying something beyond happiness. Delight. Joviality. Mirth. Merriment.

A song written for men in three or more parts. That’s highly misogynistic, don’t you think? Let’s give it a fix, shall we?

A song written for women in three or more parts.

There. That’s better. And it’s more appropriate. We are at an all-girls school, aren’t we?

Perhaps this story should have been called glee.

Then again, there’s nothing about lying in these synonyms. Or is there? How much happiness really exists in a person? We’re capable of great emotional swings, yes, but they shuttle between two normatives: happy and sad. It is only when we wish to impress or impart that the sliding scale of nouns goes into overdrive.

If we’re trying to rouse someone with our vocabulary, we can find hundreds of words to use in place of these base terms. For example, I would hardly write an essay and say I am happy to be accepted to The Goode School. No, no, no. My essay would be littered with extremes: ecstatic to be accepted, thrilled to be joining you, elated to make the move to America.

You, reading my words, would smile, pleased with yourself (happy? Yes, of course, there’s another, but the more sedate pleased is so genteel) at how enthusiastic I seem to be.

You would write back, a pretty little letter, more personal this time, about how genuinely delighted you are to have me joining you.

So sweet.

Yes, glee is a very funny word. A funny word indeed.

Though you really should start looking at the synonyms for sad. You have no idea what’s coming. None of you do.





“The past beats inside me like a second heart.”

—John Banville, The Sea



49

THE COP

Kate Wood takes 29 North to Manassas, one hand on the steering wheel, singing an earworm by Billie Eilish that got into her head back at Goode, “You Should See Me in a Crown.” She heard the song coming from one of the dorm rooms and can’t seem to shake it. She finally looked up the video and had to turn it off almost immediately. Spiders. Ugh. She doesn’t like spiders.

The Goode School gives her the willies just like spiders do, sitting atop the hill like an ancient, cherry-round orb weaver in a desiccated web, waiting. Oh, sure, it’s been renovated, updated, but paint and shellac can’t scrub away ghosts. Just walking through the campus is like nails on a chalkboard. She has no idea how Uncle Tony can stand living there.

Something about Camille Shannon’s death feels hinky to her. Tony thinks it’s a clear case of suicide, the diary was the clincher for him, but Kate isn’t so sure. Something about the roommate is off. Something deeper than British reserve and the aloofness of a teenager. Something in her eyes... A darkness, like she’s hiding something.

Granted, Kate is a cop. To her, the whole world is hiding something. But this girl’s empty eyes have been haunting her.

And how she’s been roped into this case... Stupid. She’s supposed to be at home, minding her p’s and q’s, waiting for the ruling on her suspension. Just the thought of the situation makes her blood pressure spike. She was executing an arrest warrant, a nasty drug dealer turned murderer named Gary Banner. Should have been standard fare, but the idiot had seen her and bolted, hid out in a barn, and when she tracked him down, he started shooting. She responded in kind, killing him.

Cut-and-dried case.

But said scumbag happened to be the beloved, railroaded, not responsible for his actions, must have been provoked—was that warrant properly drafted?—nephew of a state senator.

They took her badge and gun. Have had them for two weeks and counting.

Kate is in the right, she knows this. The department knows this. The media knows this. The city of Charlottesville knows this. But she’s still on suspension pending a lengthy examination of the case by the new Police Civilian Review Board. And she has her doubts she’s going to get a fair shake.

She took off for Marchburg to visit her mother’s twin brother, her favorite uncle, both for comfort and, if she’s being honest with herself, to lay the groundwork for making a jump to the sheriff’s office staff in case she gets run out of Charlottesville on a rail.

Nepotism, but this is hardly an issue. Tony would never hold her back. And Kate’s not going to give up her career because of a civilian oversight committee. She’s just not.