Mercifully she stopped right there.
"That's the last thing I remember. I passed out then. I didn't wake up for three days and when I did, well, I spent the next few weeks in and out of consciousness. There were constant surgeries. The pain was intolerable. I was pretty drugged up. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me go back a little. Campus police heard me scream that night. They caught Phil Turnball in the dean's front yard. My blood was all over his shoes. We all knew that other students were there too. See, there was a scavenger hunt. The dean's boxer shorts were a big prize. Sixty points. That's what Phil Turnball had been after-a pair of boxers. Like I said, a prank. Nothing more."
"You said you heard others. Whispers and giggles."
"Right, but Phil claimed that he'd been alone. His friends, of course, backed up that story. I was in no condition to counter what he said, and really, what did I know?"
"Phil took full blame?" Wendy asked.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"I still don't understand. What did he do to you exactly? I mean, what caused all the cuts?"
"When I came in the room, Phil hid behind the bed. When he saw me reaching for the light switch, well, I guess the idea was to try to draw my attention away. A big glass ashtray got thrown near me. It was supposed to make noise so I'd turn and then Phil could run, I guess. But there was an antique mirror there. It shattered right into my face. Freak injury, right?"
Wendy said nothing.
"I spent three months in the hospital. I lost an eye. My other one was also severely damaged-the retina got severed. For a while I was totally blind. My sight came back gradually in the one eye. I'm still legally blind, but I can make out enough. Everything is blurry and I have tremendous trouble with any sort of bright light-especially sunlight. Again, apropos, don't you think? According to the doctors, my face had literally been sliced off, piece by piece. I've seen early pictures. If you think this is bad… it looked like raw ground chuck. That's the only way I can describe it. Like a lion had eaten my face away."
"I'm sorry," Wendy said, because she didn't know what else to say.
"My fiance, Marc, he was great. He stuck by me. I mean, he was heroic when you think about it. I had been beautiful. I can say that now. It doesn't sound immodest anymore. But I was. And he was so damn handsome. So Marc stuck by me. But he also kept diverting his gaze. It wasn't his fault. He hadn't signed up for this."
Christa stopped.
"So what happened?"
"I made him go. You think you know love, right? But that's the day I learned what love really was. Even though it cut me deeper than any shard ever could, I loved Marc enough to make him go."
She stopped again, took a sip of tea.
"You can probably guess the rest. Phil's family paid me to keep silent. A generous sum, I guess you'd say. It's in trust, paid out to me every week. If I speak about what happened, the payments stop."
"I won't say anything."
"Do you think that worries me?"
"I don't know."
"It doesn't. I have pretty modest needs. I still live here. I kept working for Dean Slotnick, though not with his children. My face scared them. So I became his assistant. When he died, Dean Pashaian was kind enough to keep me on. Now it's Dean Lewis. I mostly donate the money to various charities."
Silence.
"So how does Dan fit into this?" Wendy asked.
"How do you think?"
"I assume he was in the house that night?"
"Yes. They all were. All five. I found out later."
"How?"
"Dan told me."
"And Phil took the fall for all of them?"
"Yes."
"Any idea why?"
"He was a stand-up guy, I guess. But there might have been more. He was wealthy. The others weren't. Maybe he figured, what good would it do him to tell on his friends?"
That made sense, Wendy thought.
"So Dan visited you?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"To offer comfort. We talked. He felt horrible about that night. About running out. That was how it started. I was furious when he first came by. But we became friends. We talked for hours at this very table."
"You said you were furious?"
"You have to understand. I lost everything that night."
"Right, so you were justifiably angry."
Christa smiled. "Oh, I see."
"What?"
"Let me guess. I was angry. I was furious. I hated them all. So I plotted my revenge. I, what, bided my time for twenty years and then I struck. Is that what you're thinking?"
Wendy shrugged. "It is as though someone is paying them all back."
"And I'm the most likely suspect? The scarred chick with the ax to grind?"
"Don't you think so?"
"Sounds like a bad horror movie, but I guess…" She tilted her head again. "Are you buying me as the bad guy, Wendy?"
Wendy shook her head. "Not really, no."
"And there is one other thing."
"What?"
Christa spread her hands. She still had the sunglasses on, but a tear escaped from the one eye she had left. "I forgave them."
Silence.
"They were just college kids on a scavenger hunt. They never meant to hurt me."
And there it was. There is such wisdom in the simple-a truth you can hear in the tone, unmistakable for anything else.
"You live in this world, you collide with others. That's the way it is. We collide and sometimes someone gets hurt. They just wanted to steal a silly pair of boxers. It went wrong. For a short time, I hated them. But when you think about it, what good does that do? It takes so much to hold on to hate-you lose your grip on what's important, you know?"
Wendy felt tears push into her eyes now. She picked up the tea and sipped it. The peppermint felt good sliding down her throat. Let the hate go. She couldn't reply to that.
"Maybe they hurt someone else that night," Wendy said.
"I doubt it."
"Or maybe someone else wants revenge for you."
"My mother is dead," Christa said. "Marc is happily married to another woman. There is no one else."
Dead end. "What did Dan tell you when he first came?"
She smiled. "That's between us."
"There has to be a reason why they're all being ruined."
"Is that the main reason why you're here, Wendy? To help them get their lives back?"
Wendy said nothing.
"Or," Christa continued, "are you here because you're worried that you inadvertently set up an innocent man?"
"Both, I guess."
"You're hoping for absolution?"
"I'm hoping for answers."
"Do you want my take on it?" Christa asked.
"Sure."
"I got to know Dan pretty well."
"Sounds like it."
"We talked about everything at this table. He told me about his work, about meeting his first wife, Jenna, about how it was his fault the marriage didn't work, about how they remained close, about his loneliness. It was something we both shared."
Wendy waited. Christa adjusted her sunglasses. For a moment Wendy thought that she was going to take them off, but she didn't. She adjusted them and it seemed as though she was trying somehow to look Wendy in the eye.