The Head waves me into the anteroom of his office. A sturdy cherry-wood desk is empty of personal belongings, its flawlessly glossy top covered with a pristine paper blotter tucked into a leather holder. Two pencils, perfectly sharpened, stiff in a cordovan-leather container. A letter opener with a matching cordovan handle.
The desk chair has a needlepoint seat pillow.
I look at Josh, my eyes questioning. He gives me a tiny nod.
This was Dorothy’s desk.
The Head returns, his arms wrapped around what looks like an oversize scrapbook, bound in aging brown leather.
“The BEX,” he says, handing it to me.
I can smell the leather. The BEX is much heavier than it looks, thick as a New York City phone book, trimmed in brass. The front is stamped with an embossed Bexter seal, tastefully discreet, and the school motto, Bex et Lux. The brass at the lower right corner is burnished at the tip, exactly where someone would turn the page.
“You can sit right at Doro-at this desk to look at it,” the Head continues, waving me toward the chair. He looks at his watch, then back at me. “We’ll be meeting for approximately an hour. I trust that’s sufficient?”
“That will be lovely,” I say.
Sitting at Dorothy’s desk, in Dorothy’s chair, I page through the book, trying to get a sense of it. It’s expandable, held together with two metal posts with removable silver tabs on the back. I suppose that’s how they add new pages every year. The pages aren’t numbered, so it would be easy enough to remove a page. I tuck that thought away.
Each page has its own stiff black backing. Two class photos on each side of the page, the pictures covered in clear plastic. The students are arranged similarly, the class sitting on the front stairs of Main. Names, by row, are printed underneath each one. The first one, a fifth-grade class dated 1928, shows six students. By this year, there are maybe forty per class. There’s no index.
I’m looking for Hogarth, Fryeburg, Claughton. They must still be alive, I suppose, since their names are on the donor lists. Only one way to find them.
I start at the back of the BEX. Class of 1928. The photo is sepia, the edges scalloped, tinged yellow on the edges. The girls are wearing essentially the same plaid skirts, white shirts and navy sweaters Josh and I just purchased for Penny. Only their carefully waved hair, white socks and chunky shoes mark them as of another time: 1928. That would make those kids about a hundred years old now. Probably not doing anything sinister.
I skip a few decades to the fifth graders who started Bexter in 1967. The girls’ hair is teased and pouffed, and bangs have appeared. I count on my fingers. They’d be about fiftyish now. And would have graduated in 1974. Turning to that year, I find the senior class and run my fingers along the names. And there in the front row is Alice Hogarth. Class of ’74. She’s in a classic flip with a headband, a circle pin centered on her round oxford collar.
After writing her name and class in my notebook, I turn the glossy pages back through to the senior class of 1973. There’s Brooks Fryeburg. A girl. Lesley Claughton, also a girl, is class of ’72.
I flip ahead to the newest pages and work backward. I know this is a losing proposition, because if those girls had children at Bexter now, their last names could be different. I’m right, I guess. I can’t find anyone named Hogarth, Fryeburg or Claughton. But I do see teen heartthrob Talbott Dulles, Wen and Fee’s son. That gives me an idea.
Counting on my fingers again, I wish for a huge calendar as I turn a few more pages. There’s Loudon Fielder, the prosperous owner of WWXI, already taller and more elegant than his classmates, sitting by the teacher. I guess that explains why he was at Dorothy’s service. The heavy pages creak as I keep searching. Doesn’t seem like the BEX gets much viewing. I turn one more page.
And there she is. Fiona Rooseveldt, in the senior class of 1971. I start to count again, and consider making a time chart, but it’s quicker to page through. I see a broad-shouldered Randall Kindell on the end of a top row. I don’t see Wenholm Dulles. And there’s Fiona again, with students who were freshmen in 1966.
Something is off. I turn back to her senior photo. Back to her freshman photo. Forward again. Back again.
None of her classmates are the same. I blink at the pictures and names. Maybe I counted wrong?
I look again, trying to memorize each class photo, which is tough, because the kids are sitting in different places each year. But no. Fiona Rooseveldt graduated a year later than she should. Other students come and go, new kids arrive and some students leave. But no one else leaves and then comes back. I clamp my pencil between my teeth, staring at the photos.
“We all miss Dorothy very much.”
My pencil clatters onto the desk and rolls across the blotter. Why do I feel so guilty? I have permission to be here.
The development consultant-is it Ebling?-coat draped over his arm and a Bexter standard-issue muffler twisted around his neck, stands in the doorway. Gray hair, wire-rimmed glasses. Do they hire only people who look like each other?
“Meeting is over. Your Josh will be out soon,” he says. He tilts his head, assessing. “I see you’re looking at the BEX. For one of your investigative stories?”
“Well, no, it’s not that, of course, I…” I tuck my hair behind my ear, stalling. And then I realize, this guy, the big fundraiser, probably knows exactly where everyone is. I quickly duck under the desk and pull Dorothy’s report from my bag. And from out of nowhere, I get a brilliant idea.
“Actually, I guess I can tell you I’m working on a special project. Kind of a surprise gift to the school. I was thinking of a ‘where are they now’ kind of thing? Interviewing former students to illustrate how Bexter has changed their lives?” I pause, checking his expression to see if he’s buying this. I hold up the fundraising report.
“I circled a few names from this pamphlet,” I say, all smiley and earnest. Yes, I remember now, his name is definitely Ebling. Harrison Ebling. “And, Mr. Ebling, I figured that was as good a way as any to come up with random names without asking any faculty members. You know, to keep it a surprise.”
“Very resourceful of you, Miss McNally.” Coat now on and buttoned, Ebling takes a pair of charcoal suede gloves from a pocket.
“Please call me Charlie,” I say. I’m on the verge of fluttering my eyelashes, but restrain myself. “Especially since I’m about to ask you a favor.”
“Ask a favor? Of me?” he says. He stops, one glove partly on.
“Yes,” I plow ahead, coming around the desk to face him. I hold out the pamphlet, pointing to the names. “I’ve found their photos in the BEX, but now I’m wondering how to find them. To interview. To follow up my research. I could do a Google search, of course, but I was thinking, maybe you could give me their addresses? Since they’re all donors, you certainly have them in your files. Right?”
Ebling pauses, sizing me up. Then he smiles as he pulls the glove onto his hand. “Well, I suppose it’s all in the family. Let me consider it. And perhaps if we could agree you didn’t tell them I told you?”
I nod, reassuring. “Of course. I always protect my sources.”
“So. What. Did. They. Say?” I click up the car’s heater a few notches. We’re halfway home. This is the fourth time I’ve asked Josh for the scoop, and I still haven’t gotten a satisfactory answer. He’s relishing his tale about what he called his “undercover assignment” in the Bexter staff meeting.
This is what I get for being engaged to the drama coach. Drama.
“I’m telling you,” he says, turning to me as we stop at a red light. “But you have to hear the whole thing.”
I gesture the stage back to him, and wrap my cashmere scarf a little closer.
“Anyway. I waited through the entire meeting, as I said, for the right time to bring up a question about drug use. I waited through the latest on the fundraising report, and the rundown of the new semester’s schedule, and the search for a new Dorothy. And then, the new policy about the senior prank. And then, since school starts Tuesday, the ever-popular assignment of counseling and detention duty.”