After a eulogy from an old friend of Tom’s and a final benediction, the service drew to a close. The guests were invited to the Barnetts’ house for a reception directly following the service. Tom’s body had already been cremated, per his request. The congregation stood to let Barbara and other immediate family pass before we filed out.
Barbara’s blond head was bowed, and she had linked her arm through Adam’s, who guided her dutifully up the aisle. Several older couples followed, whom I imagined to be assorted relatives. Edward and Helene Porter, Sara’s grandparents, were among the group, a stately white-haired pair I’d met at Grenthaler board meetings. Then the other rows began emptying out. I still didn’t see Sara. I wondered if maybe she’d left through another door, wanting to avoid the crush outside.
I’d turned to walk up the aisle when Grant Crocker materialized at my side. “Rachel,” he greeted me, his voice appropriately hushed to reflect our surroundings. “What brings you here?”
“Tom was my client,” I explained, “and Sara Grenthaler and I worked together when she was a summer associate at Winslow, Brown. And I needed to be in town for recruiting, anyhow. How are you, Grant?”
“I’m fine. But this is a sad day.” He put his hand on my elbow as we made our way up the aisle. He’d always been quick to go through the motions of chivalry-opening doors and offering to carry stacks of heavy client presentations-but from him they’d always rankled, knowing as I did that the flip side of his chivalry was chauvinism. And his sanctimonious tone made me wish somebody else was there to hear it, so that we could joke about it later. “I felt it was important to be here,” he added. “For Sara. Since they were so close.” He said Sara’s name with a proprietary air, which I thought was odd given what she’d told me the previous night.
“Have you seen her anywhere?” I asked.
“No. In fact, I was just about to ask you the same thing.”
“We probably missed her in this crowd,” I replied as we emerged from the church into the crisp air. A few flakes of snow had started to fall, precursors of the major storm that was expected that weekend.
“Probably,” he agreed. “Are you going to the reception?”
I made a quick decision. My presence among the several hundred who were likely to descend on the Barnett house would hardly be missed. Nor would it be an appropriate time to discuss Barbara’s ten-percent stake in Grenthaler Media. “No, I’ve got to get back to the Charles. We’re doing the second round of interviews today and tomorrow.”
“I guess I’ll see you at the Winslow, Brown thing tomorrow night, then.” I’d almost forgotten that Winslow, Brown was hosting a cocktail party Friday for the candidates we were asking back to New York as well as previous analysts, like Grant, who had offers outstanding to return to the firm after graduation. I stifled a shudder at the thought of once again having to work with Grant on a daily basis.
“I guess so,” I said, striving to be polite. There was nothing technically wrong with anything Grant had said or done in our brief exchange, but just being around him seemed to rub me the wrong way. I said goodbye, glad to extract my elbow from his grasp and be at least temporarily done with him, and walked down Boylston Street in search of a cab. I found one idling at the corner of Clarendon Street and got in, asking the driver to take me to Harvard Square.
I felt apprehensive, and I tried to figure out why. Clearly, a memorial service was not the most soothing event, nor was it comforting to think about Grant Crocker being back in my life full-time should he return to Winslow, Brown in the fall. But there was something else. I realized that I would have felt better if I’d known for sure that Sara had been at the church. It was strange that neither Grant nor I had seen her. And I couldn’t imagine that she would have missed the service.
I busied myself on the trip back to Cambridge by calling my office to check in with Jessica. I also tried Peter, just to say hello, but his cell phone went straight into voice mail. I left a message then leaned back in my seat, staring out the window. The cab rounded a final curve, zooming past the business school campus to the left and the familiar red brick buildings and cupolas of the undergraduate campus across the river. We turned off Storrow Drive and made a right-hand turn onto the bridge and into an unmoving line of cars.
The driver braked abruptly, cursed at the traffic and added his horn to those that were already honking. After several minutes during which we traveled only a few feet, I paid him and got out. I’d get to the hotel faster by walking. The driver happily pocketed my money and made an illegal U-turn, tires squealing, to return to Boston.
I turned up the collar of my coat against the harsh wind and made my way across the bridge. At its foot, the yellow crime-scene tape remained with its accompanying flock of police cars. Those rowers must have been up to some serious hijinks.
Curious, I stopped to ask one of the uniformed policemen what had happened.
“A young woman was attacked this morning,” he told me.
“Attacked?”
“Uh-huh. In the boathouse. Really early.”
Suddenly, I knew why I hadn’t seen Sara at the church. I felt the blood drain from my face.
Six
I rushed up JFK Street to Mount Auburn, hung a right and sprinted the remaining block to Holyoke Center, which housed University Health Services. The run on the uneven brick sidewalks was no easy feat, dressed as I was in a skirted suit and heels, and the mere act of passing through the building’s entrance instantly brought back unpleasant memories of the times I’d gone there as an undergrad, nursing a bladder infection or something equally embarrassing, but these concerns were eclipsed by my concern for Sara.
Flu season was in full gear, and the clerk at reception was busy with other visitors, but I guessed that Sara would be in the Stillman Infirmary on the fifth floor, so I headed for the elevator bank, punching the call button impatiently. Nobody ever seemed to stop you when you gave off the air of knowing exactly where you were going.
The elevator arrived, and I jabbed at the button for the fifth floor, and then the button to close the doors. The elevator rose at a glacial pace, ticking off each floor with a beep. When the doors finally parted, I strode to the nurses’ station. “I’m here to see Sara Grenthaler,” I announced in my most authoritative tone. While UHS was probably less strict than a normal hospital, I worried that visitors would be restricted to family, of which Sara didn’t have much.
“And you are?” asked the nurse behind the desk.
“I’m Rachel Benjamin. Sara’s cousin.” If you were going to lie, I knew that the only way to do it was simply and with confidence. And there was, after all, a small chance that we were distantly related-her father’s family and my father’s family could have lived in the same Russian shtetl, many generations back, being persecuted by the same Cossacks. It wasn’t a complete lie.
My bluff seemed to work, or it may have been completely unnecessary, because the nurse consulted her computer terminal. “She’s in five-oh-six, ma’am.” I ignored being ma’amed-now was not the time to get hung up on concerns that I’d become prematurely matronly. Instead I hurried off in the direction she’d indicated, counting off the room numbers on either side. The door to Sara’s room was ajar, and I gave it a gentle knock before going in.
She was lying in one of the two hospital beds, and she looked awful. Her head was wrapped in white gauze, and she was hooked up to a variety of tubes and monitors. Her eyes were shut, and her skin was nearly as white as the gauze that framed her face. I let out an involuntary gasp.