“Is that where you met your wife?” Phoebe asked. “At Northwestern?” She found the subject of his marriage slightly unsettling but also utterly compelling, and she’d been fighting off her curiosity since their first dinner.
“I met her when I first started teaching, but not at the school.” He cleared the plates then, and she wondered if this was terrain he wanted to avoid.
“What about you?” he said, returning with salad and a plate of cheeses. “I realize I’ve assumed you’re from the East Coast, but I never asked.”
“A small, uncharming town in Massachusetts. Since my mother died a few years ago, I’ve been back just once—for a cousin’s wedding.”
“Not your favorite place in the world?”
“No. I have some happy memories—my mom tried hard to make things special for me, even though my father took off when I was two, never to surface again. But I hated the town. I wanted to be out in the world, forging a new life.”
“Then why leave boarding school and go back there?” he asked quietly.
Phoebe smiled ruefully to herself. She felt like a witness on the stand in a courtroom drama who has just answered the wrong way, accidentally opening the door to a line of questioning that her lawyer has warned her to avoid at all costs. She met Duncan’s eyes briefly and looked away, picking a piece of bread from the basket.
“So you didn’t buy my answer the other night about being homesick?” she said.
“I sensed there was something you weren’t telling me,” he said. “If you feel comfortable talking about it, I’d love to hear.”
“You’ll actually find it fairly ironic,” she said, meeting his eyes again. She hesitated. “I was bullied by a bunch of girls. They were part of a secret society, not unlike the Sixes.”
Be careful, she warned herself. You don’t really want to go here. Glenda knew all about it, of course. But very few others. Even Alec had been offered only cursory details in their four years together.
“Okay,” Duncan said. “That explains why you’re passionate about trying to root out the Sixes. So tell me about these bullies.”
She touched the tips of her fingers to her forehead and lightly brushed her hair away. God, she thought, why did I start this?
“There’s not all that much to tell. They sent mean notes, that sort of thing. Glenda was like a rock for me then, and I think that’s why our bond has been so strong all these years.”
Phoebe realized she’d been talking without drawing a breath. She breathed now, trying not to look as if she was gulping for air, and then took a long sip of wine.
“It’s hard to picture Phoebe Hall fleeing town just because of some mean notes.”
“Well, things got worse. They boxed me out of things I wanted to belong to. It was pointless to stay at the school if I couldn’t participate. And it’s no fun being shunned by other girls.”
“It must have been a very difficult time.”
“I don’t think anyone escapes adolescence scot-free. Look, let’s change the subject, okay? I hate dwelling on something from so long ago. It’s not worth the time.”
“Sure,” he said. “I remember promising a neck massage earlier, and now seems like the perfect time.”
“Yes, I’d like that,” Phoebe said, glad to be delivered from the topic. She stood up from the table and began to clear the salad plates.
Duncan rose too and followed her into the kitchen. As she was setting the dishes on the counter, he slipped behind her and placed his hands on her waist. It was the first time he’d touched her intimately since the kiss in his office, and desire spread through her like a brush fire. “Or we could just go to bed,” he said. “I can do some things there that are even better than a massage.”
“Option B,” she said, smiling.
They made love—first slowly and sensuously and then afterward in a fierce, raw way that almost shocked her. She felt herself letting go and briefly shucking off all the craziness happening around her.
In the morning Duncan was up ahead of her again. She could hear dishes clacking lightly together in the other room and classical music playing softly. When she padded into the great room, she found that he’d set out fruit and a basket of muffins.
“Okay, you didn’t bake those, did you?” she asked.
“Berta’s,” he said. “I made a guess you’re a blueberry girl.”
“You guessed right,” she said.
Their conversation over breakfast was easy and relaxed, no naked-light-of-day awkwardness. After breakfast they cleared the table together, their movements in sync, she noticed.
“This is the last weekend for good foliage,” Duncan said. “If you’re up for it, we could hang around here for a bit and then drive along some great back roads. Afterward we could eat lunch at an inn I know where they have really great mussels.”
So he was kidnapping her for the weekend.
“That sounds perfect,” Phoebe said.
The sky was crystal clear that morning, and as promised Duncan took them along charming backcountry roads, past farms with big silos and old red barns. They drove around for about two hours, stopping at several roadside antique stores just to poke around, and then finally reached the inn. It was a little shabby, but bustling with people. Phoebe made a stop in the ladies’ room first. When she caught up with Duncan again, she saw that he’d scored a table in the bar area next to a roaring fire. They both ordered mussels and shared a bottle of ice-cold pinot grigio. Duncan seemed less talkative during the meal than he had been in the car, but she figured he was simply chatted out for now. Just after they’d finished eating and ordered espressos, a young guy with a Lehigh University baseball cap strolled into the bar. Lehigh, she knew, was in Bethlehem.
“Tell me what you think of college men today,” she said, setting down her espresso cup. “Especially the ones at Lyle. I keep hearing that they’re not on par with the women.”
“I have a few amazing guys in my classes this term, but it’s true that many guys seem clueless these days. As a society, we’ve done a good job of empowering girls—deservedly so, of course—but some boys have gotten lost in the shuffle. The female students at Lyle often seem very frustrated with them.”
“That reminds me of something that I turned up about Lily, something I don’t want to lose sight of.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Right before she died, she had apparently started seeing someone new who wasn’t a student. It sounded as if she was frustrated by the guys here, too.”
“You’ve really been quite the sleuth,” Duncan said. “Who told you that?”
“Her roommate. And serial killer theory aside, it’s possible that this guy is tied to her death somehow. I wish I could find out who he is. As Hutch pointed out to me, women are vulnerable when they dump guys who don’t want to be dumped.”
Just then Phoebe’s cell phone rang. When she glanced down, she saw that Hutch was calling.
“Speak of the devil,” she told Duncan. “Excuse me for a sec.”
“Thanks for those notes you took,” Hutch announced after she’d said hello. “They turned out to be very insightful.”
“What do you mean?” Phoebe asked. She felt a prick of excitement. “Did you find something in them?”
“In a sense, yes. Mindy, that girl you talked to at campus security, was nice enough to make me a copy of some of my old notes that I didn’t keep here, and when I compared them to yours, a lightbulb went off. Can you drop by and see me again?”
Natch. It was just like Hutch to insist on a one-on-one.