Page 32 of What Boys Learn

“Yes, but I didn’t get the position.”

Dr. Campbell had dyslexia. That’s why he needed the help of an undergrad assistant. He was my only college professor who not only accommodated learning disabilities at a time when fewer teachers did, but honestly seemed to believe that one’s differences could become one’s strengths.

“I didn’t fill it once I knew I was taking time off, to work on the marriage problem. Listen to me, going on about my personal life.”

“No, please do. It’s been so long. I want to hear all of it.”

He smiled again—grateful, maybe a little shy.

“We tried to work things out. It was her idea to move closer to her parents, in Wisconsin. When we finally pulled the plug, I decided to come back to the North Shore.”

“But you didn’t want to return to teaching?”

“I decided to focus on my private practice and my writing. I’d had some unexpected success with a book about parenting.”

“I had no idea. But everything’s . . . good since? Aside from the divorce?”

“It was overdue.”

All along, I thought I’d been passed over for the position because I wasn’t good enough. I was about to ask more about his new book when my phone started vibrating.

The text read:Handed in the diary. B has nothing to worry about.

I was confused. Robert had said he’d returned the diary, without reading it, via the Scarlattis’ mail slot last night.

“Sorry,” I said to Dr. Campbell. “I need to take this.”

I grabbed my phone and walked behind the lounge chairs, to a high fence that separated the pool area from several outdoor tennis courts, dialing as I went. On the closest court, a couple—lean, gray-haired man and a girl in a short tennis dress, probably his daughter—were finishing up a game and collecting loose balls from the court.

Robert had just picked up when I saw the gray-haired man lay a hand on the girl’s behind.

“Oh,” I said with disgust. Not his daughter, then.

“Yeah, hello to you, too,” Robert said. “I just wanted to let you know Benjamin’s name wasn’t in the diary.”

“You read it, then. You told me you hadn’t.”

“I had to, Abby.” He sounded harried. I could hear multiple voices in the background, like he was calling from a hallway or break room. “They ordered an autopsy on Izzy.”

“When will they have the results?”

I waited as Robert moved away from the hubbub to someplace that sounded echoey but quieter. He kept his voice low. “Preliminary physical exam, they already have, but analysis of fiber, DNA can take months. All depends on the backlog and the type of test. There didn’t appear to be sex involved. Which is a different story than her friend. Sidney Mayfield had intercourse the day she died.”

My head was spinning, all of my assumptions turned around. Izzy, the sexually precocious one juggling three men, died somewhere twenty miles from here in a small town. No intercourse was involved. Sidney claimed not to be interested in local boys and thought only about college. She died at home, in a short span of time when no one else was around. She may have had sex just prior to dying. Someone was with her—a man, face hidden, spotted hurrying away from her house.

“It may have been consensual,” Robert said. “Or not. Hard to tell when there isn’t clear evidence of trauma. And of course, she could have been unconscious by that point, on account of the overdose.”

I groaned, caught off guard by the image of someone violating her that way. But Rita had said both girls were drugged. Why else would a man drug a young woman? Maybe Izzy’s anaphylactic shock scared him off, but only long enough to set his sights on Sidney.

“There’s a whole lot we don’t know yet,” Robert continued. “The department is keeping some details to itself, until we know more about who was with her. If we pick him up, we don’t want to feed him information he can use to construct an alibi. You didn’t hear all this from me.”

The tennis players were chatting with their backs to me. I wanted to shout. To tell that old man to take his hand off that girl’s nearly bare ass.

“So, you can see why I’ve been busy today,” he said. “I didn’t have time to update you on the diary. But once I saw what was in it, I had to hand it over to Hernández and his partner, Wood. They’ll need everything they can get.”

“You held on to the diary. You lied to me. And Benjamin knew you were lying. To me. His mother.” The next part hit me hard. “Which means he was watching you get away with it.”

“Whatever.”