The tragedy began to unfold during a beautiful day, also in October. I was so young then. I’d just started my senior year in college. The blistering heat of the Florida summer had yielded to a mellow warmth; the girls in my sorority wore light sundresses or tank tops and shorts with CHI OMEGA stamped across the butt. Our house was filled with a happy energy; the new pledges would be initiated after sunset. As social director, I’d planned the Jell-O shots, the blindfolding, the candles, and the surprise plunge into the ocean.
But I woke up exhausted and feeling queasy. I nibbled on a granola bar as I dragged myself to my early-child-development seminar. When I pulled out my spiral-bound planner to write down the next week’s assignment, a realization stilled my pencil on the page: My period was late. I wasn’t ill. I was pregnant.
When I looked up again, all the other students had packed up and were leaving the classroom. Shock had stolen minutes from me.
I cut my next class and walked to a pharmacy on the edge of campus, buying a pack of gum, a People magazine, some pens, and an e.p.t test as if it were just another casual item on my shopping list. A McDonald’s was next door and I huddled in a stall, listening as two preteen girls brushed their hair in the mirror and talked about the Britney Spears concert they were dying to attend. The plus sign confirmed what I already suspected.
I was only twenty-one, I thought wildly. I hadn’t even finished school. My boyfriend, Daniel, and I had been together for just a few months.
I stepped out of the stall and went to the row of sinks, running cold water over my wrists. I glanced up and the two girls fell silent when they caught sight of my face.
Daniel was in a sociology class that let out at twelve-thirty; I’d memorized his schedule. I hurried to his building and paced the stretch of sidewalk in front of it. Some students sat on the steps, smoking, while others sprawled on the green—a few eating lunch, others forming a triangle and throwing a Frisbee. A girl rested with her head on a guy’s lap, her long hair draped over his thigh like a blanket. The Grateful Dead blared from a boom box.
Two hours earlier, I would’ve been one of them.
Students began to trickle out the door and I scanned their faces, frantically searching for Daniel. He wouldn’t be the guy wearing flip-flops and a Grant University T-shirt, or the one burdened by a cumbersome saxophone case, or even the one with a backpack shrugged onto a shoulder.
He didn’t look like any of them.
After the crowd had thinned, he appeared at the top of the stairs, folding his glasses into the pocket of his oxford shirt, a messenger bag slung crosswise over his chest. I lifted my hand and waved. When he saw me, he faltered, then continued down the steps to where I stood.
“Professor Barton!” A girl intercepted him, probably with a question about his class. Or maybe she was flirting.
Daniel Barton was in his mid-thirties, and he made the Frisbee-throwing jocks, with their leaps and hoots when they caught the disk, look like puppies. He kept glancing at me while he talked to the other girl. His anxiety was palpable. I’d violated our rule: Don’t acknowledge each other on campus.
He could be fired, after all. He’d given me an A during my junior year, a few weeks before our affair began. I’d earned it—we’d never shared a personal conversation, let alone a kiss, until I bumped into him after being separated from my friends at a Dave Matthews beach concert—but who would believe us?
When at long last he drew close to me, he whispered, “Not now. I’ll call you later.”
“Pick me up at the usual spot in fifteen.”
He shook his head. “Today won’t work. Tomorrow.” His brusque tone stung me.
“It’s really important.”
But he was already moving past me, hands in his jeans pockets, toward the old Alfa Romeo that had taken us to the beach on so many moonlit nights. I watched him go, feeling stunned and deeply betrayed. I’d stuck to our agreement; he should have realized this was urgent. He tossed his bag onto the passenger’s seat—my seat—and sped off.
I clutched my arms around my stomach and watched as his car turned a corner and disappeared. Then I slowly made my way back to the sorority house, where everybody was busy preparing.
I just had to get through the rest of the day, I told myself, blinking hard at the tears that filled my eyes. Then I could talk to Daniel. We’d come up with a plan together.
“Where were you?” asked our chapter’s president as I walked through the door, but she didn’t wait for an answer. Twenty new pledges would officially join our house tonight. The evening would start out with a dinner and rituals: the house song and a sorority trivia game about our founders and important dates. Each girl would then take a candle and repeat sacred vows. I’d stand behind my “little sister,” Maggie, whom I’d been paired with for the year. The hazing would begin around ten P.M. Although it would last several hours, nothing bad would be done to the girls. Nothing dangerous. Certainly no one would be hurt.
I knew this because I was the one to plan it.
Bottles of vodka for the Jell-O shots lined the dining room table, along with grain alcohol for the Dirty Hunch Punch. Did we need so much liquor? I wondered. I remember because of everything that happened afterward. Those flashing blue and red police lights. The high-pitched screaming that sounded like an alarm.
But as I climbed the steps to my room, it was just a fleeting thought, winging past like a moth, quickly replaced by my worry over the pregnancy. The feeling of sickness radiated out from my core, encompassing my entire being.
Daniel hadn’t even glanced back at me as he’d driven off. I kept remembering the way he’d walked right past me, whispering, “Not now.” He’d treated me with less respect than the student who’d intercepted him before he reached me.
I slipped into my room and quietly shut the door, then pulled out my cell phone. I lay down on my bed, hugging my knees to my chest, and called him. After four rings, I heard his outgoing message. The second time I dialed, it went directly to voice mail.
I could see Daniel glancing down at his phone as the code name he’d given me—Victor—flashed. His long, tapered fingers, the ones that caressed my leg whenever I sat beside him, picking up the phone and pressing Decline.
I’d seen him do the exact same thing to other callers when we were together, never thinking he’d do it to me.
I dialed his number again, hoping he’d see it and realize how desperately I needed to talk to him. But he ignored me.
My pain was being overtaken by anger. He must have known something was wrong. He’d said he cared about me, but if you truly cared for someone, wouldn’t you at least answer her fucking call? I’d thought.
I’d never been to his place because he lived with two other professors in faculty housing. I knew his address, though.
I’d thought, Tomorrow isn’t good enough.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
After Aunt Charlotte comes to get me at the Robertson bar, I take a cool shower, scrubbing off my sweat and makeup. Wishing I could rinse away the day as easily and have a fresh chance with Emma.
I’d planned my words so carefully; I’d anticipated that Emma would be skeptical at first. I would have been, too—I still remember how I’d bristled when Sam seemed suspicious of Richard, or when my mother expressed concern that I seemed to be losing my identity.
But I’d assumed Emma would at least listen to me. That I would have the opportunity to plant doubts that might prompt her to take a closer look at the man she was choosing to spend the rest of her life with.
But clearly she’d already formed a strong opinion of me, one that tells her I’m not to be trusted.
Now I recognize how foolish I was to think this could end so easily.