The Finishing School

“Why do we keep doing this?” she asks, looking into his face, not caring that her nose is running and her eyes must be red and puffy.

“I guess because we’re both hurting.” He sits down on her swivel chair and gently pulls her onto his lap. “This hasn’t been easy for me, either. I’ve always wanted to be a father.”

“But you’re ready to give up now—”

“Isn’t it time? When will you be ready?”

She shrugs, not knowing the answer.

“When our marriage is over?” he continues. “When we’re bankrupt?”

She snuggles up against him and presses her face into his warm neck. She’s always loved the smell of his skin. She doesn’t want to lose him. But. But. How can she be expected to release her dream of motherhood? Not just the dream, but also the sense of purpose inherent in raising a child? “I guess the journey would end for me if we couldn’t get pregnant with an egg donor.”

“Would it, though?”

“Yes, of course. I mean, I would consider adoption, but the fertility part of the journey would end—”

“After how many egg donor cycles?” he flares. “Because I know you. You wouldn’t stop at one.”

She doesn’t bother to argue, because he’s right. She would never stop at one. She will never stop. It’s not in her DNA. “Let’s be friends,” she says, suddenly feeling exhausted. “I miss you.”

“Me, too.” He kisses her and touches her hair. “What did you do in New York?”

“I met with Cressida’s old boyfriend,” she says, leaving out the part about him being her first love, her first lover and the Guy Who Broke Her Heart. “Magnus Foley.”

“And?”

“We had dinner.”

Jay gives her a strange look.

“I went there specifically to talk to him,” she explains. “About the night Cressida fell. It was your idea, remember? You said it would be a good distraction for me. A good idea for a new novel.”

“And?” he asks calmly. “Was it?”

“Yes, actually. I found out that he was at Huber House that night. But he wasn’t there to see Cressida. He was there to see Mrs. Fithern.”

“Why?”

“She was the housemother on duty that night,” Kersti says, getting excited as she recounts her conversation with Magnus. “He told her that Cressida was having an affair with her husband.”

“What did she do when she found out?”

“That’s the thing. Magnus said she didn’t even react. She didn’t seem surprised or angry, which is strange.”

“She could have been trying to save face.”

“What if she went up to confront Cressida in her room? She’d just found out her husband was screwing her favorite student—”

“You think she pushed Cressida?”

“They could have fought. I’m not saying it was premeditated, but it’s just as plausible as any other theory—”

“Sounds like the makings of a great mystery.”

“I’m still not entirely convinced Magnus was telling me the truth.”

“How did he look?” Jay asks her.

“Who, Magnus? That’s a weird question.”

“Is it?”

“He looked the same,” she says. “Pretty good, I guess.”

“Where did you have dinner?”

“A French place in Chelsea.”

“What time did you get home?”

“I don’t know. Ten?” She kisses his face and rubs his sideburns, omitting Magnus’s invitation to go back to his place. “What’s this about, babe?”

“This is how affairs happen,” he says. “We’re going through a rough patch, you’re feeling vulnerable and sad. You reach out to an old guy friend on the pretext of finding out what happened to your friend, and next thing you know . . .”

“First of all, it wasn’t a pretext.”

“What exactly are you hoping to accomplish hopping from city to city, interrogating all these people?”

“You’re the one who suggested it,” she repeats, frustrated. “I guess it was convenient for you at the time to get me off your back?”

“Yes! It was before you took off to New York and had dinner with an old boyfriend at a French restaurant in Chelsea while we were fighting!”

“Not my old boyfriend—”

“It doesn’t fucking matter, Kersti.”

She gets up off his lap and moves away from him. “It so happens I do want to find out what happened to Cressida,” she tells him. “Nothing I’ve found out so far makes sense and frankly I want to dig a little deeper. No one else ever investigated or asked questions and I’m doing it now. Better late than never, don’t you think?”

“Do what you need to do,” he says.

“Meaning?”

“We just can’t seem to get back to where we were.”

He shakes his head and leaves the room, defeated.

Alone again, Kersti returns to her swivel chair, faces her computer, and stares at it for a long time. Tears come again, blurring the words on her screen, and she doesn’t move. Eventually, the tears dry up on her cheeks, leaving salty streaks and a faint headache. She reaches for her phone, feeling like a naughty child who’s been told not to do something and wants to do it all the more. She scrolls through her contacts, her finger stopping at the name Brains-Chowne.

It’s nine o’clock at night in England, a good time to catch someone at home, either putting the kids to sleep, reading in bed, or watching TV with her husband. She impulsively dials the number. While it’s ringing, she pictures the two of them snuggled on the couch watching Downton Abbey with a hand-knit blanket thrown over their legs, a tea tray spread out in front of them, and a fire blazing in the stone fireplace. She imagines Mr. Chowne to be tall and lanky with bad teeth, wearing a serviceable brown robe over his pajamas and slippers on his large feet; and then she realizes she’s unfairly superimposed middle-aged Mr. Fithern onto her picture of Mr. Chowne.

“Hullo?” A chipper woman’s voice on the line.

Kersti freezes.

“Hullo?”

“Mrs. Fithern?” Kersti blunders, forgetting to call her by her new name, Mrs. Brains-Chowne.

After a beat of silence, Mrs. Fithern says, “Who is this?”

“It’s Kersti Kuusk. I was in your English Lit class at the Lycée in Lausanne—”

More silence.

“Ninety-four to ninety-eight?”

Kersti is sure she can hear her sighing on the other end. Neither of them says it out loud, but it’s there, unspoken and intractable: Cressida’s year. Cressida’s best friend.

“I’m speechless,” she says. “How did you get my home number?” Her voice sounds exactly the same, warm and youthful, familiar. Twenty years collapse like a ribbon of dominos, and she might just as well be talking about Paul Morel in Sons and Lovers.

“I’m sorry to intrude,” Kersti says. “I remembered your maiden name and I looked you up in the white pages. I . . . it’s not for myself. It’s for Lille.”

“L’il Lille Robertson?”

“Yes,” Kersti says, encouraged. “She died recently. She had breast cancer.”

“Oh, good God, not ’er, too?”

“She wrote me a letter before she died,” Kersti continues. “Her mother found it on her computer and sent it to me.”

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