CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

McLean, Virginia
Susan Donovan

Susan pulled into a parking spot in front of St. John’s Academy. Just seeing the edifice made her sad. Eddie had been so excited when Ally was accepted.

Would she ever be able to look at the school again without his face popping up, sitting next to her in the car, staring at the school? “Do you think she’ll like it?” he’d asked, and Susan had assured him that Ally would love it. She’d love anything her father did. That was how Ally rolled.

Susan huffed out a sigh and got out of the car. She walked along the sidewalk to the school’s entrance and slipped inside. The headmaster’s office was to the right. His administrative assistant, Gloria, had stepped away—there was no one else around. Susan tamped down her annoyance. She didn’t like that her kid was all by herself, in trouble, scared and upset.

Ally was sitting on an adult-size chair in the reception area, her legs swinging over the edge as she fidgeted. Being still was always hard for Ally. She twiddled with her hair, bounced her little legs, chewed on her lip, tapped her fingers on the table. She was a restless child. Another thing she had in common with her father.

Ally spied Susan and her face crumpled. Good God, what had the girl done?

“Ally? Are you okay?” Susan knelt on the floor in front of the chair and gathered her eldest child in her arms, smelling her still-babyish scent. Clean. Ally always smelled so clean and fresh.

“I’m sorry, Mommy. I didn’t mean to.” She began to cry, tears building up like water drops from a leaky sink.

“Didn’t mean to what?”

A throat cleared. Susan looked up to see the headmaster, all five foot six inches of him, rattling with displeasure.

“Why don’t we discuss that in my office, Mrs. Donovan?”

“I’d like to hear it from Ally.” She turned back to her girl. “Sweetheart, what did you do?”

“She’s broken the honor code. Cheated,” the headmaster pronounced. “And you know the penalties for cheating. Don’t you, Alina?”

“My kid? No way in hell.”

“Mrs. Donovan. Language.”

Ally broke into fresh wails, and Susan stood and looked the headmaster in the eye. Language, my ass.

“Hey. Threatening her isn’t the way to handle this.” He took a step back. Susan pulled a tissue from her purse and knelt down to wipe Ally’s eyes.

“Sweetie, tell Mommy what happened?”

“I didn’t cheat. I saw someone in the window. I was looking outside, not at Rachel’s paper. I swear.”

Susan watched her daughter for a moment. Ally wasn’t prone to lies. Yes, she’d gone through a stage, like all children do, testing the boundaries of what was allowable, but that had been last year. She’d broken one of Susan’s small Swarovski crystal figurines, and hid the evidence in her sock drawer. When Susan found it and asked her, she’d calmly said she didn’t have any idea what had happened. Ten minutes later, she’d appeared at the laundry room door, face streaked in tears, and admitted her fabrication. Ally had been put on restriction for a week. Her first real grounding. It had made an impression. Now she was forthright and up front about everything, almost to the point of embarrassment.

“Who did you see outside, baby?”

“I don’t know. It was a stranger.”

Stranger danger. Drilled into their precious heads along with SpongeBob and Cinderella.

“A woman or a man?”

“I don’t know. It was fast, like they were peeking. Like a ghost.” Her little face began to waver again. “They had a baseball cap. Like yours, Mommy. The red one from the football game. The one you were wearing …”

The day Eddie died. Susan had thrown the hat in the garbage, not wanting anything that would be such a ready reminder of the day they’d lost him.

Susan glanced at the headmaster, who had his arms crossed and was looking dubious.

“Mrs. Donovan, please. Can we talk in private?”

Susan nodded and kissed Ally on the forehead. “Hang on just a second, sweetie. I’ll be right back. Do you want to color?”

Susan reached into her rapacious handbag for a pad and crayons, but Ally shook her head. “I’m fine, Mommy. I’ll just wait and think.”

A budding Zen master, her child.

She followed him inside the cool office and sat heavily in the chair across from the headmaster’s desk.

“I don’t believe she cheated, Headmaster. Ally is many things, but she’s not a liar.”

He shook his head, his glasses swinging on the cord around his neck in time, a little metronome of disapproval. “Mrs. Donovan, no one else saw this phantom at the window. And she and Rachel Bennett both misspelled misconstrue the same way.”

There was irony for you. “Isn’t it entirely possible that Rachel cheated off of Ally’s paper?”

The headmaster frowned. “Anything is possible, Mrs. Donovan, but I’m afraid that we have to take Mrs. Werlin’s word for it. She feels she saw Alina looking at Rachel’s paper. She’s the adult here, with no reason to obfuscate the truth.”

Susan’s back stiffened. “That’s not enough proof for me. You can’t expel Ally. I will raise holy hell if you even try. My daughter is not a liar. If she says she saw someone outside, she did.”

He sighed heavily. “I understand things are difficult right now. I don’t want to add to your burden. But this can’t go unpunished. I’ll have to suspend Alina, at the very least, for causing a disturbance in class.”

“Fine,” Susan said. “I’ll take her home now. Will a week of suspension suffice?”

The headmaster finally looked uncomfortable. “Yes, Mrs. Donovan. And a permanent note in her record.”

Susan bit her lip. It was utterly and completely unfair, but she just wanted to get out of there. She rose from her seat and nodded, then left the office.

“Come here, baby.” She took Ally’s hand and stood her up.

“Are you mad at me, Mommy?”

The headmaster had just come out of his office and was watching them.

She raised her voice a bit. “No, honey. I believe you. Let’s go get some ice cream.”

As they left, her cell phone began to chime. Six missed calls. The school had interrupted cell service inside the building to encourage a focused learning environment. She pulled it from her bag and saw the caller ID.

All six calls were from Betty Croswell.