Chapter 18
The lecture hall empties in a tide of rustling paper and low conversation, the last few students drifting toward the heavy oak doors until the final footsteps fade.
My pulse pounds in my ears as I make my way down the steps from the tiered seating to the lowest level where Dr. Lowry stands at the desk, packing up a stack of papers.
The vaulted ceilings make the room seem cavernous when it’s devoid of people, and my footsteps echo in the almost-empty hall.
“Dr. Lowry? I ask tentatively.
He glances up with the same stern expression he wears while teaching. His eyes, dark beneath thick brows, fix on me with the same irritation he directs at every unprepared student. “Can I help you?”
He’s even more intimidating up close, taller than I expected with an unwavering, unforgiving expression.
His hair is graying, as is his thick beard.
He looks nothing like the carefree, smiling 20-year-old beside my dad in the yearbook, but the resemblance of his facial structure is enough for me to be certain it’s him.
I clutch the strap of my backpack and force false confidence into my voice. “I was wondering if I could speak to you for a moment. But it’s not about class, it’s… personal.”
“I’m not a guidance counselor and therefore don’t need to know about your personal life. If you need accommodations for attendance or otherwise, you can go to the administrative offices and they’ll get it sorted out.”
He returns his attention to his papers in clear dismissal, but I don’t move. I’m determined to do this, no matter how nervous I get.
“No, it’s nothing like that. I, um, recently discovered that my father attended Arcadia, and that you were here at the same time as him. I was just wondering if you might’ve known him. Cameron Langley?”
He goes still and looks back up at me, emotion flickering across his expression before it’s replaced by a furrow in his brow. He stares at me in silence for a long moment, his gaze roving over my features, before he clears his throat.
“You’re Cam’s kid?” The question comes out soft, with something resembling disbelief.
“Yes. I never got the chance to know him, though. He died months before I was born, and my mother kept the pregnancy a secret from his friends and family. She said they hadn’t been together long, and she didn’t want to complicate things after he was gone.”
Dr. Lowry absorbs this in silence. For several long seconds he simply looks at me, and I watch a hundred emotions pass over him in a matter of seconds: surprise, grief, wariness, something almost like anger that causes his jaw to clench.
He releases a slow breath that seems to carry the weight of decades, then gestures to one of the desks in the front row of the student seating.
“Have a seat.”
I sink down into a chair that’s still warm from whoever sat in it during class. Dr. Lowry lowers himself into the adjacent seat rather than returning behind the barrier of his desk. The gesture feels significant, like he’s willing to show that he’s not a superior in this circumstance.
With him closer now, I can see deep lines etched around his tired eyes.
“He was one of my best friends during those days,” he says softly. “We roomed together our first year and certainly caused our fair share of trouble, though it was always relatively harmless fun. I knew him all through our undergraduate years and then on into our graduate programs.”
My heart twists in my chest as his gaze goes hazy, memories forming behind his eyes. It’ll never compare to knowing my father, but hearing about him causes a bittersweet ache to bloom inside of me.
“Can you tell me about him?”
Dr. Lowry hesitates, fingers drumming against his knee. Then he nods, settling back in his chair.
“He was a jokester,” he begins, and I remember Professor Showen saying something similar before she froze up.
“But not in an immature sense. Cam could walk into a room full of strangers and have them laughing within minutes. He had this gift for finding the exact right observation, the perfect turn of phrase. He brought people together without even trying.”
The image appears in my mind almost as if I were there as I envision the man I’ve only seen in photographs at the center of a room holding an audience of peers captive.
“He loved to read,” Dr. Lowry continues. “He was fiercely intelligent, though he never made a show of it. He’d spend hours in the library, curled up in a corner upstairs until someone told him he needed to go eat. Or attend a party,” he adds with a wistful smile.
The ache in my chest deepens, and I smile at the thought of my father lost in a book for hours, only to put it down to go have drinks and make friends.
Every detail feels like a gift and a theft all at once.
These are pieces of a man I will never know, fragments I have to assemble from other people’s memories.
It’s not fair that I lost him before I even had him.
I wonder what he would think of me now, fumbling through my first weeks at his alma mater, killing plants one moment and coaxing new growth from them the next.
“He sounds amazing,” I say softly. My voice threatens to crack, but I swallow against it.
“I’ve spent my whole life wondering about him.
My mother never spoke of him much. She said their time together was brief, and after he died she didn’t want to intrude on a family she’d never met.
She said he was trying to start over, whatever that means. ”
Dr. Lowry’s expression shifts again. His gaze hardens, only fractionally, but enough to be noticeable. He studies me again, the silence stretching between us until it feels weighted with things unsaid. Outside, thunder rumbles in the distance, vibrating through the ancient stones beneath us.
“I can see the resemblance,” he says. “Now that I know who you are.”
“Thank you,” I reply, because I’m not sure what else to say. “If you think of any other stories about him you’d be willing to share, I’d love to talk again.” I rise slowly, smoothing the wrinkles in my red and black plaid skirt.
He stands as well, overshadowing me by a good six inches, and rests his hands in his pockets.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I startle at the sudden shift in tone. He’s gone from somewhat sentimental to cold in an instant. “Um, oh. Why not?”
“A word of warning, Miss Harver. Be careful about who you speak to when looking for information. Not everything is as simple as it seems here at Arcadia Academy.”
The warning is like a chill settling into my bones. “What do you mean?”
He tosses a wary glance over his shoulder, then holds my eyes with an intensity that raises goosebumps on my arms.
“It would do you well to keep a low profile and not mention this to anyone else. I know you’re curious about your father, but there are people here who weren’t on such good terms with him. Sometimes the past is meant to stay in the past, and resurrecting it can only bring more pain.”
The words hang heavy between us, and I want to press him further, to demand what trouble he means and why my father’s name should carry such caution decades after his death.
But it’s clear from his expression that he won’t explain further.
“I understand,” I say, though I don’t. I’m only more confused. It’s like every time I manage to get a step further, another door is slammed in my face.
I leave the room, thanking Dr. Lowry again for his time. The weight of his gaze follows me until I leave his sight.
I can’t help but wonder, though, why he’d warn me off asking anyone else about my father.
Sure, there are probably some people here who didn’t like him, but what can they really do?
Punish me for being the daughter of a man they disliked?
From everything I’ve been told about him so far, he was a bit of a class clown but not cruel by any means.
With a list of four other faculty members who reside here on campus in my backpack, I now have another decision to make.
Do I trust the man who I’ve already written off as an elitist asshole who just happened to show me a bit of kindness in this moment, or do I continue to pursue my quest of finding information about my father?