Chapter 4
Two Days Later
“Yoo-hoo!” Mirabel coos through my front door screen just as I’m bribing Heathcliff to eat oatmeal and soy milk. Admittedly,
it looks like Oliver Twist gruel.
At sixty, my mother-in-law is annoyingly beautiful. Her clingy jade-green dress and coiffed blond hair make her look like
Jessica Lange.
“Nana!” Heathcliff yells, leaping up from the kitchen table.
“Mirabel, I’m running late.”
But she’s already inside hugging Heathcliff. Her cloying cigarettes-and-lavender scent hits my nose like a heavy brick. She’s
lied for years about smoking. Yet, Philip remembered her leaning out the den window in her bathrobe every morning with her
cigarette.
“Now, listen to your mama, Heathie, and eat up your . . .” she wrinkles her nose at the bowl’s contents “. . . breakfast.”
She glances at the soy milk carton on the table.
“I see you’re still not feeding him regular milk.”
“As I’ve told you, he’s lactose intolerant.”
“We don’t have any of that in our family. My mama always made us drink our milk every morning.”
I clench my teeth as I follow her into the den, where she runs a finger along my dusty fireplace mantel.
“You should have called before driving up all this way this morning.”
“Now, hush, Elizabeth. I’ll cut to the chase.”
I tighten my lips. Things between us have always been a bit cool. But she’s never spoken to me this sharply.
She narrows her red-rimmed eyes. Like me, she’s grieving. I’m sure losing Philip has almost broken her. But Mirabel likes
secrets, not emotions. And that night of the accident hangs between us like a swinging scythe.
“Your law-yer called mine yesterday. Philip’s old friend Henry Lawton’s been prodding around about a trust I have all set up for Heathcliff. I need to know what your game is.” She crosses her
arms, gold bracelets clattering.
“Game?”
“Did Philip tell you anything that night?”
“He left a message that we needed to talk. It seems like there’s something I needed to know.”
She closes her eyes in relief.
“Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“It’s a trifle. It doesn’t matter.”
“Then why did you drive all the way here to talk about it?”
She glares, tapping her manicured nails on the mantel, her mouth firming into a tight line. She’s wishing for one of those
cigarettes she doesn’t smoke.
“Look, Mirabel, I have to get to work . . .”
She marches toward me, pointing her finger. “You should stay out of this, Elizabeth. Just be happy that I have a bit of money set aside for my grandson’s education.”
“Henry’s just protecting my son’s interests.”
“No games, Elizabeth.”
“I’m not the one playing games here.”
She scowls, picks up her purse and leaves, slamming the door hard behind her.
My fingers tremble as I brush Heathcliff’s hair and pour coffee into a thermos. She’s trying to rattle me, and it’s best to
let Henry deal with her at this point.
After Mirabel’s unexpected visit, I realize Heathcliff missed the bus. I’m late dropping him off at school, and amid the scramble,
I left my coffee thermos on the kitchen counter. I’m so shaken, I clench the steering wheel driving to work. My head pounds
from lack of caffeine. And damn it, I stayed up too late reading Blood Oath. Chloe wasn’t lying—it really is the most marvelous trash reading.
The headache hits hard as I’m walking through the department. As I pass her desk, Sandra lets me know she left a few letters
for me.
How bad can it be? No one wants to actually write letters anymore.
Unfortunately, a small pack of envelopes lies at the foot of my office door.
Additionally, someone taped one torn, spiral-bound notebook sheet to my door. I tear off the sheet first.
Miss Wells, can I have extra credit? This Austen chick is like so tough. —B
Furious, I scoop up the letters and unlock my office door.
There’s four from Bill Rhodes. I only read the first one. Nothing else from him is worth reading.
We need the fucking humanities fall budget by 2:00 today. Your weird Amish experiment can’t keep you from doing your job.
Then there’s a simpering note from Dean McGregor asking if I can cut Brad some slack in my seminar: He’s really looking forward to Cancún . . .
There’s one barely legible letter from the provost asking me to hire four more adjuncts for the fall.
Three students left handwritten requests for overrides for my fall classes.
I slump in my desk chair, staring at Everett Dane’s smoldering gaze and then promptly send each letter through the shredder.
I try to finish grading my latest batch of papers, but my mind can’t stay anchored on my students’ semicoherent thoughts.
I head over to the library to try to start collecting sources for a Bronte conference I’m speaking at in October.
But by midmorning, I’ve had a full-blown panic attack—racing heart, sweaty palms, vertigo—when I briefly thought I left Philip’s
bird urn in the encyclopedia section. It turned out I stashed him in my bag when Bill Rhodes walked by. (I wasn’t going to
expose Philip to Bill’s patriarchal toxicity.) After stowing the urn in my pocket, I hurry from the library toward my classroom
building.
My phone dings.
Mirabel: Don’t forget my advice. Stay out of this.
I still see her in that too-tight dress, reeking of cigarettes. Seriously, with all this drama she’s drawing even more attention
to whatever it is she’s trying to cover up.
I chew my lip angrily, trying to forget my hundreds of small problems amid my big looming problem: Philip is gone, and I have
to learn to live without him.
I cut across the main campus lawn, passing a large white events tent.
There’s a ribbon-cutting in an hour for the new glossy Student Support Services Center—a center we clearly cannot afford.
Patrick told me that the new director is making three times what we do.
I stare at the rows of empty folding chairs in the tent.
I’ll skip it.
“Dr. Wells!” Professor Evie Caldwell, head of the art department, hurries down the pavement toward me. She never actually
earned her doctorate. Instead, she was given an honorary doctorate in the ’70s for walking around Berkeley wearing nothing
but Post-it notes on her naked body and paper clips in her hair in what was supposed to be a profound artistic feminist statement.
Something about women’s bodily presence in the workplace.
She stands far too close to me, and on her clothes, I smell the burrito breakfast meal she eats during midmorning meetings.
She’s thin, and her thick, swoopy gray hair falls long around her shoulders.
“Did you attend the Fiscal Oversight Committee meeting this morning? The funding allocation for this Student Services Center
is unbelievable.”
She resembles a fairy-tale witch. I picture her luring children to a cottage with a trail of candies. I should keep Heathcliff
away from her.
“Are you listening to me, Dr. Wells?”
“What? Yes.”
She attempts to look empathetic. “I’m terribly sorry about Colin.”
“Philip.”
“Philip. I know you’re in mourning.” She glances distastefully over my black skirt and blouse. “But there are grave consequences if you can’t convince the provost to stop taking money from the humanities to give six-figure salaries to consultants and Student Services Center workers. It’s criminal.”
“It actually isn’t.”
“Whose side are you on, Dr. Wells?” And then she pokes her finger into my chest for emphasis before storming off. “Oh, and I would suggest that you be careful. You’re on Bill’s
shit list.”
I realize how amazingly little I care that Dr. Bill Rhodes in philosophy continues to hate me and Patrick. I realize how little
I care that Professor Caldwell also hates me.
I stand on the lawn, staring at the empty white tent, its sides rippling in the soft Carolina breeze.
For the first time in fifteen years, I don’t want to teach class.
I walk into my seminar, where we’re wrapping up Pride and Prejudice today.
“Jesus—she’s still dressing like Morticia Addams,” Brad snorts to Ryan next to him. Anger flares poker-hot inside me, that
unedited letter burning in my satchel. Best to ignore Brad and focus on my twenty other students. As least two want to be
here. Kayla is smiling and attentive in the front row as I arrange my notes on the lectern.
I try very hard to lose myself in the material. I try to remember why I tolerate campus politics and committees—it’s because
I love teaching these books. But I’m not feeling it today. I keep playing with the jet necklace at my throat as I lecture,
but I can’t block out Brad unashamedly texting and chewing on a Dum-Dums sucker, the stick hanging out the side of his mouth.
I see Mirabel. I see Henry’s handsome face too close to mine. And underneath it all, I feel the goddamn awful heartache.
“Is it a happily-ever-after for Lizzy Bennet by the end?”
“No?” Kayla offers hesitantly.
My phone lights up.
Mirabel: Your LAWYER tried to call me again. Now you both will be hearing from MINE, Elizabeth.
I see red.
“No! Despite what everyone tells you, there is no such thing as a happy ending. Ever, ever, EVER. Sure, Elizabeth Bennet’s happy now—she’s bagged Mr. Fucking Darcy.
But it won’t last. There’s still that god-awful dysfunctional family.
Lydia will always ask for money. Mrs. Bennet is always going to be a drama queen. And Lady Catherine de Bourgh is
always going to be the rotten bitch who sticks her nose in everyone else’s business.”
Everyone’s listening to me now. Even Brad.
“And then . . . one day, fifteen years from their wedding, Mr. Darcy, the perfect husband, father, and picture of health, dies in a stupid
motherfucking carriage accident on the way home from Brighton. It’s a dumb accident. Just a little rain, and the carriage
slips clean off the road, killing him instantly. Lizzy doesn’t know what to do except soldier on. But everyone hounds her: