Chapter 13
For a split second, I have this odd sense that I’m being teased, that she somehow knows the word birch has been on my mind and she’s playfully riffing off it. But then I realize how absurd that thought is.
“Do you know the street?” Alison asks, obviously confused by my furrowed brow.
“Vaguely,” I say. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m fine getting back on my own tonight. After that wonderful meal, I could use the walk.”
I flick my gaze back to Handler. His eyes read curious, too, but there’s a tight set to his mouth.
“Good night,” I add, and hurry from the house.
Once I reach the campus gate, I lean, bone weary, against the stone pillar, trying to process what I’ve just heard.
Jeffrey Handler lives on Birch Street. Meaning there’s a chance Mel’s haiku was about him and the backyard classes he held there.
I’d already worried today it might have nothing to do with me, but this seems to be partial proof.
I push off from the pillar and dig for my phone.
To my dismay, an Uber is going to take seventeen minutes to arrive, and when I try a local cab company next, I reach only voicemail.
I’m too mentally exhausted to wait, so I decide to walk after all.
It’s early still, and I’ll be near campus much of the way.
Before I’ve gone a block, though, I’m struck by how dark the street is. There are streetlamps, of course, but since the stores on the opposite side from me are closed, and so are the administrative buildings at this end of campus, there’s little additional light.
And there’s absolutely no one else around. This, I realize, is the quiet, small-town darkness Mel found soothing but, in the end, doomed her.
As my body floods with dread, I slow my pace, trying to decide what to do. The street seems even more forbidding up ahead, but when I check behind me, I see that section is empty as well. I try Uber again, but now the app says the wait will be twenty minutes.
Just keep going, I tell myself. Though there are heels on my boots, I begin to jog along the sidewalk, looking, I’m sure, like a woman fleeing from zombies or werewolves in a horror film.
A car approaches from behind me, but instead of zooming past, I sense it slowing. I shoot a glance to the left. Though I can barely make out the driver, it looks like he’s turned his head and is studying me.
Shit. Is it just a concerned citizen or some kind of bad actor? The irony of me possibly being in danger in Cartersville makes me want to scream. I keep jogging, eyes straight ahead now, but the car is still crawling along beside me. I jab my hand in my purse again, wondering if I should call 911.
“Ms. Winter?” a male voice calls out.
I stop dead in my tracks and glance again toward the car. The driver, a male, is leaning across the front seat with the passenger-side window lowered. It takes me a moment, but then I recognize the PR guy I sat next to at dinner. I feel a simultaneous surge of relief and embarrassment.
“Oh, hi,” I call back.
“Are you headed to the Cartersville Arms?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Why don’t I give you a lift. It’s in my general direction.”
“Oh, that would be great.” A second later I’m sliding into the passenger seat.
“Is everything okay?” he asks once we’re on our way. “You seemed to be running.”
“Everything’s fine, thanks.” The car smells vaguely like take-out food, and there are crinkly wrappers near my feet, a funny contrast to his crisp dress shirt, striped tie, and classic navy blazer.
“I thought a walk would be nice, but it’s later than I realized, and I’m supposed to do a Zoom call tonight with someone in Uruguay. ”
“How fortuitous, then,” he says, oblivious to the lie, it seems. “And actually, I’m glad I spotted you for another reason. There’s an issue I wanted to discuss, but I didn’t feel comfortable raising it at the table tonight.”
“Yes?” I say, my body tensing again.
“A piece went up on the Albany Times Union website first thing this morning—and I assume it will be in the print edition tomorrow. It says Calvin Ruck has recently been linked to two additional murders, each out of state. I’d no sooner read it when the same reporter called our office and said he’d heard the police might be reopening your daughter’s case. ”
The news catches me off guard, but it’s not a total shock. Halligan told Logan that a reporter had been snooping around.
“Was it a guess on his part, or did he have specific details?” I ask, then brace myself for the response.
“He might have been fishing, but it sounded like he was working with some kind of tip.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I didn’t have any information myself, and beyond that, I wasn’t the right person to ask.”
“That’s a perfect response, Chip,” I say, finally summoning his name in my mind.
He makes a left with his eyes on the road, but as soon as he’s brought the wheel back, he glances over at me. “Is it true, though? Are they reopening the case?”
This is the last thing I want to be discussing now, on top of everything else I’ve had to contend with tonight.
“I’m not at liberty to share anything at the moment, but I appreciate the heads-up. Will you let us know if you get any other calls like that?”
“Sure thing,” he says. “And I hope you’ll reconsider about sharing. It would be good for the college to be in the loop, and of course we’d be discreet.”
He makes another turn, and I spot the inn just ahead.
“If there’s anything to share down the road,” I say, “I’ll definitely let Maya know.”
He pulls up to the front of the inn and puts the car in park.
“And if there’s any way I can be of assistance,” he says, “call me day or night.”
He reaches into his jacket pocket and passes me his business card.
“Thank you, Chip.”
As soon as I’m in my room, I tug off my boots and sink onto the bed.
My feet ache—it’s been over a year since I’ve stuffed them into anything with heels—and beyond that my body is humming with nervous anxiety, though it’s hard to pinpoint the main contributor.
Lisa’s awful little tribute? The discovery that Mel’s schoolwork has been erased from the cybersphere and there’s no chance of ever seeing other poems or stories of hers.
Or the fact that Handler lives on Birch Street?
I suspect a hot bath might help, but once I’ve pushed off the bed, I find myself drifting over to the desk. I plop into the chair and open my laptop.
If Mel’s haiku really was a reference to Birch Street—and sadly not to reading poems with me—perhaps Handler was a bigger influence on her than Logan and I recognized. Spending time in his presence—not mine—might have been what she longed for when life to her felt too much like a pathless wood.
I google the college website and click my way to a bio for Professor Jeffrey Handler.
He did his undergraduate work, it says, at Bates College in Maine, which, like Carter, is a small, prestigious liberal arts school, and he earned both his master’s and PhD from Princeton.
Under “Publications” are the five volumes of poetry he’s written, as well as a dozen or more academic articles.
It appears he’s been at the college for over fifteen years, but there’s no mention of where he was previously.
Then, out of curiosity, I search online for “Alison Handler, artist.” A link to her website pops up immediately.
As it turns out, she does paint dreams—just not very nice ones.
Though the paintings are done in pretty, gauzy colors, every image is downright creepy.
In one of the four on the home page, there’s a horse standing on a dining chair and staring across a small table at a young woman eating from a plate piled with wax lips.
In another, a baby about nine months old sits on a blanket with one of his chubby arms stretched outward.
As I peer closely at the image, I notice he’s holding a bunch of tiny teeth in the palm of his hand.
These must be some of her newer pieces, so I take a minute to scroll through what’s featured under “Work” in the nav bar, wondering how her style has evolved.
But these paintings are just as disturbing.
In one, a woman in a sleeveless white dress is lying prone on a trapeze-like platform with her right arm dangling over the side.
There are three silver zippers running from her wrist to her elbow. Do they represent a series of injuries?
At the bottom of the page is a contact link for Alison as well as the address for her studio—“57b Birch St.” It must be in a section of their house with its own entrance, or in a separate building on the property.
I check the bio page next. It’s brief, stating only that she grew up in Boston, graduated from Oberlin College, and has an MFA in studio art from the State University of New York at Albany, which is about twenty-five miles southeast of Cartersville.
The bio also lists some art shows she’s been featured in and provides a link to an article from a local publication that’s a roundup of young artists from the region.
Published five years ago, it gives her age then as thirty-four.
My best guess is that Handler is in his early sixties, which means Alison is over twenty years his junior.
With my curiosity further piqued, I search next for a wedding announcement and soon find it. They married in Boston sixteen years ago. The announcement gives Handler’s job then as professor of English at Colby College in Maine and Alison’s simply as artist.
How did they meet? I wonder. In New England somewhere, when he was at Colby and she, perhaps, had moved back to the Boston area?
I go to the site and click one by one on the five poetry books he’s published, swiping through each “Look Inside” sample until I reach the bio in the back. The three most recent collections list him as a professor at Carter. He wrote his second volume, I see, while teaching at Colby.