Chapter 33 Harrington #2
skin, we ought not to be writers.”
Sam nodded. She’d heard the same thing from her own workshop leaders. And unlike in the program, when people hit writers in
the real world, in the papers or online, the writers were in the stocks. They couldn’t punch back.
Zahra had turned to look out the window at the sullen white sky, her face contemplative. “I had a theory,” she said, “that
William was especially ruthless because he feared he had no real story. He was a copycat, you see. Each piece he brought in
was different, and it was derivative of someone else: Hemingway, Faulkner, Carver, Joyce. William’s first novel, that fluke
published while he was still in college, The Girl on the Mountain, even the critics said it was just like Carson McCullers. But here at Harrington he could not get away with this. Our instructors
called him out. Said he had to find his own voice. I thought perhaps he had none, that he was zero at the core. But then.”
She shrugged. “I guess he found his voice after all. And it was feminine. He has done quite well with it. Better than well.
Good for him.”
She turned from the window, set her lid back on her quinoa bowl, and smiled at Sam, who had been sitting quietly, collating
all this information. There was a question she needed to ask.
“If you don’t mind,” Sam said, “did you know William’s fiancée? Becky Bowman? She was in your cohort, too, right?”
Zahra closed her eyes briefly. “Yes. A tragedy.”
“What was she like?”
Zahra sighed. “If I tell you, you must promise to keep it confidential. Nobody must know what I am about to say.”
Sam cleared her throat. It was so dry in here. “I promise.”
“Some of us thought it strange.”
Sam leaned forward. “What was strange?”
“Their engagement, to start.” Zahra took a sip of her tea. “William was such a ladies’ man. The kids today would call him
a player, or worse. He slept with anything that moved—as long as she was attractive.” She gestured to Sam, as if in proof.
“His tastes have not changed. The exception was Becky. She was not, and forgive me for speaking ill of the dead, a pretty
girl. She was very sweet . . .”
Sam thought of Cyndi hunched in her booth in Salem, her shy and hopeful smile.
“But so quiet. Long hair, drugstore glasses, dressed like a PE teacher. Very shy. She wrote about love and sat in the corners.
We called her Mouse.”
Sam winced.
“I know. I am ashamed now.” Zahra tsked her tongue at herself. “She seemed to blossom, initially, under William’s attention. But then she became even more quiet
and withdrawn. By our second year, when they had been together a few months, it was as though she had been erased. We thought
perhaps drugs? Alcohol? She was a ghost. And then, a month or so after their engagement . . .” She shook her head. “I’m sure
he told you the story.”
“He mentioned it, yes,” Sam said. She twisted her own new ring. It was loose on her finger. Her throat ached.
“We wondered,” said Zahra, “if he had something to do with it.”
“With her—death?” Sam asked, voice cracking on the last word.
“Yes. Perhaps. It sounds ridiculous now, an outrageous accusation. But you must remember we were students of creative writing, with feverish imaginations we were flexing overtime, on a rural campus with not much else to do. And the boyfriend is always the first suspect, is he not? Excuse me, the fiancé. Even if the death is a suicide. The college investigated, of course, and the police. William came up clean. But for a few months we speculated, particularly the mystery and thriller writers among us. What stumped us, and put an end to our macabre parlor game, was that we could come up with no motive. The difficulty of staging a suicide aside, what would his motive have been?”
Sam shook her head. She couldn’t speak.
“It was a cruel pastime,” said Zahra. “Really, I am a little surprised to look back and see how catty I was at that age. We
all were. It was not fair to William. As harsh as he had been with us in workshop, he was devastated by Becky’s death. He
wrote that blockbuster novel for her, and I read he founded a support group in her name? That he still runs?”
“The Darlings,” Sam whispered, realizing that William had not held a Darlings meeting since she’d moved in. Like her workshop,
they had disappeared.
“Yes. The Darlings. That tracks. That was what he called Becky. His Darling. We thought he was being ironic.” Zahra sighed.
“However extreme our theories, I still wonder whether we persisted with them because we caught a whiff of truth. That although
William did not cause Becky’s death outright, he contributed to it by bullying and belittling her. Denigrating her behind
closed doors. None of us thought to ask, to make sure she was all right. Nowadays we would call him a narcissist. But then,
we did not have that language. We knew only that he was a charismatic bully who had chosen, for his own reasons, an introverted
woman. We thought their pairing very strange and left it at that.”
Zahra’s phone chimed, and she rose. “I must go to my next meeting. If I’ve upset you, you are welcome to stay here and collect
your thoughts. You are welcome to stay anyway.”
Sam rose too. “No, I’m fine,” she said. “I’d better go. I have a long drive back.”
“We are more than happy to put you up at the inn,” said Zahra. “It is not bad, actually.”
She surprised Sam by taking her elbow on the way out, as if they were old school chums or little French girls walking to the boulangerie.
“Please try not to worry,” she said. “We were children then. No older than those students you spoke to today. I am different
from who I was then, definitely older if not wiser. I’m sure you are different too. You would not marry the man I described.”
She waited until Sam nodded, then gave her arm a light squeeze.
“Surely, then, William has grown as well. With his writers’ support group, his Darlings, he has done a great deal of good.
Please extend to him my congratulations, on his career and your engagement. I’m certain you will have a lovely life.” She
shut out the lights and locked her office door. “Just perhaps,” she added, “watch your back.”