Chapter Fifteen. Riley, Present Day
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
RILEY, PRESENT DAY
Why would she create such a strange fabrication and send me on this wild goose chase?
A loud thump makes my head jerk toward the noise. A woman has just dropped a heavy textbook on the communal table in the center of the room.
I take in the other students: A guy is resting his head on his folded arms, presumably sleeping, next to a student who is furiously typing on his laptop, which is covered with stickers.
There’s a woman in puffy boots and leggings with at least six piercings on each ear who seems to be tutoring another woman with a math textbook, calculator, and graph paper spread out on the table.
I must be missing something. Betty seems cogent. But perhaps she got a detail wrong. I’m about to go check the 1965 yearbook when a couple passes me, holding hands.
I watch them as they exit, still holding hands as they awkwardly navigate through the door together. Then I open the yearbook again. I searched for Betty’s friends, but I didn’t check for their other halves. Helen wasn’t married, but Betty said the husbands attended or worked at Marquis.
I strike out with Betty’s husband, Douglas, then Kathleen’s. That leaves Ivy Lennox.
I find her husband on page 47.
David Lennox was the defensive coach of Marquis University’s football team. In the picture, he appears short and bulky, and he’s unsmiling.
I don’t need to check with Betty to know what I should do next. This time the search on my phone yields results.
David Lennox helped coach several championship teams during his four decades at Marquis, according to his obituary.
It says he was wed to a woman named Mary in 1966, who predeceased him, but there’s no mention of Ivy.
The final line of his obituary jumps out at me: He is survived by two children, a son, David Jr., and a daughter named Sandra.
I dig deeper. They’re not hard to find; thankfully, it’s not a terribly common last name.
In the images that spring onto my phone, David Jr. looks just like his father. He recently retired from the Navy and lives in Hawaii with his family.
But Sandra Lennox still lives in Virginia, not far from campus. She looks younger than her sixty-two years, with her dimples and headful of bouncy curls. She’s a therapist who specializes in mental health disorders and acute grief.
Loss is an inevitable part of life, her website states. Grief doesn’t follow one particular path or adhere to a set of rules. I walk with my patients through the rocky terrain of loss, letting them know they are not alone.
There’s a link to a local newspaper article that details her volunteer work with runaway teens, drug-addicted individuals, and the unhoused population.
In other words, she helps save outsiders.
I’ve never met anyone as dedicated as Sandra Lennox, a fellow therapist was quoted as saying in the article. She lives for her patients.
I step outside the library and reach for my phone and dial Sandra’s office number, planning the brief message I’ll leave.
I nearly drop my phone when she answers. Maybe she’s taking a lunch break, too.
I fumble with my words: “Hi, my name is Riley Bell … I’m calling about someone from long ago…”
“I understand.” Sandra’s voice is warm and encouraging.
“Oh, I’m not a prospective client—I’m trying to help someone locate an old friend. She has the same last name as you so I thought you might be related.”
“Who is the friend?”
“Ivy Lennox.”
For a long moment, all I can hear is Sandra’s breathing. She has dedicated herself to helping others through grief, but right now I swear she’s experiencing it; I can feel the weight of her emotions through the phone line.
Then she says, “Ivy was my mother.”