Alice focused on the objects in the room. A small marble statue of Lady Justice, blindfolded. On the bookshelves, a collection of books in neat rows, stripped of their jackets, organized by height. On the wall, a framed photo of a girls’ field hockey team from long ago. Ms. Yoder’s team when she was young, thought Alice.
She didn’t notice that Peter had risen from his chair. “Thank you, Miss Yoder,” he said. Emphasizing the first part of the name.
The woman furrowed her brow.
“I’m afraid there’s more to discuss,” she said. “In situations like these, we generally take some sort of disciplinary action.”
“Whatever you think best,” said Peter. “Come, Alice.”
She rose. But before they left the room, Ms. Yoder spoke again.
“Mrs. Van Laar,” she said, looking directly at her. Making a point. “May I answer any questions for you?”
If she did have questions, they would not come to her. And so she shook her head, and followed her husband silently from the room.
• • •
On the way to the car, Alice asked him if he might like to wait for Barbara, to talk to her directly. He shook his head.
“She’ll only lie,” said Peter. “I can’t abide it.”
In the car on the way back to Albany, he was silent while Alice, next to him, struggled to find something to say.
She had noticed recently that she was adopting the habits of Peter’s mother, who on most occasions sat off to one side, smiling pleasantly, largely letting her husband run the show. When Alice had first met her, she had wondered about her intelligence. But on the rare occasions the two of them were alone, Mrs. Van Laar had demonstrated a capacity for conversation that went beyond anything she displayed to her own husband. She was even witty, in her way.
“Early for the leaves to be changing,” said Alice, finally. And Peter affirmed that it was.
• • •
That night, he came to Alice to tell her that a decision had been made. The Emily Grange School couldn’t handle Barbara, he said. She’d have to go someplace else.
After consulting on the phone with a friend later that evening, Peter had emerged from his room with an announcement. Barbara would be enrolled next year at Élan, a school in Maine for children with discipline issues. He described it as a “behavior modification program.”
They’d have the summer together at the Preserve, he told her; and then she would go.
“Tell Barbara, would you?” he said, casually. Alice flinched.
“She’ll hate it,” said Alice.
“That,” said Peter, “is neither here nor there. What’s important is setting her on a right path. Preventing her from making some irreversible mistake. Can you imagine,” he said—but he stopped himself.
Alice understood. A boy in Barbara’s room at Emily Grange meant the possibility of sex—if not now, soon. And sex meant the possibility of a pregnancy.
Prior to marrying into the Van Laars, Alice had never met a family so obsessed with its own reputation. Peter had explained it to her once, concisely, when they were younger, when Bear was four or five.
“Banking is an industry that relies on trust,” he said. “If we wish for customers to trust us to make decisions about their money, then they must trust our judgment in all things.” This, said Peter, was one of the reasons that Peter I had founded the Preserve and Camp Emerson; their interest in conservation was genuine, but also shrewd, designed to augment their reputation in the region. The friendships they’d curated with well-connected people over time were just the same: Shrewd. Chary. The Van Laars were meticulous about anyone they brought into their life, and ruthless about those they excised.
• • •
The thing was: Alice still hadn’t told Barbara about their plans in the fall. She was stopped, always, when she considered the commotion that would ensue: Barbara raging, making a scene. There was something so violent about Barbara, something inherently aggressive that Alice had noticed since her birth. Even beyond the tantrums she had had as a younger child, the teenage Barbara now seemed permanently stormy, always one misapprehension away from throwing a vicious punch.
When Barbara asked to spend the summer at Camp Emerson, therefore, it became in Alice’s mind another excuse to defer the announcement.
Her latest decision was to tell Barbara at the end of the summer. That would be best, thought Alice. One swift single blow, and then up to Élan. Perhaps she could even tell her after she was in the car, packed for Emily Grange. After they were safely in the car, with a driver at the wheel.
She had planned it all out.
Barbara, she would say—speaking quietly. There’s been a change in plans.
• • •
Suddenly, Alice is roused from her thoughts by a sound someplace far in the distance.
It sounds like a young girl, crying out.
“Does anyone else hear that?” she says.
She turns to look over her shoulder, but the ranger assigned to attend to her is gone.
Judyta
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day One
Through the kitchen window, Judy watches as the elder Mr. and Mrs. Van Laar move across the lawn in the direction of the woods. He walks with a quick aggressive stride; she hustles along behind, trotting every few steps to keep up. These men never seem to really like their wives, Judy thinks. Not the ones at the club, and not the ones here. Her own father—as strict as he is with his children—not only defers to her mother but practically worships her. Once, on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, he read to her a god-awful poem of his own creation, paper rattling in shaking hands, Judy and her siblings willing themselves not to laugh.
Judy gathers her strength once more before turning back in the direction of the large main room with the fireplace. Gathered around it, still, are young men and women who aren’t so much older than she is. She isn’t certain how they fit into this picture, but she understands it will be her job to find out. All of them, she thinks, look inappropriately casual, their demeanor almost offensively relaxed.
She hovers for a moment, looking down at her pad as if noticing something important on it.
