The Twisted Thread Read Free Page A

her voice than she’d known she possessed, “I’m going to ask you again. Where is the baby?”
    Sally shook her head and could not speak. “I don’t know,” she finally whispered. “He’s gone. When I found her this morning, we looked everywhere, but he’s gone. Someone took all his blankets and the diapers. Someone took him. I just can’t believe he’s gone.” She burst into ragged tears again and threw herself on Madeline.
    The officers’ watchfulness had thickened. The taller murmured into his radio. Almost instantly, Madeline heard the scrape of men’s shoes on the stairs. She held Sally close. She wanted to offer some reassurance, to blot away the girl’s grief. She understood now why Sally had shouted on the steps and why the girls had seemed not just saddened but so scared. She started to ease Sally to her feet, but Madeline’s mind was charging forward. Claire might have given birth in that room. Where was her child? Sally kept sobbing. Police in uniforms, in suits came swarming up the stairs. One was ordered to take Madeline and Sally downstairs, now, and as he leaned in to help them, Madeline saw that his face was almost as young as those of her students. Sally tottered back to the first floor, and Madeline followed, her hand on the girl’s shoulder. As they moved, light poured in through the high windows and dazzled the gold braid on the officer’s cap. Above them, radios crackled, cell phones shrilled, men barked into them, voices taut.
    The sun spread in hot bands through the stairwell, illuminating long threads of dust floating through the air. It was going to be a beautiful day, green, warm, rich with spring’s fullness. With a suddenness that made Sally, the silent officer, and Madeline all jump, the chapel bells began to peal.

CHAPTER 2
    F red Naylor was sitting next to Alice Grassley and doctoring his dining hall coffee with a carefully engineered combination of cream and raw sugar. A miniature success with which to start the morning. It was just 6:45, and peace reigned in the elegantly proportioned room. He hadn’t realized how much he savored the ritual until Rob Barlow, the dean of students, strode in, saw them both, and came over to shatter the day. Rob planted his hands on their table and said, with a rough attempt at lowered volume, “Tragic news. Claire Harkness is dead. We’re meeting at seven fifteen in the Study.”
    Fred and Alice happened to eat breakfast at the same early hour, and they’d developed a habit of sitting next to each other and trading sections of the newspaper. It was a friendship of sorts, an unexpected one. Alice was at least sixty, bony, exacting, the keeper of minutes at faculty meetings, and best known for the ruthless speed with which she graded calculus exams. Fred was twenty-nine, the painting teacher and boys’ soccer coach, and had cultivated a professionally relaxed attitude about almost everything. Nonetheless, he and Alice had grown used to talking companionably together each morning in the hushed, almost empty dining hall, sports pages spread over the narrow table. They were both citizens of what was now called Red Sox Nation, but Alice didn’t like that name. “Die-hard fan will do nicely,” she said. When Rob approached them, they were about to tuck into a discussion of last night’s loss to Baltimore, a five-run lead blown in the ninth inning, a kind of mishap specific to the Sox. But Rob’s news destroyed everything. Fred dropped the packet of sugar. Alice’s tea spilled an amber river through her eggs. “Do the students know?” she asked Rob. Her face was as pale as the chalk she still insisted on using. Everyone else had long ago switched to whiteboards.
    â€œA few,” said Rob. “The ones in the dorm, mostly. Sarah’s meeting with them now.” Sarah Talmadge was the assistant head: professional, crisp, smart.