The Secret History - Donna Tartt [73]
When I got out I went downstairs to a pay phone and called Francis’s number in the country and let the phone ring maybe fifty times. No answer.
I walked back to Monmouth House through the snow and went to my room and thought, or, rather, didn’t think, but sat on my bed and stared out the window at the ice-rimed yews below. After a while I got up and went to my desk, but I couldn’t work, either. One-way tickets, the operator had said. Nonrefundable.
It was eleven a.m. in California. Both my parents would be at work. I went downstairs to my old friend the pay phone and called the number of Francis’s mother’s apartment in Boston, reversing the charges to my father.
“Well, Richard,” she said when she finally figured out who I was. “Darling. How nice of you to call us. I thought you were going to come spend Christmas with us in New York. Where are you, dear? Can I send somebody to pick you up?”
“No, thank you. I’m in Hampden,” I said. “Is Francis there?”
“Dear, he’s at school, isn’t he?”
“Excuse me,” I said, suddenly flustered; it had been a mistake to call like this, without planning what to say. “I’m sorry. I think I’ve made a mistake.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I thought he’d said something about going to Boston today.”
“Well, if he’s here, sweetheart, I haven’t seen him. Where did you say you were? Are you sure you don’t want me to send Chris around to get you?”
“No thank you. I’m not in Boston. I’m—”
“You’re calling all the way from school?” she said, alarmed. “Is anything wrong, dear?”
“No, ma’am, of course not,” I said; for a moment I had my customary impulse to hang up but it was too late for that now. “He came by last night while I was really sleepy, and I could’ve sworn he said he was going down to Boston—oh! Here he is now!” I said stupidly, hoping she wouldn’t call my bluff.
“Where, dear? There?”
“I see him coming across the lawn. Thank you so much, Mrs. er, Abernathy,” I said, badly flustered and unable to remember the name of her present husband.
“Call me Olivia, dear. You give that bad boy a kiss for me and tell him to call me on Sunday.”
I made my goodbyes quickly—by now I’d broken out in a sweat—and was just turning to go back up the stairs when Bunny, dressed in one of his smart new suits and chewing briskly on a large wad of gum, came striding down the rear hall towards me. He was the last person I was ready to talk to, but I couldn’t get away. “Hello, old man,” he said. “Where’s Henry got off to?”
“I don’t know,” I said, after an uncertain pause.
“I don’t either,” he said belligerently. “Haven’t seen him since Monday. Nor François or the twins, either. Say, who was that on the phone?”
I didn’t know what to say. “Francis,” I said. “I was talking to Francis.”
“Hmn,” he said, leaning back with his hands in his pockets. “Where was he calling from?”
“Hampden, I guess.”
“Not long distance?”
My neck prickled. What did he know about this? “No,” I said. “Not that I know of.”
“Henry didn’t say anything to you about going out of town, did he?”
“No. Why?”
Bunny was silent. Then he said: “There hasn’t been a single light on at his house the last few nights. And his car is gone. It’s not parked anywhere on Water Street.”
For some strange reason, I laughed. I walked over to the back door, which had a window at the top that faced the parking lot behind the tennis courts. Henry’s car was there, right where I’d parked it, plain as day. I pointed it out to him. “There it is, right there,” I said. “See?”
Bunny’s jaw slowed at its work, and his face clouded with the effort of thinking. “Well, that’s funny.”
“Why?”
A thoughtful pink bubble emerged from his lips, grew slowly, and burst with a pop. “No reason,” he said briskly, resuming his chewing.
“Why would they have gone out of town?”
He reached