Page 5 of Good Girls Lie
This is a very bad idea.
I fight the urge to run, plant my feet, flexing my quadriceps so I am grounded, stable.
Dr. Asolo retakes her seat. “That was Becca Curtis. Senator Curtis’s daughter. Becca’s a senior and loves to spook the incoming girls. She’s only playing with you. Ignore her.”
“It wasn’t very funny. Is she always so mean?”
“No, actually. She’s quite a lovely girl. One of our best students. A true leader. Just a wee bit sadistic when it comes to newbies. You’ll see. You’re in sister classes, after all, and many of the school events are done with your sister class. Odds and Evens.”
“I see.”
“Kitchen rules are straightforward and posted on the door. The Rat—that’s the little café over there, through the staircase in the back of the building—is open until 10:00 p.m. If for some reason you miss a meal, you can always grab a latte and a banana or a sandwich. I highly recommend the tuna melt. Library hours are in your packet, along with your class schedule and everything else you might need, including your keycard for the buildings and student ID. Don’t lose them—there’s a five-hundred-dollar fee to replace them. Can you manage that bag by yourself or do you need some help?”
“I can manage.” I slide the packet into my backpack and redirect my suitcase, immediately wishing I’d agreed to help. The bag is so heavy, but it’s all I have.
“Excellent. Welcome to Goode. You’re going to love it here.” Dr. Asolo starts away but I stop her.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Asolo, I’m supposed to meet with the dean. Can you point me toward her office?”
“Oh!” Dr. Asolo peers at me curiously. “The dean doesn’t usually meet with students on their first day. And opening convocation is in an hour. Her office is just there, through the doors, down the hall.” She points toward the right side of the building. “You can leave your bag with me if you like.”
“Thank you. I’ll bring it with me.”
“Suit yourself. It’s been a joy, Ash Carlisle.” She smiles briskly and disappears back into the office, shutting the door behind her.
I take a huge, shuddery breath, blow it out, hard.
I’ve got this.
5
THE DEAN
Dr. Ford Julianne Westhaven watches from the attics as her girls arrive for term. She loves it up here. When she attended the school, she was desperate for a glimpse into the seniors’ hall, for an invite to the forbidden level. As the ultimate legacy, she thought it was her right. But traditions are traditions, and the only time she’d been allowed, up until her own senior year, was blindfolded, being dragged up the wrong set of stairs during a secret society tap.
The room is cozy. The windows overlook the Blue Ridge Mountains on one side and down the mountain to the green valley on the other. If she could set up her permanent office here, she would. Instead, she uses it for escapes during the day when she doesn’t have the time to flee to her cottage on the grounds.
She knows she has to go down and greet the classes, is excited, in her way, but turning herself from a months-long private life to a public one always takes a toll. She is at heart an introvert, has to force herself to smile and laugh and participate in her own world. Being continually thrust in front of the microphone as the mentor to two hundred impressionable young women is alternately terror-inducing and exhausting. She is expected to speak at every opening convocation, every graduation, and several times in between. She is their lodestone, their shining light, their leader.
Ford aspires to be a novelist, not headmistress to a band of brilliant young girls. Oh, she knew she would take over the school eventually, but hadn’t planned to be doing this in her thirties. She assumed she’d step in once her mother was too infirm to handle the school, that she’d have a full, laudable writing career first.
But her mother screwed up everything, so instead, here Ford is, hiding in the attics, dreading the start of term as she has the past nine autumns. She can hear Jude’s voice echoing through the chambers of her mind.
It is expected of you, Ford. It is your role in life to be the dean of this school, as I and your grandmother and hers were before you.
Ford doesn’t like doing what is expected of her. And yet, she does it anyway.
A Westhaven has held the top position since the school opened, in the early 1800s, as an Episcopal-run home for wayward girls. Girls who needed to disappear. Girls who’d disgraced themselves and their families. Girls who would have otherwise ended up in bawdy houses, as prostitutes, or worse. Decidedly not Goode girls.
Ford’s namesake was a nun who served the school when it opened in 1805. Sister Julianne was a radical who thought all women should be educated. She felt the poor, lost girls of Virginia who found their way to Marchburg needed to serve a purpose and started teaching them to read and write. Quietly, stealthily, she turned the ones who were capable of change into ladies. Some even managed to return to Virginia society, though most moved west and started over under new names. The illegitimate children were adopted out or put into service at the plantations in the area.
The school’s mission changed in the late–nineteenth century, when Sister Julianne, then Mother Julianne, ancient and bent, stubborn still, was given a gift. One hundred thousand dollars from the father of her own illegitimate daughter, bestowed to them upon his death. With this absolute fortune, she bought the school outright, a legacy for her child.
All girls who entered the gates were good, in her mind, no matter the sin they’d committed. She, too, was capable of sin. She changed the name of the school to reflect this opinion and created a new mandate—the school would take in needy girls and turn them into governesses and schoolteachers. Her descendants would run it, using the Westhaven name. The name of her illicit lover.
Soon enough, The Goode School, as it was known, became a destination for young women who wanted to break free of societal norms. Goode gave the girls who landed there a chance at an extraordinary life, a contradiction to anything they’d been taught or thought before.
When Mother Julianne died, her wishes were followed to the letter. Her daughter—a woman with Julianne’s own gray eyes and her father’s name—took over the school.
