Page 97 of All These Beautiful Strangers
“My, Knollwood seems like a lifetime ago now, doesn’t it?” Margot asked my father, turning back to him with a smile. “Can you believe we’re old enough now to have children there? We’re old geezers, I’m afraid.”
It took a moment for my father to answer. He seemed frozen in thought, dazed.
“Yes,” he said. “I have a hard time believing it myself.”
“Well, I hope we all like Italian food,” Margot said, looking at each of us in turn and smiling. “I’ve made reservations at Osteria da Luca.” She looked pointedly at my father. “That used to be one of your favorite spots, if I’m remembering correctly,” she said.
My father only nodded.
“Superb,” she said. “I have a reservation for seven thirty.”
She tilted her wrist up to check the time. The sleeve of her coat fell slightly and revealed the white-gold band of her watch. It was beautiful—the watch face was pearl white, surrounded by a dozen yellow diamonds that sparkled and caught the light. Dalton’s mother had good taste.
“That’s pretty,” I said. “Barneys?”
“Hm?” Margot asked.
“Your watch,” I said.
“Oh, no, family heirloom,” Margot said. She dropped her hand and the arm of her sleeve fell down and covered her watch. “I have a car waiting for us downstairs,” she said. “Shall we?”
There was something off with my father. At the restaurant, I stole glances at him over my dinner plate. He was uncharacteristically quiet. I wasn’t sure what had affected him so much—had Eugenia told him about the conversation we’d had at homecoming? Had Uncle Teddy broken my confidence and told him about the pictures that Uncle Hank had found at the lake house? Was he angry with me? Or was it Margot’s presence that had unnerved him? And if so, why?
Whatever it was, I couldn’t let it get in the way of what I had come here to do. I cleared my throat and dug my fork into the pile of risotto on my plate.
“I joined the school newspaper,” I said.
“The Chronicle?” my father asked, for the moment at least breaking out of his reverie. “Charlotte, that’s great.”
He smiled and I felt the warmth of his approval surge through my blood.
“I’m working the Features beat right now,” I said. “I just pitched this article on the urban myths surrounding campus.”
“That sounds interesting,” Margot said.
“It is,” I said. “There’s this one myth I’m looking into right now. It’s kind of a ghost story. There’s this boy—an old Knollwood student—who haunts campus. Supposedly he killed himself or something; the details surrounding it are really vague.”
“Oh yeah,” Dalton said. “Crosby swore he saw him one night when he was”—he paused and looked around at my father and his mother—“um, coming back from studying. At the library. Scared the stuffing out of him.”
I looked over at my father.
I swallowed and then went on. “I’ve been looking into it to see who it might be linked to, and there are only two students who died at Knollwood in the last century. It turns out that one of them was at Knollwood at the same time as you. His name was Jake Griffin.”
My father paused in sawing his knife through his steak.
“Jake Griffin.” Margot said his name slowly, as if she were having trouble placing him. “Oh yes, I remember. That was so tragic. Happened my junior year, if I’m remembering right.”
“So you knew him?” I asked.
“Yes, we were on the student council together. Jake was a really sweet kid.”
“Did you know him, too?” I asked my father.
“Not really,” my father said. “He wasn’t in my year.”
Not really? My mind flashed back to the “In Memoriam” page in the yearbook—the snapshot of my father and Jake Griffin with their arms around one another, beaming at the camera. Jake Griffin and Alistair Calloway. My father was lying.
“But I thought I saw a picture of the two of you together in the yearbook,” I said.
