opened the glass balcony door to let Madonna escape into the branches of the adjacent poplar, then set her pile of books on the kitchen table and filled Elton’s bowl with dry cat food.
While-he was eating, Camilla went into the bathroom and ran the tub, adding a liberal dash of scented bubbles. She stood at the counter to take out her contact lenses, then stored them in their little plastic case. She rubbed her eyes with relief as she looked at herself in the mirror.
The change was always so dramatic, because her eyes weren’t blue at all. They were actually a clear, pale gray, like the sky on a cloudy day.
She’d chosen the tinted lenses mostly for practical reasons, because they were easier to find if she dropped or misplaced one of them. But tonight she was gratified to see again how much the lenses altered her appearance.
When Jon Campbell had seen her all those years ago, she’d had gray eyes….
Camilla touched the bridge of her nose, then picked up a hand mirror to study her profile critically. The plastic surgeon had repaired the cartilage in her nose skillfully. But back in that long-ago summer, her nose had been freshly broken and wasn’t healing properly. It had been noticeably crooked, and somewhat thicker at the bridge.
And her hair, too, had darkened a lot over the last two decades. Twenty years ago, her long braid had been pale blond, almost silver, hanging all the way to her waist.
Camilla put the mirror aside, stripped off her clothes, turned off the faucet and stepped into the tub, settling with a weary sigh among the fragrant mounds of bubbles.
Perhaps the man wasn’t lying, after all. It seemed quite possible that he didn’t recognize her, and he’d only arrived in her classroom by some kind of ghastly coincidence.
When their eyes first met, he’d looked puzzled by her own shocked reaction. There’d been no answering spark of recognition from him, no meaningful smirk or veiled threat. Just a look of good humour, masculine admiration and a readiness to smile and respond if she gave him any encouragement.
Jon Campbell seemed too blunt and forthright to carry off some kind of sinister deception. Still, she could hardly dare to hope that the man truly had forgotten what happened between them twenty years ago in that dirty motel room.
Camilla lowered herself among the bubbles so the water came to her chin. She lifted a slim foot and touched the faucet with her toe, idly tracing the outlines of the gleaming brass.
Maybe, for once in her life, she was going to be lucky. Perhaps the tinted contact lenses, her nose surgery, darkened hair and a few more inches of height were going to be enough to disguise her real identity from Jon Campbell.
Briefly she wondered what the man was like, how he’d turned out after all these years.
He seemed similar in some ways to the boy she remembered, but there were subtle differences, as well. Jonathan Campbell now had a look of wealth and power, despite the casual air. He was obviously a man with a privileged background and enough money to do anything he wanted—even go back to college full-time if he chose.
In fact, he seemed to be everything the campus myths claimed her to be. Camilla smiled grimly at the irony, then sobered and reached out to run more hot water into the tub.
Regardless of what he’d become, he was a threat to Camilla, and she knew she had to get the man out of her life quickly to preserve her own safety.
Elton wandered into the room, licking his whiskered chops with satisfaction. He stood erect, with his front paws resting on the edge of the tub, and stared at her solemnly. Camilla blew a couple of soap bubbles into his face, making him blink.
She smiled sadly. “Too bad a professor can’t just walk out of a class the way her students do. Should I drop that creative-writing class, Elton?”
The cat watched her with his usual inscrutable expression.
“Oh, I know. You’re right, of course,” Camilla said. “Dr. Pritchard can hardly drop a class simply because…”
Because the professor happens to share some unpleasant and embarrassing sexual history with one of her students.
Camilla’s throat tightened with anxiety. Of course, she had the power to remove a student from her class, but in order to do that she’d need a good reason.
Maybe if the work was hard enough, the man would quit of his own accord. After all, he’d probably been away from college for more than twenty years, presumably doing a lot of rugged, outdoor work, if his callused hands were any indication. No doubt he was going to find it difficult to adjust to the daily grind of classes and homework.
Camilla’s spirits lifted a bit.
Maybe she could give out the individual research assignments a couple of weeks early, and find some way to make Campbell work harder than anybody else. But she’d have to do it soon—before he had a lot more opportunities to sit at the back of that room and study every detail of her face and body.
Camilla climbed from the tub, dried herself on a big green towel and slipped into a terry-cloth robe and slippers, then made her way to the kitchen with Elton at her heels. She brewed a pot of herbal tea, put a small frozen entrée into the microwave and spread her books out on the glass-topped table.
What assignment could she give Jon Campbell? It had to be something tedious enough to convince the poor man that he wasn’t really interested in completing a senior writing class.
Camilla put on her reading glasses and began to work. After a few minutes, the microwave beeped and she got up, carried the tray to the table, picked up a fork and ate without tasting the food.
A short while later Camilla returned to her problem.
Maybe an analysis of character development in Chaucer?
How about a comparison of editorial styles of seven major newspapers, or a definitive look at the American novel from Hawthorne to Updike…
The pages blurred in front of her eyes. Camilla took off her glasses and dropped her head into her hands, rubbing her temples wearily.
It was beginning to rain. She could hear the heavy drops flowing down the windowpanes, pattering on the floor of the balcony. The sound was seductive, almost mesmerizing, carrying her back through the years.
Back to 1977, and the terrible events of that early summer…
July 1977
IT’S RAINING AGAIN, but I’m so cold and dirty that I don’t care anymore. It’s weird how people are always so afraid of being caught in the rain, as if getting wet is the worst thing that can happen to them. I’ve spent the last three nights out in the rain, sitting in the ditch by the highway with a jacket over my head. My clothes are filthy, my hair’s all stringy and I haven’t eaten since…I can’t remember the last time I had anything to eat.
It’s been a couple of days at least, but the hunger pangs have mostly passed. I’m dizzy a lot of the time and I still feel like throwing up whenever I remember what happened.
My knife didn’t help me a bit when he finally came to my room. He just laughed and snatched it from me like it was some kind of toy. When I tried to fight back, he hit me so hard that I could feel my nose breaking. The taste of blood in my throat sickened me almost as much as the things he was doing to me.
I can’t bear to think about the things he did. I won’t think about it. I won’t…
After he was finished, he rolled over and fell asleep. I got up, found the knife on the floor and jammed it as far as I could into his chest. He shouted and thrashed around, clutching at the knife handle. I don’t know if I killed him, but I hope so. I didn’t stay long enough to find out, I just grabbed some clothes and money and ran away.
My mother was passed out in the living room when I left. She never even knew what happened.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do next. After what he did to me, nothing