Weaver stopped in the hallway, her mouth an angry straight line. Her eyes were bloodshot, like she had been crying for the last year. Red splotches were all over her face.
"Mrs. Weaver," Lena said, flipping her phone closed.
Dottie shook her head, like she was too angry to say anything.
"We're just talking to some classmates and teachers to see if they can shed any light on-"
"Why can't you just leave her alone?" Dottie begged. "Why can't you just let her rest in peace?"
"I'm sorry," Lena told the woman, and she meant it.
"She was my baby."
"I know that," Lena answered, looking down at her phone.
"You're here raking her name over the coals, trying to make her out to be a bad person."
"That's not my goal."
"Liar!" Dottie screamed, throwing the book at Lena. Lena dropped her phone to catch it, but missed. The spine slammed into her stomach and she winced as it dropped to the floor.
"Mrs. Weaver," Lena began, stooping to retrieve the textbook.
"The school wanted her book back," Dottie said, her bottom lip trembling. "Take it. Take it and tell them all they can go to hell."
Lena tried to close the book without damaging the pages. She picked up her phone, which didn't seem to be broken.
Dottie dabbed her eyes with some tissue, then blew her nose. She did not leave, though, which Lena could not understand until she spoke again.
"Jenny loved this school," the mother said, wrapping her arms around her stomach as if it brought her pain to speak. "She loved being here."
Lena thought now was as good a time as any to get this out of the way. "Was she seeing anybody, Mrs. Weaver?"
Dottie shook her head. "A psychiatrist?" she asked.
"A boy," Lena clarified. "Was she seeing any boys?"
"No," Dottie snapped. "Of course not. She was just a child."
Lena nodded, feeling an encroaching dread. "Some of the girls said she was."
"Which girls?" Dottie asked, looking around as if they might be there.
"Just girls," Lena answered. "Friends from school."
"She didn't have friends," Dottie told her, narrowing her eyes, sensing some kind of trick. "What are they saying about my daughter?"
Lena tried to think of a way to say it. "That she…"
"That she what?" Dottie demanded.
Lena said, "That she saw a lot of boys. That she was with a lot of boys."
The slap came suddenly, and stung so much that after a few seconds the right side of Lena 's face went numb. Before Lena could think to respond, let alone react, she was looking at the back of Dottie Weaver as the woman left the school.
The library door bumped open, and Brad stood there, holding the door for the group of teachers he had been interviewing. They looked tired, and a bit irritated, but this was pretty normal from Lena 's recollection of teachers around lunchtime. One of them looked at Lena, and she could tell from the way the woman assessed her that she sensed something was wrong. The teacher raised an eyebrow as if to invite conversation, but Lena was too shocked to speak.
" Lena?" Brad prompted. She nodded that she was okay, wondering if her face was red where Dottie had slapped her.
Brad introduced all of the teachers, whose names Lena promptly forgot. He said, "They know about the rumor."
Lena blinked, not understanding.
"The rumor about Jenny," Brad clarified. "They said they had heard it."
"None of us believed it," one of the teachers said, her voice indicating that she had resigned herself a long time ago to the fact that there were things that went on in the school that no teacher would ever know about.
"She was a good student," another teacher said. "Very quiet, turned her work in on time. Her mother was involved."
The other teachers nodded, and Lena duplicated the gesture, still too shocked to offer anything of consequence.
"Thank you for your time," Brad said, moving things along. He shook hands with each of them in turn, and to the last one they gave him an encouraging look.
"I'm sorry we couldn't help more," one said.
Another told him, "If we think of anything, we'll call you."
The woman who had looked at Lena was last, and she told Brad, "You did an excellent job, Bradley. I'm very impressed."
Brad beamed. "Thank you, ma'am," he said, tucking his head down like a happy puppy. He waited until the teachers were gone before asking Lena, "Whose book?"
"Jenny Weaver's," Lena provided, thumbing through the pages to see if any notes were tucked in. It was empty, just like the others.
"How'd you get it?"
Lena could not answer him. "Here," she said, handing him the book. "Take it to the front office, then meet me in the car."
The parking lot of Suddy's was pretty empty, even at eight o'clock. If Sibyl and Nan 's life had been any indication, probably most of the lesbians in town were at home, watching sitcoms. Not that Sibyl could watch them, she was blind, but she liked to listen sometimes, and Nan would narrate what was happening.
Lena crossed her arms, thinking about Sibyl, and how she had looked the last time Lena had seen her; not the time in the morgue, but the day before she had died. As usual, Sibyl had been full of energy, and laughing at something that had happened in one of her classes. Above everything, Sibyl loved teaching, and she had taken great joy from being in front of a classroom. Maybe that was why Lena had had such a negative reaction to being at the school today.
Before she could stop herself, Lena got out of the car. Suddy's was nice by most bar standards. Compared to the Hut, Hank's bar over in Reece, it was a palace. Outside, the decor was spare, probably because a place like this would not want to draw attention to itself. Other than a Budweiser sign with a neon rainbow flag incorporated into the logo, the building was pretty nondescript.
The interior was more festive, but the lights were down low, making the room a little too intimate for Lena. Something soft played on the jukebox, and a spinning mirrored ball did a slow turn over what looked like the dance floor. Lena had always been uncomfortable with this side of Sibyl, and never understood how someone who was so pretty, who was so outgoing and energetic, could choose this kind of life for herself. Sibyl had always wanted children, always wanted to be taken care of and loved. Lena would not have predicted this kind of life for her sister in a million years.
When Sibyl had first come out to Lena fifteen years ago, Lena 's response had been an emphatic, "No, you're not." Even after Sibyl moved in with Nan, Lena had still let herself believe that Sibyl was not gay. It sounded trite to say, but Lena could not help thinking in the back of her mind that it was just a phase, and that one day Sibyl would laugh about her confusion and settle down and have children. Being Sibyl's twin complicated matters, because Lena had always felt that a piece of herself was in Sibyl, and a piece of Sibyl was in Lena. It was unsettling to think that Lena might somewhere in her psyche share Sibyl's sexual leanings.
Lena dismissed this as she walked across the room. Two women at a corner table ignored her completely, seeming more intent upon pushing their tongues down each other's throat than seeing who had walked through the door. The bartender was reading a newspaper when Lena approached her, and she looked up, doing a startled double take.
The woman said, "You must be her sister."
Lena sat a couple of stools down from her. "I'm meeting someone here."
The woman closed the paper. She walked over and offered Lena her hand. "I'm Judy," she said.
Lena stared at the hand, then reluctantly shook it. The woman was tall, with long dark hair and a heart-shaped face. Her eyes were an intense hazel, which Lena noticed because the woman would not stop staring at her.