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Wendy felt her own pulse quicken. She wanted to ask questions, have her back up and offer up details, but she kept still, letting Christa tell the story in her own way.
“So I’m on the ground, screaming, and I hear someone run past. I reached out blindly and tripped him. He fell hard and cursed. I grabbed his leg. I’m not sure why. I was working by instinct more than anything else. And that was when he kicked out to get free.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “See, I didn’t realize it at the time but there were shards of glass—a shattered mirror—all in my face. So when he kicked to get free, his heel shoved the shards farther into my skin, slicing right down to the bone.” She swallowed. “But the biggest shard was near my right eye. I might have lost the eye anyway, but that kick plunged the shard like a knife. . . .”
Mercifully she stopped right there.
“That’s the last thing I remember. I passed out then. I didn’t wake up for three days and when I did, well, I spent the next few weeks in and out of consciousness. There were constant surgeries. The pain was intolerable. I was pretty drugged up. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me go back a little. Campus police heard me scream that night. They caught Phil Turnball in the dean’s front yard. My blood was all over his shoes. We all knew that other students were there too. See, there was a scavenger hunt. The dean’s boxer shorts were a big prize. Sixty points. That’s what Phil Turnball had been after—a pair of boxers. Like I said, a prank. Nothing more.”
“You said you heard others. Whispers and giggles.”
“Right, but Phil claimed that he’d been alone. His friends, of course, backed up that story. I was in no condition to counter what he said, and really, what did I know?”
“Phil took full blame?” Wendy asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“I still don’t understand. What did he do to you exactly? I mean, what caused all the cuts?”
“When I came in the room, Phil hid behind the bed. When he saw me reaching for the light switch, well, I guess the idea was to try to draw my attention away. A big glass ashtray got thrown near me. It was supposed to make noise so I’d turn and then Phil could run, I guess. But there was an antique mirror there. It shattered right into my face. Freak injury, right?”
Wendy said nothing.
“I spent three months in the hospital. I lost an eye. My other one was also severely damaged—the retina got severed. For a while I was totally blind. My sight came back gradually in the one eye. I’m still legally blind, but I can make out enough. Everything is blurry and I have tremendous trouble with any sort of bright light—especially sunlight. Again, apropos, don’t you think? According to the doctors, my face had literally been sliced off, piece by piece. I’ve seen early pictures. If you think this is bad . . . it looked like raw ground chuck. That’s the only way I can describe it. Like a lion had eaten my face away.”
“I’m sorry,” Wendy said, because she didn’t know what else to say.
“My fiancé, Marc, he was great. He stuck by me. I mean, he was heroic when you think about it. I had been beautiful. I can say that now. It doesn’t sound immodest anymore. But I was. And he was so damn handsome. So Marc stuck by me. But he also kept diverting his gaze. It wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t signed up for this.”
Christa stopped.
“So what happened?”
“I made him go. You think you know love, right? But that’s the day I learned what love really was. Even though it cut me deeper than any shard ever could, I loved Marc enough to make him go.”
She stopped again, took a sip of tea.
“You can probably guess the rest. Phil’s family paid me to keep silent. A generous sum, I guess you’d say. It’s in trust, paid out to me every week. If I speak about what happened, the payments stop.”
“I won’t say anything.”
“Do you think that worries me?”
“I don’t know.”
“It doesn’t. I have pretty modest needs. I still live here. I kept working for Dean Slotnick, though not with his children. My face scared them. So I became his assistant. When he died, Dean Pashaian was kind enough to keep me on. Now it’s Dean Lewis. I mostly donate the money to various charities.”
Silence.
“So how does Dan fit into this?” Wendy asked.
“How do you think?”
“I assume he was in the house that night?”
“Yes. They all were. All five. I found out later.”
“How?”
“Dan told me.”
“And Phil took the fall for all of them?”
“Yes.”
“Any idea why?”
“He was a stand-up guy, I guess. But there might have been more. He was wealthy. The others weren’t. Maybe he figured, what good would it do him to tell on his friends?”
That made sense, Wendy thought.
“So Dan visited you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To offer comfort. We talked. He felt horrible about that night. About running out. That was how it started. I was furious when he first came by. But we became friends. We talked for hours at this very table.”
“You said you were furious?”
“You have to understand. I lost everything that night.”
“Right, so you were justifiably angry.”
Christa smiled. “Oh, I see.”
“What?”
“Let me guess. I was angry. I was furious. I hated them all. So I plotted my revenge. I, what, bided my time for twenty years and then I struck. Is that what you’re thinking?”
Wendy shrugged. “It is as though someone is paying them all back.”
“And I’m the most likely suspect? The scarred chick with the ax to grind?”
“Don’t you think so?”
“Sounds like a bad horror movie, but I guess. . . .” She tilted her head again. “Are you buying me as the bad guy, Wendy?”
Wendy shook her head. “Not really, no.”
“And there is one other thing.”
“What?”
Christa spread her hands. She still had the sunglasses on, but a tear escaped from the one eye she had left. “I forgave them.”
Silence.
“They were just college kids on a scavenger hunt. They never meant to hurt me.”
And there it was. There is such wisdom in the simple—a truth you can hear in the tone, unmistakable for anything else.
