Six Years

Chapter 19

I found old yearbooks in the school library.

They were in the basement. The books smelled of mold. The glossy pages stuck together as I tried to flip through them. But there he was. Professor Aaron Kleiner. The picture was fairly unremarkable. He was a nice-enough-looking man with the usual posed smile, aiming for happiness but landing somewhere closer to awkward. I stared at his face to see if I could spot any resemblance to Natalie. There might have been. Hard to say. The mind can play tricks, as we all know.

We have a tendency to see what we want to see.

I stared at his face as though it would give me some kind of answer. It didn’t. I checked through the other yearbooks. There was nothing more to learn. I scanned through the political science pages and stopped at a group picture taken in front of Clark House. All of the professors and support staff were there. Professor Kleiner stood right next to department chair Malcolm Hume. The smiles in this photograph were more relaxed, more natural. Mrs. Dinsmore still looked to be about a hundred years old.

Wait. Mrs. Dinsmore…

I tucked one of the yearbooks under my arm and hurried toward Clark House. It was after hours, but Mrs. Dinsmore lived at the office. Yes, I had been suspended and was supposed to be off campus, but I doubted that campus police would open fire. So I walked across the quad where the students roamed, with a book I hadn’t checked out of the library. Look at me, living on the edge.

I remembered walking here that day six years ago with Natalie. Why hadn’t she said anything? Had there been any sign? Did she grow quiet or slow her step? I didn’t remember. I just remember yapping happily away about the campus like some freshman tour guide after too many Red Bulls.

Mrs. Dinsmore looked up at me over her half-moon reading glasses. “I thought you were out of here.”

“Maybe in body,” I said, “but am I ever far from your heart?”

She rolled her eyes. “What do you want?”

I put the yearbook down in front of her. It was open to the group picture. I pointed at Natalie’s father. “Do you remember a professor named Aaron Kleiner?”

Mrs. Dinsmore took her time. The reading glasses were mounted to a chain around her neck. She removed them, cleaned them with quaking hands, and put them back on again. Her face was still as stone.

“I remember him,” she said softly. “Why do you ask?”

“Do you know why he was fired?”

She looked up at me. “Who said he was fired?”

“Or why he left? Is there anything you can tell me about what happened to him?”

“He hasn’t been here in twenty-five years. You were maybe ten when he left.”

“I know.”

“So why are you asking?”

I didn’t even know how to dance around that question. “Do you remember his children?”

“Little girls. Natalie and Julie.”

No hesitation. That surprised me. “You remember their names?”

“What about them?”

“Six years ago I met Natalie at a retreat in Vermont. We fell in love.”

Mrs. Dinsmore waited for me to say more.

“I know this sounds crazy, but I’m trying to find her. I think she may be in danger, and maybe it has something to do with her father, I don’t know.”

Mrs. Dinsmore kept her eyes on me another second or two. She let her reading glasses drop back to her chest. “He was a good professor. You’d have liked him. His classes were lively. He was terrific at energizing the students.”

Her gaze dropped back to the photograph in the yearbook.

“In those days, some of the younger professors doubled as dorm monitors. Aaron Kleiner was one of them. He and his family lived on the bottom floor of the Tingley dormitory. The students loved them. I remember one year, the students chipped in and bought a swing set for the girls. They all built it on a Saturday morning in the courtyard behind Pratt.”

She looked off wistfully. “Natalie was an adorable little girl. How does she look now?”

“She’s the most beautiful woman in the world,” I said.

Mrs. Dinsmore gave me a wry smile. “You’re a romantic.”

“What happened to them?”

“A few things,” she said. “There were rumors about their marriage.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“What kind are there always on a college campus? Young kids, distracted wife, attractive man on a campus with impressionable coeds. I tease you about the young girls who stop by your office, but I’ve seen too many lives ruined by that temptation.”

“He had an affair with a student?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Those were the rumors. Have you heard of Vice Chair Roy Horduck?”

“I’ve seen his name on some plaques.”

“Aaron Kleiner accused Horduck of plagiarism. The charges were never brought, but vice chair is a pretty powerful position. Aaron Kleiner got demoted. Then he got involved in a cheating scandal.”

“A professor cheated?”

“No, of course not. He made accusations against a student, maybe two. I don’t remember the details anymore. That might have been his downfall, I don’t know. He started to drink. He behaved more erratically. The rumors started.”

She stared down at the photograph again.

“So they asked him to resign?”

“No,” Mrs. Dinsmore said.

“Then what happened?”

“One day, his wife walked through that very door.” She pointed behind her. I knew what door. I had walked through it a thousand times, but I still looked, as though Natalie’s mom might walk through it again. “She was crying. Hysterical, really. I was sitting right where I am now, at this very spot, at this very desk…”

Her words faded away.

“She wanted to see Professor Hume. He wasn’t here so I called him on the phone. He hurried over. She told him that Professor Kleiner was gone.”

“Gone?”

“He’d packed his things and run off with another woman. A former student.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, she was hysterical. There were no cell phones back in those days. We had no way to reach him. We waited. I remember he had a class that afternoon. He never showed. Professor Hume had to cover that day. The other professors took turns covering until the semester ended. The students were really upset. Parents called, but Professor Hume placated them all by giving everyone an A.” She shrugged, pushed the yearbook back toward me, and pretended to get back to work.

“We never heard from him again.”

I swallowed. “So what happened to his wife and daughters?”

“The same, I guess.”

“What does that mean?”

“They moved away at the end of the semester. I never heard from them again. I always hoped that they all ended up at another college-that they patched things up. But I guess that wasn’t what happened, was it?”

“No.”

“So what happened to them?” Mrs. Dinsmore asked.

“I don’t know.”