Page 29 of Devil

And then she wasn’t there the next day or that Saturday, at my commencement ceremony. I endured Sean’s bossy questions and Aiden trying to knock my graduation cap off my head while I searched the massive crowd spilling down the auditorium steps and onto the sodden green that stretched between the old brick buildings of the former monastery. I took the requisite pictures with my dad and brothers, briefly appreciated that Jesuit college was one of the few places where Aiden’s monk robes didn’t garner stares, and then made a point to circulate aggressively through the cloud of chatting faculty off to the side.

No sign of Birdie.

When I managed to sneak off to her studio, I found the door unlocked and the space emptied of carvings, wood, and tools. The paper and clay remained, but the worktable was empty and even the floors had been swept bare of sawdust.

I accrued answers over the next hour as I went to the graduates’ reception and made myself a charming and irresistible bearer of champagne. The Fine Arts Department would be too discreet or awkward or defensive if I’d asked them myself, so I went straight to the department of gossips: the student life team. They were next door to administration and knew almost everything, but I’d been assured by the counselor and dean in my interview that my identity would be kept confidential. It seems like they kept their word because the director of student life and her secretary appeared to have no idea that I was involved in any fashion and were all too happy to spill the sordid story to me.

Admitted misconduct. Suspended without pay. An investigation that everyone knew was a formality. Even the lecturer knew it—she’d already cleaned out her studio. The secretary drained the last of her champagne, lowered her voice, and told me that she’d heard from her friend in general counsel that the lecturer’s roommate had even kicked her out of her house.

I could feel the fury tickling the palms of my hands and the back of my throat, but I’d still smiled and cajoled and teased out the last of the information I could. The roommate’s name was Kaitlyn Masterson, who was regarded as both deeply abrasive and good at her job. No one knew much else about Birdie Cooper, other than how quiet she was and that her statues were some of the most incredible things they’d ever seen.

Isn’t it a shame that she turned out to be like this?they finally said, shaking their heads.That her talent is now forever polluted by this?

Whatthiswas, thethisdoing the polluting, was vague. When I’d asked them about the particulars—if there’d been coercion or a quid pro quo or even just a sustained length of time that this had been going on—they’d shaken their heads.It doesn’t matter, the director told me. If there’d been one instance, there were probably more. The students came first at Evelyn; that was the commitment Evelyn was making to the world. I’d kept smiling. I didn’t mind the commitment itself, merely the hypocrisy in its implementation.

You know, at leastIknew there was something wrong with me. At least I didn’t pretend to myself that I was good. A shame Evelyn couldn’t make that commitment to the world too.

I left the commencement furious with the college and furious with Birdie for leaving that night and for not coming back, for not finding me so I could finish what I’d started. So I could feed her more fruit and watch the entire world move inside those giant eyes…wonder if I could see God inside there too. But I had no doubt that I’d find her the next day or the day after. How many people named Birdie made religious carvings in the Kansas City area? How many people named Birdie under the age of thirty could there be in the entire Midwest?

My hubris had not accounted for her humility.

I’d already known from my career of stalking Birdie that she didn’t have a website or social media. But there were no upcoming exhibitions either, no agent, nothing that made searching for her the traditional way possible. I spent the summer following old trails of sawdust to churches all over the country, only to find the same thing over and over—she barely existed. There was a phone number the churches had used, which was now disconnected. There were checks cashed at a bank close to Evelyn, all of them made out to Mary Cooper. Her sister’s real name, I remembered. Maybe they shared a bank account?

When I began tugging on the strings at the college instead, they all came loose in my hands. The address I coaxed out of a work-study intern in the office was her friend Kaitlyn’s address, where she no longer lived. None of the phone numbers they had on file worked. She wasn’t close enough to anyone in the Fine Arts Department for them to know where she’d go after being kicked out of her friend’s house. No one seemed to know anything about her at all, in fact. She’d been a ghost to them until she’d been caught with her skirt up, and then she’d been a necessary sacrifice, her banishment cleansing Evelyn like the dripping blood of a young bull.

It wasn’t pretty, that summer. I was frustrated and pissed and…and avid. Starved for Birdie, who I’d snared so carefully over the winter only to have her ripped out of my hands by the end of spring. I drank and fucked in an attempt to blow off steam, but it didn’t work. Nothing worked. She was all I saw when I closed my eyes. She was all I thought about, hoped for, needed, and the worst part was that I couldn’t tell anyone. Not because she’d been my studio teacher for a semester but because they wouldn’t understand. Because then I’d have to explain how it all started, and they’d see the ill-made heart inside me. Sean already suspected that there was something not quite right with his youngest brother, and I didn’t need to add stalking and dubious consent to the catalog of evidence he’d been diligently assembling in his mind.

Kaitlyn Masterson refused to tell me anything, but after she’d left my emails and calls unanswered, I’d taken the liberty of showing up in her office later that summer. Her shelves were bare, as were her walls, and there was a neat tower of labeled boxes in the far corner. A guidebook for conversational Italian peeked over the edge of the topmost box.

“Moving?” I asked when she walked through the door.

She came to a stop, face pale, as she saw me sitting in the half-upholstered, half-wood chair in front of her desk. The chair was tatty and cheap, as was the vinyl woodgrain desk. Every piece of furniture in here clearly had come with the office when she was hired and would stay with the office when she left. I had to hand it to Evelyn—they hadn’t wasted my tuition dollars on cushy shit for the staff.

Kaitlyn took a breath and then walked the rest of the way to the desk. When she sat, I saw that she was wearing the same wraparound cardigan as when she’d come in to give me the full rundown of my legal and academic options should I wish to contest my grade for the studio section, given the circumstances. The blouse underneath her cardigan had the kind of permanent creases in the front that spoke of vacuum-sealed bags and two-day delivery. It was a miser’s business casual.

“I got a new job,” she said finally. “For the diocese.”

“Kansas City?”

A nod. “On the Kansas side.”

“Congratulations. Enjoy that KBI investigation.”

She looked at me like I was beyond disgusting for bringing it up, like mentioning the investigation was the actual reprehensible thing rather than the reason for the investigation itself. I didn’t fucking care. I’d happily drag her to the family plot and tell her to give me that look over my sister’s grave.

“I want to talk to Birdie,” I said, not bothering with any other pleasantries. And to Kaitlyn Masterson’s credit, she didn’t seem to mind that I moved directly to the point. Underneath that brittle self-righteousness was a shark. My guess was that the self-righteousness wouldn’t last much longer than a couple of years with the shit she’d see as an advocate for the diocese, and it would be replaced by either resignation or cold ambition.

With the look she gave me as she considered how to answer, I put my money on cold ambition.

“I don’t talk to Birdie anymore,” she said.

“That’s fine. I just need a good phone number or the place she’s living now if you’ve got the address.”

“She’s changed her phone number. And my guess is she’s gone home to Tongie, although I know there’s a place in the Ozarks. She could have gone there instead.”

Tongie—Tonganoxie. Ozarks. I filed all that away. “I don’t suppose you’ll give me any of the addresses?”

“No.”