Hannah Alexander - Double Blind

“You don’t know me as an adult, so you can’t say that.”

“Okay, sorry. I meant to say that the Sheila I once knew would never have allowed anyone to unfairly accuse her.”

“Well, this Sheila couldn’t help second-guessing what she saw. Did you ever think that there might have been two dogs on the road today? The dog I saw in the desert distracted me at the wrong time, and the dog alongside the road—perhaps a buddy—got under the wheel of the tire as I veered from the road.”

“So now you’re trying to work out a scenario in your mind that you can accept. The Sheila I knew would never try so hard to place herself in the wrong.”

“That makes the third time you’ve mentioned the Sheila you knew. Mind telling me a little more about this other me?”

No difficulty there. He’d given it a lot of thought since his last conversation with his grandfather. “The Sheila I remember best is the one I knew when her mother was alive.”

She looked away. This interested him, since he could have sworn Sheila had returned to Twin Mesas, at least in part, to discover more about Evelyn Metcalf, her death and her life here. He had no idea what her father had told her, but Canaan wasn’t going to pass along old hurtful gossip about Evelyn.

Although there hadn’t been much. The People did not make a habit of speaking ill of the dead, because they rarely spoke of the dead at all.

“Don’t you and your father discuss your mother?” he asked.

“We’re talking about young Sheila right now.”

He nodded. Fair enough. “She laughed a lot, she spoke her mind and she despised bullies. She wasn’t afraid to face down the biggest kid on the playground if he was picking on the pip-squeak.”

Canaan saw her wince at the name he’d been called so often.

“No one would call you that now,” she said.

“Sometimes I wonder if I grew so tall just to prove those bullies wrong.”

She smiled at him. “Or maybe to prove me right? That you were the best guy at Twin Mesas.”

He tentatively returned the smile. “I sure missed that after you left.”

Her smile was a fleeting thing, and once again she stared at the ground, looking pensive.

“I often wondered if the real Sheila ever resurfaced,” he said. “By the time you and your dad left here, your heart had gone into hiding. You never cried for her.”

She looked at him, obviously startled. “I cried.”

“For your mother? I know you cried about leaving here, and about leaving me. You never mentioned your mother’s name, never talked about her.”

“My father never mentioned her.”

A troop of little girls pranced across the sandy playground from the dormitories. Their dorm mother, a plump woman with short black hair and olive-toned skin, waved to Canaan. He waved back as the group filed through the cafeteria entrance.

“You remember the day of my mother’s death that well?” Sheila asked.

“It isn’t something I’m ever likely to forget, the day Granddad carried you in from that desert, dehydrated and nearly catatonic.” He could still close his eyes and see his grandfather’s gaunt face and tortured eyes as he carried her, surrounded by teachers and dorm parents from the school.

“It was the day I lost my best friend,” he said softly. “You were never the same.”

He watched her close her eyes, and he knew he’d scored an unintentional hit. Sheila Metcalf had come back to Twin Mesas to find what she’d lost as a child.

Why did he suspect that the tragedy of Evelyn’s death could somehow be connected to the recent tragedies that had taken place here at the school? Could it be because Wendy Hunt had called him just before the fire, telling him she had found something disturbing, and that he needed to see it?

Evelyn Metcalf had done the same long ago. Canaan had been in the cafeteria, slouched over his food, under orders from his dorm room father to eat it all before leaving. Canaan’s smallness had seldom been a bonus for him, but at that time no one had seen him. He’d overheard Evelyn whisper something to Betsy behind the counter. “I need to talk to you later,” she’d said. “I found something in the medical records that I can’t figure out.”

Moments later, Canaan had seen a teacher, Kai Begay, get up from his table in the faculty section, behind a partition. Later, Evelyn had been found dead. Canaan had always wondered if anyone else had heard the exchange.

If it had been just his child’s imagination that made him suspect something sinister had happened, then why was he so anxious now that danger may have lain in wait all these years?

S heila felt sick all of a sudden—and in over her head. She had lost all her curiosity about her mother, though she was sure that would return. But now, everything seemed to be happening too quickly.

“So, I think we’ve exposed everything about Sheila that we can tonight,” she said drily, hesitating at the cafeteria door. “Why don’t we learn a little about Dr. Canaan York?” Anything to delay the inevitable plunge.

To her relief, he took the hint and ceased further probing. He also didn’t open the door. “I’m not a good principal.”

“Most doctors I know wouldn’t make good principals, but this position is temporary, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “If I can make it three more weeks.”

“I understand this has been your first year at the school clinic.”

He looked at her. “I’m sure Granddad managed to tell you everything about my life since you left. He has a tendency to…um…boast a little more than I’d like him to.”

“Oh, yeah, you mean the way he has of saying, ‘My grandson, the doctor,’ every other sentence?”

Canaan chuckled.

“He told me you joined a clinic practice in Ganado as soon as you’d completed your residency.”

“That’s right,” Canaan said. “Many of the Twin Mesas’ graduates went to college in Ganado, so I knew many of my patients already.”

“Sort of like built-in job security,” she said.

Canaan hesitated. How he wished he’d been able to have built-in marriage security so easily. “You know how hard it can be for The People to trust outsiders, or even strangers in our tribe.”

“Your grandfather said a large percentage of Twin Mesas’ graduates go on to college.”

“Yes, Granddad’s proud of that.” Canaan hesitated. “I am, too.”

Sheila glanced up at the change in his voice. “You don’t sound too sure of that.”

He shook his head. “Some of the graduates didn’t make it to college. Two didn’t even live to graduate. They had such high hopes for the future, but they died before they could realize their dreams.”

“How?”

“Accidents.”

“What kind of accidents?”

“One from heatstroke. He was found out in the desert two years ago. He should have known better. He grew up in this desert.”

“And the other?” Sheila asked.

“Car wreck down in Gallup last year. Hit by a drunk.”

“So the deaths were unrelated.”

He grimaced.

She wondered if he realized how poorly he hid his thoughts. He’d never been good at keeping his emotions off his face. “So you came here after you became so concerned about the deaths.”

He didn’t return her look. “After Grandad asked me to.”

“He wanted you here to keep an eye on things,” she guessed.

He glanced through the glass doors into the cafeteria. “And that didn’t work, either. Three died under my watch.”

“And the Hunts were also former students,” she said.

“All three were former students. Bob Jaffrey was, as well.”

“You’re desperate to find out what’s going on.”

He nodded.