3. CHAPTER 1
F ive mornings a week, Madeline Christopher jogged through
the cool air of Armitage, past tidy clapboard houses, below
stately maples, down the quiet, shuttered High Street. It was
New England at its most pristine. The town had staved off box
stores and cul de sacs plowed from corn fields; high taxes and
strict zoning had allowed Armitage to relegate the Shop N’
Saves and condos to Greenville, a factory town it bordered to the
north. Her route used to include it. After living in one of Cam-
bridge’s seedier neighborhoods, the body shops had felt familiar.
Gradually, and not quite consciously, she’d retooled her five
miles so that she traveled down elm-shaded lanes, parallel to
porches with Doric columns. One stretch of the run now took
her past a reservoir where swans nested, white birds on black
water, while the wind chapped her face raw well into spring. A
big curve guided her round the Quaker graveyard and then up a
steady hill and through the iron gates to the plush, orderly cam-
pus where she had lived for the last nine months. Armitage
Academy, where ivy clung to mellowed brick and lawns un-
folded like thick, green pelts. Madeline felt always that she was
not grand enough to walk on the marble stairs or through the
shady buildings. It was preposterous that schools like this still
operated, were available to teenagers of all people, and even
more, that she worked at one of them.
For all its appearance of mannered ease, Armitage was a
place of ferocious industry. Forty-five minutes was all she had to
4. 2 CHARLOTTE BACON THE TWISTED THREAD 3
herself each morning and it was the only time she could call her seen Kate, her husband, Nick, and their baby, Tadeo, during the
own until late that night. Her day was pared into slivers—four recent holiday.
minutes to change before track practice, 17 for lunch. An intern At 28, Kate had a PhD in architectural history, a husband, a
in the English department, she’d had 19 years of education, ac- son, a house, and a dog, which seemed like a lot of having for
quiring two degrees and no practical experience of any use in the someone so young. What was more disturbing to Madeline was
process. But an M.A., a firm handshake, and the willingness to that all these possessions seemed equivalent to her sister. The
relinquish one’s personal life were apparently all it took to qualify house equaled the baby; the degree equaled the husband. This
you as a teacher at a boarding school. wasn’t going to work as a long-term strategy, Madeline sensed.
Her mother, when she’d seen her at Easter, had placed a Babies and husbands in general rebelled against being treated
thumb between her daughter’s eyes and pressed critically at the like hardwood floors or dissertations, things that could be pol-
skin. At first, Madeline thought Isabelle was engaging in some ished. But for now, Kate’s life looked admirably shiny, well ap-
yogic practice—trying to pry open a tightly shut third eye, for in- pointed, primed for more and more accomplishment. Kate was a
stance, as out of character as such a gesture seemed. Then she graduate of Armitage.
said, “You know, they’re doing Botox younger and younger.” It was Kate, in fact, she had to thank for having a job here in
Being responsible for the transmission of American literature the first place. Madeline had produced a thesis on Flannery
to four classes of intelligent, slouching adolescents sometimes O’Connor and a covertly written collection of short stories—well,
struck Madeline as a task more ludicrous than ending depen- at least seven, and that was almost a collection, wasn’t it? By early
dence on foreign oil. That she was also entrusted with the girl’s last spring, she had also amassed a quiver of rejections from the
j.v. track team, the literary magazine, and dorm duty twice a community colleges where she’d hoped to teach near her boy-
week in Portland, a residence known, even to teachers, as Pot- friend’s medical school. By May, Madeline’s prospects for em-
land, just added to her sense of living in a Sisyphean nightmare. ployment had thinned like her father’s hair after divorcing his
‘Sisyphean’ was a word one of her sophomores had used in an third wife. It was Kate who had bluntly captured the situation.
essay; Madeline had had to look it up in the dictionary to make “Face it, Madeline, Owen wouldn’t move for you, so why move
sure it had been spelled correctly. It had been. Grindingly repeti- for him? Put him to the test. Strike out on your own.” She was
tive, relating to the futility of labor. right, of course. Owen had steadfastly and with no guilt insisted
At least it would soon be over. In ten days, she’d be spending that Duke was the only place he was willing to study medicine.
the summer on the Cape, in a house her mother had wrested And there he was in North Carolina, dissecting Gary, his ca-
from her second marriage. The plan was to stay and lend a hand daver, into thousands of tiny bits. Quite happily. With only oc-
to Kate, her older sister, caught in the throes of early mother- casional calls that had, in truth, become so occasional they were
hood. Rather self-consciously so, thought Madeline, who had almost nonexistent.
5. THE TWISTED THREAD 5
any of his pictures did she look happy. Tanned, lithe, intelligent.
EPILOGUE But never relaxed, contented, open. It was a face that knew, well
before Harvey’s documented interest, that it was watched.
“What about you?” Matt asked him.
W hat a long, freakish summer it had been. It had started
with what Vernon had discovered in Harvey’s apartment.
Camera equipment and a tiny darkroom converted from a half-
bath. Vernon said, “I saw that stuff and I wanted to be sick. I was
Porter shrugged. “I watch birds. I am trying to write. I’m read-
ing or re-reading. Thoreau, Emerson, Melville. Dostoevsky. I
don’t think more hours spent poring over testimony and being
coached by lawyers will ultimately make much difference.”
Those weren’t the lessons he was prepared to draw from what
sure it was little boys.” But it wasn’t. It was years of portraits of had happened. Literature was a more useful guide. “I should go
girls. All of them clothed. All taken without their subjects’ knowl- now,” he told Matt. “But I am glad to see you. It gives me a
edge. Candid pictures from soccer games. At theater perfor- chance to say thank you for helping us at a critical moment.”
mances. Always clothed and chaste. All of them taken in places Matt could say nothing in response. That he’d been young
where no one would have remarked on Harvey’s cameras, which once would sound callow. That he wanted to help preserve what
were uniformly small, though fitted with long lenses. The files he could of what had been an honorable man was even worse.
were meticulous, begun about a decade earlier, and they cata- He took Porter’s offered hand and remembered that one of the
logued obsessions with various students throughout their Armit- things people had always said about Porter McLellan was that he
age years. But only by their first names: Mary, Lily, Alex, Rebecca. was very good at remembering to offer gratitude. And although
They would graduate and he would have to choose a new muse. the trip back to Massachusetts would take another eight hours,
His last had been Claire. What struck Matt was that Harvey had Matt sat in his car for a long time and looked at the storm prepar-
captured some of her loneliness, some of her fear. They were ing to blow into the small harbor.
head shots, the last series, which dated from April. There was no
way looking at that face, you would have guessed she was preg-
nant. But he had also shot pictures in Castine and those were the by the end of august, the green of Armitage’s maples had
photos that Tamsin had been shredding. Harvey, knowing a war- dulled to a color that looked better on old lizards than on trees,
rant would discover his obsession, had panicked and taken the Madeline thought. She was sitting on a lawn chair outside her
pictures to Porter in a desperate measure to blackmail him. How dorm collecting herself with a tall glass of ice water. She had just
pleased he must have been to discover her there so unexpectedly. moved into her new apartment and it was a vast improvement
Even pieced back together with tape, Claire looked gloriously over her original digs. With the futon foisted on an old friend,
pretty in those summer photographs, but not happy. Not once in she had bought herself a small sofa with a brown velvet cover,
