The English Teacher

It was an unseasonably hot summer day when Katherine's daughter read about the murders. A Friday, in late July. It was the time of year Katherine felt least connected to school—the very heart of summer, when she'd finally managed to stop thinking about the previous semester and wasn't yet in planning mode for fall. It was also the time of year she most appreciated living in New England. Dana reported temperatures were topping one hundred in some places, but in New Hampshire, the cool nights brought relief from the heat.

Katherine looked up from her garden, surveying the pale, sun-bleached sky over the field. She pushed a lock of hair off her brow with one wrist, picked up her cucumber and a handful of tomatoes, and headed for the kitchen door. Inside, she dumped her vegetables on the counter and had just turned on the faucet when Dana called from the living room: "Mom?"

"Yes?" Katherine said, rinsing dirt from her hands.

"Mom!"

Over the rushing water, Katherine heard the note of anxiety in her voice. "What?" she said, shutting off the faucet.

"Did you ever have Nathan Dugan?"

Right away Katherine recognized the name. She prided herself on her memory of her students—would argue she could summon up any one of them given thirty seconds—and with Nathan she doesn't miss a beat. "He was in my 101," Katherine said. She stood, waiting, hands dripping over the sink. "Why?"

"So you knew him?"

"Of course," Katherine said, calmly, but she felt a kernel of worry. "He was my student," she said. "What, Dana?"

Her daughter appeared in the doorway, laptop under one arm, still wearing the rumpled t-shirt and shorts she'd slept in. Her eyes were crusted with dark makeup but her face was alarmed, awake. Dropping to a kitchen chair, she opened the laptop and angled the screen toward Katherine. Fatal shooting spree in Leeds, NH, mall. "Oh my God," Katherine breathed. Suspected shooter NHS grad. At least three dead.

Katherine sank into a chair. Numbly, she thought: it's another one of those stories. The kind that now seemed to crop up every few months, part of the new American life: the killing of civilians, random but meticulously planned, usually in a nondescript town like this one—not fifteen minutes from their own. The stories were always a combination of the ordinary—the mall, the Friday—and the horrific: the cache of weapons in some lonely apartment, the cell phones ringing in victims' pockets. Dana scrolled down the page. A photo of two stunned-looking teenagers, hugging. A mother clutching her baby, her face such a raw mask of pain that Katherine was indignant it was reported online. And suddenly: Nathan Dugan. Alleged gunman takes own life, the caption said. The picture was just his face. It was him, no question, though he looked considerably older—older than the number of years (five? six?) it had been since he was in her class. The buzz cut had grown long, thick, tucked behind both ears; he still wore glasses, but different ones, with metal rims. His skin looked sunken, slightly pitted, his lips a thin straight line. His expression was blank, she thought. It was the thing that looked most the same about him. He'd worn that same look in class.

"Is that him?" Dana asked.

Katherine nodded. "That's him."

"Was he creepy?"

"Creepy," Katherine repeated, testing it. "I wouldn't say creepy, exactly."

Usually, Dana would have rolled her eyes—Katherine was a stickler for language, always looking for the best, the most accurate word—but her daughter had fallen quiet before the pale glow of the screen. "What was he like?"

"He was . . ." Her mind roamed, looking for the right way to describe him. "Formal."

"What does that mean?"

"He was—precise," Katherine said. "He was exact." Other details were returning. She remembered how he sat, hands folded on the desktop, with that same empty expression. He wore button-down shirts tucked into belted jeans, the sharp wings of his shirt collars buttoned all the way...