Peculiar Plants

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No dean enjoys dealing with irate parents, but after talking to Mrs. Isleworth, Dr. Rosen felt he’d been punctured and that his deflated remains were taking up valuable space she required for other purposes. He had been unable to explain how her twenty-one-year-old daughter had disappeared without a trace. He had been unable to convince her that summer vacation might have something to do with it. He had been unable to promise that her daughter would not be late for yet another “vital family event”—a wedding as it turned out. And when she’d demanded he find her—he had been unable to do that.

The university had its own troubles too. Professor Dibley was nowhere to be found. Nobody would have noticed until September, but the whole Isleworth event had brought it embarrassingly forward.

“Mrs. Isleworth,” he had vainly protested, “I’m really not sure there’s cause for concern. There were no signs of struggle and apparently Laura withdrew a hundred dollars the day before to buy camping equipment.” The same was true of Professor Dibley. The dean found himself hoping that they had truly disappeared, and that especially the media would never find them.

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