Page 113 of Hushed

“Understood,” Bastien says.

Patrick opens the folder. He asks the right questions in the right order. He asks when Bastien knew I was enrolled, whether he informed any superiors, and who.

“Yes. Molly Baker,” I say, before Bastien can spill the beans about how late she came into the picture. “Bastien asked her to oversee my grading. We signed a form sometime in August.”

Bastien looks at me. I can tell he doesn’t like this. “Yes,” he says after a brief pause.

Patrick looks at him. “You seem uncertain about that, Dr. Saint-Jacques. You should be very careful about that. I cannot knowingly submit evidence that I know to be false, and if I were a prosecuting attorney, I would definitely pounce on that pause.”

“It was the date. He said it was in August. I don’t remember the date exactly. It felt like September.”

“First week of September was our annotated bibliography. It was way before that.”

Bastien looks at me, then turns to Patrick. “He’s right. Those first few weeks all blurred together.”

Patrick sighs and rubs his nose. “I want you to understand what’s going on here. An email creates a timestamp that their lawyers will examine for context and sequence. An in-person conversation is your word and Dr. Baker’s word. If she is aware of your grading—which she should be as head of department—and can verify that your grading has been fair, it undercuts their argument. The university would have to formally charge a tenured department head with administrative fraud to fight it. They don’t have the stomach for that kind of collateral damage.” He turns a page. “The prior relationship carve-out is in the faculty handbook — Levi sent me the relevant section. Their case is highly untenable on paper, and completely unenforceable in practice. There’s one line, there’s no clear procedure to follow, and there’s no reasonable expectation that Bastien would have known what to do in this situation. It is entirely legitimate for him to have read it and said, I can prove that this relationship predates our involvement at the University and moved on with his day.”

“That’s great!” I say. “Moreover, he was never supposed to teach my class. They said that relationships that predate the instructional relationship are not prohibited. Bastien could not have a reasonable expectation that he would be my professor. He was forced to take that class in violation of his existing contract. And don’t think I forgot that,” I snap at Bastien. “You were coerced into taking on that class.”

“Coercion is harder to prove than you think. How did he coerce you?”

“I’m at-will for the first year. And I’m on a work visa. The Dean, Arthur Hughes, came in and calmly told me that he fired an adjunct for no real reason and sort of leered at me and told me that I struck him as a team player.”

“Hmph.” I cross my arms.

Patrick lifts one arm to keep me from exploding. “And you were not aware of your future husband’s class schedule at that time?” he asks Bastien.

“I was not.”

I turn to the lawyer. “That’s good, right?”

“Maybe. They can also argue the spirit of the contract, which is basically that, from the moment you knew that you would be accepting this contract, you therefore had formed an understanding with the University that you were to behave in a professional manner, including avoiding having a liaison with a student. Therefore, the spirit of the contract applied even before you signed the contract. The offer would therefore be enough to trigger the enforcement of those rules.”

“Non.” Bastien says it simply, and, to my surprise, he says it in French.

“No to which part?” Patrick says.

Bastien shakes his head. “I’m sorry that you don’t live in a country where worker rights are taken seriously, but I happen to come from a country that hasn’t turned its working class into serfs yet. Non. You have a contract, I honor it fully. It’s not based on vibrations. There is a gap in my employment from May to August, and that gap means something to my visa status. I have to explain why I didn’t self-deport during that time. It means something to Immigration Services in the US, who declared me unemployed. So, if your own federal government said this guy doesn’t have a job, and he needs to leave the country, I very much think they overrule what a handful of petty bureaucrats in Fairhaven, Virginia, thought about my employment status. Until the moment I signed that contract, I was free to do what, and whom, I chose.”

“Damn right,” I put in.

“Well, that’s probably going to be their strongest argument and it’s not very strong.” Patrick turns a page. “But I like that. It’s a bit impassioned, but it’s a good legal point that the federal government classification does matter.”

“Labor rights are very big in Québec. They’re part of the…” He looks at me. “The stony floor of the ocean?”

“Bedrock?” I supply.

“Merci. The bedrock of what it means to be part of society. How you work and what you expect out of work.” His accent sounds deeply French now.

“And the campus ban,” I prod Bastien. “Tell him about that.”

Patrick glances at his notes. “Verbal? No documentation?”

“Emailed to me.”

“I’ll need to see that email.” He closes the folder and leans back in his chair. “This is a punitive sanction that presupposes guilt. That adds to the damage.” He drums his fingers on the closed folder, like he’s already envisioning a nice round number for those damages. “Dr. Saint-Jacques, I’ll be direct. The university has a weak case and I think they know it. The spirit-of-the-contract argument runs directly into the immigration gap, and they don’t want to litigate that in front of a judge. What I’m going to do is contact Molly Baker, take her statement, confirm the timeline, and put together a formal demand letter. My honest assessment? They’re going to want this to go away quietly.”

I feel Bastien’s hand find mine under the arm of the chair.