Page 119 of Hushed

I look up and try to mask my surprise. “Thank you! I’ll pass that along. How long have you known?” I ask, testing out something. Maybe he got the letter this morning and hasn’t opened it yet.

“Oh, last week at least. Nobody can keep a secret in this town,” Ruthie answers.

Except my husband, apparently.

Alison doesn’t look like she’s been fooled by my mildness. “You aren’t going, are you?” she probes.

“Of course we are!” I insist, and make a mental note that my husband and I need to have a come-to-Jesus about why he didn’t tell me. “Why wouldn’t we go?”

Ruthie shrugs and looks significantly at her wife.

Alison trades her a look before turning to me. “A word or two in the right ear, that’s all I’m saying. Although I don’t know personally what Lincoln Preston is up to—what a silly name—I would research a bit how he’s achieving his results. You have met him, haven’t you? A pompous, sneering little man. He’s won for at least five years. Something always felt off to me, but the Kirkfields are rich and have no sense, so they fall for it every time. It’s always that same nonsense he aims for. Slap the word decolonizing on it, point it at something, and call it the source of whatever ails us as a society.” She snorts.

“So he’s cheating to get the win?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Alison says. “Just promising undeliverable things and then moving on before someone catches on that he’s basically setting up a series of unfalsifiable claims. But a fool and his money. You know how that goes. But I have always wondered how he actually spends that money.”

I pull out one photo, blink, and stare hard at it. “Is this what I think it is?”

“It’s all what you think it is. They’re no good to me now, I suppose.” She sighs, clearly reluctant to sacrifice her leverage. “I applaud you coming out to help your husband. It shows that your heart’s in the right place,” Alison says. “And you’re willing to color outside the lines to do it. I hope that the Ethics Committee will find in his favor. They’ll want a story they can understand. A simple story.” She smiles at me sadly. “And right now, it seems that they’ve already found it. The story that’s simplest is that he’s a predator and you’re a dupe.”

I straighten my back. “Do I look like a dupe, ma’am?”

“You look like a young man trying to protect his family,” she answers. “So I wish you good luck.”

I put the box on the passenger seat. I drive back toward the Needles with the windows down and a whole speech building in my chest. By the time I hit the gravel I have thrown every word of it out. I don’t want the speech. I want to watch his face. I want to ask him one small ordinary question and see what he does with it.

Chapter forty-one

Bastien

Iam four minutes down the gravel with the brass key already in my fist before I remember that it rained and I should have worn boots against the mud. There are currently puddles in the tracks that are big enough to spawn fish, and the first time I have to oblige a car by getting the hell out of its way, I’ll be ankle-deep in it.

Pamela gave me the key on a paper tag with 192 written on it and I lost it inside the first week. Levi had a second one cut that afternoon and slid it onto my key ring. He never mentioned it. I think about that every time I take it out of my pocket.

Behind me a screen door bangs. Somewhere down the row a dog is having a long professional argument with a squirrel.

Ghost is at the boxes when I get to the mail station. They are a set of boxes bolted to a cement slab, an island of pavement where the USPS can offer their mail without getting their nice uniforms dirty.

He looks up at me and resumes going through a stack of envelopes with his thumb the way a dealer goes through a deck. “Professor.”

“Bastien is fine.” I’ve said it every time.

“I’d rather not.”

I work the key into the mailbox. “How’s your aunt?”

“She’s good.” He says it the way you close a door with your shoulder.

Then he stops on one of the envelopes. He doesn’t open it. He squares it against the others, tucks the whole stack under his arm, and looks out at the road like there’s something on it.

“And your brothers?” I ask, because Vlad and Draco did help us move in.

“They’re fine.”

“You know, you’re welcome to come to dinner, you three. My husband is a very good cook and it’s the least we could do.”

“No need.” He straightens and glares at me.