Page 126 of Hushed

“We go in. We shake hands. We applaud. We congratulate Lincoln Preston for his unprecedented sixth win. We leave.”

I pull onto the gravel.

“That’s a plan.” I draw it out so that he knows what I think of that plan.

“There will be some scrutiny you might not be ready for.”

“I’ve had scrutiny.”

“Not this kind,” he says. “If they did the right and ethical thing, the scandal has been kept behind closed doors, so my peers in other institutions will simply treat you with polite curiosity. Speaking of which, has Cara Finch’s article come out yet?”

“This week.”

“I know the stakes don’t sound big to you, but this is a world that lives and dies by nuance.”

I want to retort that unless they use actual live rounds, they can go fuck themselves, but I hold it back. These are the biggest stakes he has ever had to deal with. So I reach across and take his hand. “We’ll be okay,” I tell him.

“Of course we will! Just, if something irritates you, let it go, okay?”

“Why would something—never mind. Roger that.” I make the turn onto the main road.

The Kirkfield Foundation is holding its gala at the Fairhaven Inn, a hotel that had its heyday sometime before Prohibition and has been coasting ever since. Potted palms the size of a man in porcelain vases. Leather sofas nobody sits on, and enough of them for a lobby full of walrus-mustached travelers waiting on the morning train to Union Station.

I let him take the lead through the lobby. This is his world and I’m the luggage. At the registration table a girl with a clipboard finds our lanyards. I scan over them. Most of the ones that haven’t been claimed yet have the words GUEST or a university on them. I pick out mine and put it on before she can find it. For some reason, Bastien’s is more of a challenge to find.

“It should be with the Fairhaven faculty,” he says, skimming over the tags again. She smiles, checks her list, and then says, “Oh, we have you listed as unaffiliated. Here we are. So sorry. We can get it reprinted if you like.”

“No, that’s fine.” He looks at the words Independent Scholar on his tag and I watch him put it on.

“It’s the Grand Ballroom,” she says, and turns to the next arrivals, clearly relieved that this didn’t turn into A Thing.

I pull him away from the registration table. “What’s an independent scholar?” I ask.

“It’s someone who isn’t employed by a college,” he says. He’s still smiling. His jaw hasn’t moved once since seeing the tag, not even to answer my question. He turns back to me. “Shall we?”

My stomach sinks. For the first time, I start to feel some genuine apprehension as we cross into the Grand Ballroom. It’s enormous, with parquet floors. The ceiling is high and intricately carved, painted in cream white. There are circular tables with white linens and the people look well dressed. Half the room took the words black tie optional at its face and half clearly read a subtext that said you’d better wear the damned black tie. I count two tuxedos before we’re clear of the doorway. Waiters glide around with trays. In the corner is a string quartet playing the kind of light, breezy music that before this I’ve only heard in cartoons.

Bastien starts angling toward the tuxedo who is standing like he owns the building, and I don’t get my hand up in time to flag the woman at his ten o’clock before he bumps into her elbow.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he says, turning quickly and smiling his apology at her.

“Not at all, it’s a crush in here.” She turns, and there is a spark of recognition, a bit of a half-smile, that faint let me just place you, give me a second flash.

“Dr. Fletcher!” Bastien says. “Abigail. It’s nice to see you again. We met at the conference in Chicago, I think?” He extends his hand.

And then she realizes who she’s looking at. I don’t have a better way to describe it. She closes her mouth and raises her chin like she’s just about to give a good dressing-down to a servant. Her smile doesn’t waver. Then she turns back to the women she had been facing before. “Carol. You were telling me about the house in Provence.”

Carol looks at her. Then at us. Then back at her. “Yes. Well.” Carol takes a drink. “Umm. Did I mention the plumbing? Or had I left that out?”

“You hadn’t gotten to the plumbing,” Abigail Fletcher prompts her.

“No. Right. So the plumbing.” She glances back at us like someone who’s not been read in on what’s going on, and is desperate to find out why they’ve just become so interested in her vacation home’s drainage problem.

Fletcher’s husband gives me one second of handshake, in the wrong part of the hand, and turns to take an interest in the plumbing himself.

I’ve been snubbed before, but this is different. In the Army a man tells you to your face and then it’s finished and you both know where you stand. I have never in my life watched a person decline to admit that another human being is standing in front of them so openly.

Bastien lowers his hand slowly enough that it doesn’t look like retreating. “Shall we find the bar?” he asks me.