Untrue Love Read online

  “Of course,” Karen echoed, a sour taste in her mouth. And of course she wasn’t going to make a fuss about his request, partly because she had little choice in the matter, and partly because, if she had to keep meeting with him, she couldn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t reach over her desk one day and slap his smug little face. Let Ellie have the little bastard, with his tedious thesis and his unbearable writing style. She deserved it.

  It was difficult keeping a calm exterior, though, for inwardly Karen raged. A young, pretty lecturer shows up on campus, and of course everyone was falling all over themselves to bask in the glow of her dim-witted attention! Meanwhile, experienced and respected scholars like herself were shamefully neglected.

  Turning from a student that she was already half-ignoring, Karen glanced out the window and dreamed of the day when Ellie would be the one suffering indignities like this.

  13

  ELLIE LEANED BACK in her office chair, her feet on the desk, and for the first time took a good, long look at her teaching assistant. Donna O’Donnell was a graduate student with long, dark hair, a round and pleasant face, and—as far as Ellie could tell—almost no social skills. The two of them had been discussing Ellie’s students for over twenty minutes now, and all the while Donna had mostly managed to avoid eye contact while she shifted and fidgeted in her chair so frequently that Ellie was afraid she might break the thing. Donna wore her hair with a long, thin braid running down one side of her head, and Ellie half-wondered if that was by design or was the accidental outcome of the girl endlessly, nervously twisting her hair around a finger.

  “So as you know, all of your students are required to meet me during office hours at least once a week,” Donna was saying, shooting the occasional nervous look at Ellie, “and all of them have done it except for Michael.”

  “Michael?” Ellie asked. She had never been good with names, and usually it was midterms before she figured out what to call the students in her classes.

  “Michael Johnson. He’s tall, and has short hair. He’s on the football team.”

  “Right,” Ellie said, her mind snapping to a picture of one of the young men who sat in the back of the room during her 20th Century American Literature lecture class. “Broad shoulders. Bored look on his face.”

  “That’s the one,” Donna answered with a half-smile, which gave Ellie her closest glimpse yet of the girl’s teeth. She was not surprised to see that Donna had braces. “I sent him email asking about his absence, and he says that he’s too busy with practice to meet with me. He asked if I’d be willing to meet with him over the phone.”

  Ellie snorted in amusement. “No. The answer is no.”

  “I thought maybe I could—”

  “No, Donna. One of the things you learn in college is how to show up for things that matter. They’re kids, and if we keep making excuses for them, they have no reason to stop being kids—not until they graduate, get a job, and promptly get fired from that job because they haven’t learned how to show up. Michael can come during your office hours, same as everyone else.”

  “OK,” Donna answered quietly, her eyes returning to the floor. Ellie could tell that the graduate student was wondering whether she was in trouble, too.

  “We have a football team?” Ellie asked, partly to lighten the mood but also because she was surprised to hear the news. This didn’t seem like a big enough school to support an athletic program.

  “Yes, and basketball,” Donna answered, “though none of the players are on scholarship. We’re Division III.”

  “Well, all the more reason for him to show up, then. If he’s not good enough at football to play on a real college team, he needs to learn what he is good at, and he can start with my class. But let’s talk about the other students. How does their writing look?” she asked. Donna’s job was to help undergraduate students become better writers, and although Ellie hadn’t yet seen their term papers, a few of them had sent her email and that had been nothing short of alarming.

  “It’s a little rough,” Donna allowed.

  “Rough how?”

  “Well, some of them are good. But most of the others have no idea how to write persuasively. They have no concept of evidence, or why it’s important to back up your claims.” Ellie marveled as the girl’s voice grew stronger and louder. Donna was talking about a subject she knew a lot about, and Ellie could feel the confidence radiating off of her.

  “We’ll need to work on that, won’t we? I may talk tough in class, but actually I hate handing out F’s. I always feel like a bitch, and then it’s an absolute certainty that sooner or later the student will show up in my office to contest the grade and beg for a second chance. It sucks. I’ll do it, but it sucks, and I’d like to avoid it if I can.”

  “I was thinking about that,” Donna answered thoughtfully. “I thought that maybe I could have them write very short essays, maybe only a few sentences long, where they argue something. They’ll drop it off with me one week, then we discuss it the next week, then they do another one the week after that. That will give me a chance to talk to them about evidence and some sentence-level stuff.”

  Ellie nodded approvingly. “I like it. Let’s do that. And let me know if you need me to say something in class to back you up.” She considered the girl more closely. Something about her made it seem like her face was a mask and the real Donna was hiding behind it, only occasionally peeking out through the eye holes.

  In her previous life, Ellie might never have wondered about the girl’s mask or what lay behind it. The sleepy college town she was living in, though, was proving to be a constant encouragement to stop and, well, maybe not actually smell the roses, but at least examine the rose bush to see whether it might be more interesting than the excruciatingly boring stuff that surrounded it.

  “Do you have a boyfriend, Donna?” she asked, pretty sure that she already knew the answer.

  Donna shot her a startled glance and then looked down at her lap. “Not really,” she said at last in a small voice.

  “Not really? What does that mean—that you sometimes have a boyfriend but sometimes you don’t, or that you have a friend who’s not really a boy?”

  Donna blushed and looked off to the side. “I don’t have a boyfriend right now,” she said at last, then shot Ellie a look that clearly pleaded for the conversation to be over.

  Ellie had other intentions. “Why not? You’re pretty enough. When was the last time you were on a date?”

  Donna blushed an even deeper shade. “I don’t know,” she said. “I…if you mean…that is, to be perfectly honest…”

  “What?” asked Ellie impatiently.

  The girl let out a deep sigh. “I’ve never been on a date. Not a real one, anyway. I mean, there were a few times in high school when I was with my friends and there were boys around, but I’ve never…”

  Ellie stared at her in astonishment, but inwardly a spark of interest was beginning to grow. She liked it when she had a project, and this girl would be a doozy.

  14

  THEY WERE INTERRUPTED when Ellie caught a flash of movement past her open office door, and she leapt to her feet. “Shannon! Shannon?” she called, suddenly unsure whether she was remembering the departmental secretary’s name correctly.

  The older woman reappeared in front of the doorway, a questioning look on her square face. “Yes, Professor Stanton?”

  “I was wondering if I could talk to you about my office.”

  “What is it?”

  Ellie walked halfway toward the door. She had been trying to get time with this woman for days, but she never seemed to be at her desk. Ellie was determined not to let this opportunity slip. “When can I expect the repairs on my office to be completed?” she asked in a voice that was much less impatient than she felt.

  The woman performed a quick visual inspection of the office interior. “Repairs? What repairs would that be?” she asked.

  Ellie resisted the temptation to begin shouting immediately. “The repair
s that I requested nearly a month ago. They would be the same repairs as the ones I detailed in the emails I sent you, and the notes I left on your desk.”

  Shannon gave her an unconvincingly apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. Could you please refresh my memory?”

  Ellie gestured in the direction of the window. “The window is broken, for starters.”

  The secretary glanced at it. “It’s been repaired!” she protested.

  “With duct tape. That doesn’t count. They need to replace the cracked pane with a new one.”

  Shannon sighed wearily. “Very well. I’ll send a note to Charlie.”

  “And then there are the overhead lights.”

  “They seem fine to me.”

  “Two of them are fine. Two others are burned out.”

  “I don’t like the light when it’s too harsh. A softer glow is so much nicer, don’t you think?”

  “I want them replaced,” Ellie insisted. “And the fifth bulb flickers and gives off a strange smell. I think gas is leaking out of it.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Fluorescent gas is toxic.”

  Shannon wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I’ll let Charlie know.”

  Ellie was picking up steam. “Will Charlie also take care of the problem in the heating vent?”

  The secretary looked at her as if she was beginning to realize how much trouble Ellie was going to be. “There is no problem with the heating,” she pronounced definitively.

  “And why do you say that?”

  “Because we don’t turn on the building heating until November. How can there be a problem now, when it’s not even on?”

  “The problem,” Ellie said slowly, grasping for patience, “is with the vent. In which there is a squirrel that has built a nest. When times are good, it merely scrabbles and scratches at the metal. When times are bad, which is several times a day, it becomes convinced that I am going to eat its babies and it screeches angrily at me until I leave my office.”

  “Oh dear,” Shannon said in something that sounded almost, but not quite, like sympathy. “Charlie won’t be able to help with that.”

  “Why not?!”

  “Because the squirrel might be rabid. I’ll have to send for animal control.”

  Ellie breathed in a deep, calming breath. “Do you have any idea how long that might be?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe two or three weeks?”

  “They hear about a possibly rabid animal on university grounds, and it takes them two or three weeks to get around to doing anything about it?”

  “Sometimes. They’re very busy.”

  “How convenient, then, it would have been if you had called them the first time I notified you of this problem, which was two or three weeks ago.”

  An uncomfortable silence followed that might have turned into something more dramatic, and maybe even violent, but then they were interrupted.

  “Getting settled, are we?” Karen Jefferson asked, coming up to stand beside Shannon and giving Ellie’s office a quick inspection.

  Ellie gave her fellow professor a skeptical look, but a part of her hoped that she had an ally in this war that was brewing between her and the department secretary. “I was just talking with Shannon here about some things that need fixing. Such as the animal that’s living in the heating vent.”

  Karen glanced at the vent with amusement in her face. “Snap to it, Shannon. Our new colleague doesn’t think much of our small-town ways. And if there’s one thing we know,” she said over her shoulder as she walked off down the corridor, “it’s that she will do whatever it takes to get what she wants.”

  With that she was gone, and Ellie was left sputtering her objections. “I will not! And the fact that this is a small town has nothing to do with it!”

  Shannon gave her a hard look. “We do our best, Professor Stanton. I’ll call animal control.” And then she was gone, too.

  “And the broken window? And the burned-out lights?” Ellie called out after her, but the other woman didn’t turn to reply. In frustration, Ellie half-slammed her office door and stomped back to her office chair.

  Donna was sitting in her chair with a slumped posture that said she wished she was anywhere else but where she was. “It’s name is Betsy.”

  It was a moment before Ellie realized that the other girl had spoken. “Excuse me?” she asked distractedly.

  “The squirrel. It comes back every year. Everyone calls her Betsy.”

  Ellie stared at her teaching assistant in disbelief, then closed her eyes and leaned heavily back in her chair. She was beginning to get a headache, and she could tell that this would be a very long day.

  15

  “I DON'T THINK it's a good idea for us to meet here.”

  The man he was addressing, the man whose mere presence was enough to make a university president so nervous that the armpits of his dress shirt were already soaked with sweat, eased back into his chair with a smile completely lacking in warmth. “Relax. It would be far more suspicious if we were to meet anywhere else.”

  “I don't like that we're meeting at all! I just want you to do your…business and then go away.”

  “On that we agree. When I have what I want, I'll be happy to leave you in peace. Until then, though, you and I will be working closely together…George,” he said, placing a special emphasis on the name of a man who looked like he probably wasn’t on a first-name basis with his own children.

  George rubbed his eyes wearily. “And what am I supposed to call you?”

  “We're old friends from way back, don't you remember? We knew each other in school or something. You'll call me Paul, and you'll welcome me with open arms as the newest member of your Board of Trustees. When I need anything from you, anything at all, you will give it to me, without question or complaint.”

  The other man's eyes blazed with indignation. “This isn't right! I am the president of a major institution! I am a pillar of the community! My family—“

  “Your family made its money by opening this town's first bank, convincing hard-working farmers to get up to their ears in debt, and then foreclosing on that debt. Please, George, it’s too early in the morning for self-righteousness. I know your secrets. Your hands are as dirty as anyone else’s.”

  He leaned forward and poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher that sat on a silver platter on the president's desk.

  “Do you know how easy it would be for me to take you down, George? I only have to make one phone call, and someone else will be sitting behind that desk of yours. But it’s your lucky day, because as long as you play ball I’m not here for you. You have rich and powerful friends, and you’re going to help me bring one of them down. You'll help me because it's the only way to keep your job and get me out of your life.”

  He took a long sip of water and gave the other man a predatory smile. “So let's cut the B.S. and get to work.”

  16

  ELLIE WAS JUST settling into a glass of red wine when there was a knock on the door. Her first impulse was to ignore it—the sound of the knock felt invasive, somehow, as if the person knocking had already intruded on her personal space even before she opened the door. When she heard the knock a second time, though, she groaned and heaved herself off of the couch.

  The building manager, a grizzled man who went by the name of Phipps, was standing in the hallway. “Good evening, Ellie. I’m sorry to bother you.”

  Ellie stood gazing at him in silence. She knew that he was waiting for her to say something like, “Oh, it’s no bother!” but she had no intention of giving him the satisfaction.

  At last, after an uncomfortable pause, he continued. “Have you had a chance to meet Mrs. Wilson downstairs?”

  Ellie shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Really? I thought I saw you talking to her a few days ago. Maybe you know her as Janice?”

  Something clicked in Ellie’s mind. “Right. Older lady. Has a big dog.”

  “Yes, and that�
��s why I’m here tonight. I wonder, did Janice mention that she has a heart condition?”

  “No, she didn’t. She’s OK, I hope?”

  Phipps waved off her concerns. “Oh, she’s fine. But every now and then it starts acting up and she has to spend a few days in the hospital, where the nurses can keep an eye on her. Usually her son comes over to take care of her pets, but Johnny got a job in Kansas City this year and it’s too far for him to drive.”

  Ellie stared at him without comprehension.

  “I’d do it myself,” Phipps added hastily, “but I have a terrible allergy to cats. Seriously, if I come within fifteen feet of them, I swell up like a pumpkin. Then I’d be in the hospital too, probably in the next bed over from Janice!” He laughed heartily, and Ellie managed a thin smile in return.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at last, “is there something you need from me?”

  “Why yes,” Phipps said, evidently surprised that she hadn’t already figured it out. “It would be a big help if you could check in on her pets every now and then. Just until Janice is back.”

  “Every now and then?” Ellie asked suspiciously.

  “Every day. Well, twice a day would be best. At least to let the dog out.”

  “I really don’t think so,” Ellie said, and made a move to close the door. Already her mind was returning to the glass of Shiraz that was waiting for her back on the end table next to her couch.

  “They don’t need much. Just someone to put down food and let the dog out to do his business.”

  “I’m not much of a dog person. Or a cat person, for that matter.”

  “You didn’t have pets growing up?”

  “A few. Hamsters, and rats when we were too young to realize how ugly they were. But my mother thought that cats and dogs were too filthy to let into the house.”

  “Cats are actually very clean creatures.”

  “Not according to my mother.”

  Phipps stared at her impassively for a moment, then he started up again. “It will really be only for a few days, and Janice is such a nice lady. She’s always going out of her way to help others. Just the other day, she heard that a woman down the street had twisted her ankle, and so she cooked up a casserole and brought it down so that she wouldn’t have to worry about feeding her family. Wasn’t that thoughtful of her?”