There was no need to panic yet, but she should have brought a lawyer. This suddenly seemed about as bad as it could get as she sank into the empty chair at the small conference table. Tom closed the door and offered a sad smile as he took a seat opposite her.
“How are you doing, Alice?” he asked, giving a good impression of compassion behind his round spectacles.
“Okay,” she said, and it was more or less true. Her life got remarkably easier after she quit obsessing over what was said about her on social media each hour.
“Good, good,” Tom said. He shifted uneasily and fiddled with a pen. “Well, we might as well get straight to it,” he said. “Therehave been a lot of concerns ever since this latest news about cocaine hit the press.”
Alice blinked. “Cocaine?”
Tom nodded. “Things were dicey even before, but, Alice, we can’t have a professor who has been accused of distributing cocaine. I’m sure you understand.”
Her jaw fell open as she swiveled to gape at Anita from HR and the college lawyer. “I have no idea what this is all about.”
Anita’s beige suit matched her beige hair and wan complexion. Her mouth thinned and it looked like she was smelling something bad as she met Alice’s gaze. “There have been credible assertions that you were the one who supplied Sebastian Bell with cocaine on the set ofEmma. Cocaine is illegal in the United Kingdom, as it is here. Not only does possession of cocaine show poor judgment, it is especially egregious in light of Mr. Bell’s well-known attempt to stay clean and sober.”
The assertion was so ridiculous she didn’t know where to start. Alice had never done an illegal drug in her life! She wouldn’t even know where to get cocaine, let alone expose Sebastian to it. She’d been proud of the way he kicked a debilitating cocaine habit four years earlier, and thought it was well behind him.
“I don’t know where you heard this rumor, but it isn’t true,” she stammered.
“It’s all over social media,” the college lawyer said. “Sebastian Bell’s agent confirmed that you were the source of his client’s access to cocaine, and it was the primary reason Sebastian wanted you to be on set at all times. I’m sure you can understand there is no way the college can risk having you teach students, many of whom will be away from home and their parents’ protection for the first time.”
“Are you firing me?”
“We’re putting you on indefinite suspension,” the lawyer said, opening a file and handing her a stack of papers. “We’d like your signature acknowledging the terms of your suspension.”
She turned her gaze back to Tom, whose incessant jiggling of his knee betrayed his unease. They’d known each other for five years. He used to call her “Goody Two Shoes.”
“Tom, you don’t believe this, do you?”
Tom shifted in his chair, then went back to jiggling his knee. “It doesn’t really matter what I believe,” he said. “From the outside, it looks pretty bad, so I’ve got to follow what the lawyers say. Sorry, Alice.”
Mr. Bowers slid the stack of papers closer to her. “Your signature, please.”
There was nothing worse than confrontation, but if she didn’t stand up for herself, nobody else would. “I won’t sign anything until a lawyer looks over this,” she said.
“That’s your right,” Mr. Bowers replied. “I am notifying you in person and in writing that you will not be teaching in the fall, nor may you enter the college campus. You may use the college library databases, but only from a remote computer connection off campus. Any attempt to enter the college grounds will subject you to arrest for trespass.”
Arrest? Alice hadn’t so much as jaywalked in her entire life. She wasn’t the sort of person who needed to be threatened with arrest to obey the rules, but the threat awakened terrible memories. The humiliation of cold, steel handcuffs clamped around her wrists when security guards escorted her off theEmmaset haunted her to this day.
“You will still be paid while HR convenes a Faculty Conduct Review,” Tom said.
That was a relief, but this was still a perfectly horrible and humiliating situation. “How long will the review take?”
“At least through the fall semester,” Tom replied. “You may want to use the time searching for another position.” His expression was the picture of sympathy even though he always resented having a Jane Austen specialist foisted on his department. “I’ll be able to write you a positive letter of recommendation, although if there is a threat of a lawsuit, I’ll need to refrain from any form of recommendation on your behalf until things are settled.”
It was a nice way of warning her not to make trouble. “I’ll let you know soon,” she said as she took the fat stack of legal paperwork and left the office.
How long had they been preparing these documents? Her palms sweat as she cradled the horrible stack of documents in her arms and left the building. Normally she loved strolling beneath the tree-shaded paths through campus, but this might be the last time she would ever walk along these herringbone brick pathways. They could arrest her if she dared set foot on campus.
Maybe it had been foolish to stop monitoring social media. This wouldn’t have caught her unawares if she’d been paying attention. She took a deep breath, savoring the scent of freshly mowed grass.
No, she hadn’t been a fool. Ignoring what the trolls were saying about her was the only way to keep her sanity, and she needed to focus on her blessings. Jack had helped her understand that. He could let problems roll off his back and bounced back with good humor and optimism.
Jack could help her cope with this. She didn’t want to wallow in the muck of social media by re-downloading those poisonous apps onto her phone, but she needed to know exactly what was being said about her, and who was saying it.
She set off for the country club, praying she could find Jack before her fragile hold on sanity slipped away.
Jack sat on the front steps of the country club, binoculars held to his eyes as he watched a group of golfers on the third hole. The foursome were all avid golfers he asked to play a test round and evaluate the course for playability and identify last-minute issues for improvement. Hosting test rounds was a routine part of launching a new golf course, but he’d never been this nervous before. This was the first time he had an ownership stake in a golf course he designed. Its success meant the difference between working until his dying day or having a safety net to pay his bills in case his health took a nosedive.
