“And did you complain to Dr. Taliesin about the error? I understand your project was defunded, and that’s very disappointing.” Maggie couldn’t hide the way her lip curled in anger; she was too tired. He was talking to her like she was a child. Likeshe was irrational for being upset. “But I think my expectations about how you were to approach your relationship with Dr. Taliesin were clear.”
“I took what you said very seriously,” she argued. “I am helping him at the expense of my own work. We have a very good working relationship.”
“Then why is Dr. Taliesin concerned about a budgeting error instead of the pall that is still growing in this building?” The implication in his words was clear.You asked him to do this. You put him up to it.
“I didn’t…I had nothing to do with this.” She held up the file folder as she said it before setting it down to look at its contents again.Oh, Arthur…The grant was an annual gift of twelve thousand dollars, earmarked for her seminar, even more than was originally awarded to the program. “Where did this money come from?”
Dean Clearwater narrowed his eyes. “Dr. Taliesin funded this himself. Why would he do that, Maggie?” Anger burned, hot and shameful, in her gut. Arthur hadn’t stopped to think, not for one moment, what this would look like to the dean. He hadn’t listened to her. He’d gone behind her back and broken his promise to wait. She was a fool.
“If you’re implying that I asked him to use his own money to fund a grant—”
“Whatdidyou ask him?” Dean Clearwater interrupted.
Maggie rubbed her eyes. She was so tired. “I asked him to reconsider the budget at the committee meeting in the fall. That’s it.” She looked over at Dean Clearwater. “I know howhard it is to get funding back on a project once it’s been taken away. I didn’t want special treatment. I just wanted my seminar back.”
“Maggie.” The dean’s voice was almost gentle, even with its hard edge. “Is there anything I need to know?”
“No,” she said, too quickly. The dean’s impressive eyebrows arched, but it was clear to her now what she needed to do. “We are going to get rid of the pall as soon as the gloaming creeper decoction is ready, and everything will go back to the way it was.” She paused. “What about the grant?”
He looked down at her over his bifocals. “I told you it was approved by the board of trustees. Please let Dr. Taliesin know.”
After a moment when he watched her with an exacting gaze, he turned to leave. As he reached the door, Maggie called out to him. “Why did you put him in this office?”
Dean Clearwater’s eyes softened, only slightly. “You weren’t my first choice,” he said. “But I didn’t make the office assignments. Dr. Taliesin did. I tried to get him to reconsider, but he insisted.”
The knot of nerves in her stomach tightened and her cheeks burned hotter. Dahlia had been right, all along. What had Arthur been thinking? Gods below.
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Maggie said to the dean, her voice tight. “I promise.”
He nodded once and then left.
—
Whatever lightness shehad seen in Arthur over the weekend was gone when he arrived at their office. It was replaced with a tense scrunch she recognized well. He set a paper cupfrom Bean There, Done That on her desk, along with a crinkling paper bag filled with a cream-cheese pastry. “Morning,” he said quietly, the air between them already thick with tension as he bent down and kissed her gently on the forehead.
Her anger was a weak thing, but her shame still burned. It wasn’t only shame at Dean Clearwater’s suspicion, at everything he left unsaid during his visit to her office that morning, but also shame at what she had done to Arthur. She had always known this relationship between them wouldn’t work, had always known it was a mistake, but she had done it anyway.
She stared at her computer. She was supposed to be reading through her notes on the incantation, but the words were swimming in front of her as tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. She didn’t know how to start this conversation. She didn’t know how to go on without having it. He had agreed—to keeping their relationship between them, to not go to Dean Clearwater about the budget—and why couldn’t he have just done what she asked? Why did he think he knew better?
Maggie was drawn back in her memory to Dr. Fleet’s office, when she went there to plead her case. But Evan had gotten there first.Evan has already let me know that you were struggling. That he has been helping you stay afloat for a year now.Between them, it had been Evan who’d struggled. She had coaxed him through long nights of panic about the quality of his work, motivating him to finish, prompting him to help him come up with ideas. Everything she had done to help him, he had turned on its head and used it to make his case seem more believable.You should have come to me or another member of the faculty. We could have helped you then, but it’s too late now.
“You’re thinking very hard over there,” Arthur said, and she looked up to find him watching her. His work bag remained unpacked beside him, his coffee forgotten on his desk. She didn’t respond right away, because she didn’t even know where to start. She couldn’t tell where her anger at Arthur ended and her rage at Evan began. “Talk to me,” he urged. “Please. Something happened on Saturday night. Just talk to me about it.”
She pushed the file folder across the desk. “Dean Clearwater dropped this off this morning.” He opened it but closed it quickly when he realized what was inside. “Your grant is fully approved.” She hated the flatness in her voice. She hated everything about this.
“I was going to tell you.”
Gods below, she had been a fool to think, even for a moment, that this could work. She should have learned her lesson with Evan, but here she was again, repeating her mistakes. “I told you not to talk to the dean. I told you we would figure it out together after we dissipated the pall.”
“Ifixedit,” he pleaded. “I just wanted to make it right.”
She shook her head. “I told you how to make it right!”
“Maggie—”
“Did you stop to think, even for one second, how it would look to the dean if you took twelve thousand dollars of your own money to pay for one of my programs?”
He tensed. “What did he say to you?”
