the world.”
His head dropped and she added, “My gran was the same way with me. It’s nice. Everyone should have someone so firmly in their corner.”
“Tell me she didn’t tell you about me spitting out my peas in my dresser drawer.”
Addy laughed. “You spit your peas in your dresser drawer?”
“I’d seen it on TV or something. A way kids could get out of eating vegetables they didn’t like.”
He didn’t like peas. Good to know. For what purpose, she had no idea.
It was time to change the subject. To stop being friends.
Because she wasn’t who he thought she was.
They weren’t even halfway across campus yet.
She had to focus on the job she was there to do.
“I read the most incredible story.” She heard herself say the words before she’d fully decided to utter them. “I was looking up professorial ratings, checking out my botany professor.” She altered the circumstances by which she’d found the information on Sunday to fit her current situation. But she needed to run this by someone—to get another reaction. “And that made me curious about the woman at the top of the ratings charts, so I looked her up.” She was skating a fine line. Melding reality with fiction. Adrianna with Adele.
If she wasn’t careful, people would get hurt.
“They have professorial ratings?”
“Yes. I’m not sure all universities do, but I know that Montford prides itself on maintaining the highest levels of academic excellence. I did a lot of research before choosing a college,” she ad-libbed as she floated close to dangerous waters.
And scooted closer to him to avoid a pedestrian crash. The main sidewalk through campus was crowded, with lanes of students hurrying in all directions. It felt like she and Mark were a bubble in the throng, part of the rest, but separate, too.
“So who was the professor with top marks?” he asked. She couldn’t talk to Will. Or anyone. Her job at Montford completely isolated her. Had Will screwed up beyond her ability to help him? Could she be friends with Mark without letting things go too far? “A woman named Christine Evans. She taught English.”
“As in past tense? She’s not here anymore?”
They turned a corner, embarking on another, less-traveled pathway, and Addy shook her head. “She had a sister, Tory, who drove out here with her when Christine was hired to start her new job as an English professor at Montford. Tory was divorced from a rich, influential, abusive older man. He was after her, which was why she was coming out here to live with Christine in Shelter Valley. Christine, the older sister, thought Tory would be safe here. They were still in New Mexico when the ex-husband’s henchmen found them. There was a car accident and, according to the coroner, Tory was killed.
“But it wasn’t Tory who died in the crash. It was Christine. Afraid for her life, and for the lives of anyone around her were it to be known that she was still alive, Tory allowed the mistaken identity to stand and came to Shelter Valley and assumed her dead sister’s life.”
So much about the story bothered Addy. And not all of it was professional. Or to do with the job. Lines were blurring. Which was why she was talking about the case at all. She, like Tory, was living an assumed life.
Doing something wrong—but for good reason.
But she wasn’t taking on power that didn’t belong to her, wasn’t in a certified position, living a life of duplicity in a way that could directly affect other lives. Was she?
“She taught classes?” Mark asked, his tone suggesting that he found the story engrossing.
He didn’t seem to find it odd that she’d allowed her curiosity to drive her to follow the trail, either.
“Yes, she taught Christine’s full load.”
“She had a doctorate degree, then, too?”
“No. A high school education was as far as she got.”
Mark looked at her as they walked. “Wait a minute. This is the teacher that was at the top of the professorial ratings you were talking about? The ones that prove Montford’s high standard of excellence?”
“Yeah.”
“And she was a fraud?”
“Yes.”
“You said you found an article about it, so I’m assuming she was caught?”
That’s where things got really sticky for Addy.
And for Will.
“In a manner of speaking,” she said. “The abusive ex-husband apparently had a lot of money and he hired detectives to watch Christine, just to verify that they hadn’t pulled a fast one and pretended that Tory was dead. When he heard that Christine was doing so well