“And I’ll help,” my father says. When I crank my neck around to find him, his face is red. “It’s not too late for that, right? I’ll help you.”
Hell, now my eyes are stinging.
“Docket number 2305547!”
“Game time,” my lawyer says. “Stand up. Now what’s it going to be?”
Forty-Three
Daphne
May: They called his case.
When I see my sister’s text, my heart leaps into my throat. I should be in that courtroom. But I’m sitting outside the dean’s office, because when I called her first thing this morning to beg for a few minutes of her time, she’d said “If you can get here by ten thirty I’ll fit you in.”
It’s ten thirty right now. I’m glued to my phone. May and I were up half the night discussing Rickie’s legal situation in the hotel room I’d planned to share with Rickie. My sister briefed me on his choices, and my stomach is in knots over it.
I need him to plead not guilty. I need him to fight it. Reardon Halsey cannot win.
This is all my fault, too. I shouldn’t have dragged Rickie into my mess. I’ve spent the last year with my head up my ass, fixated on my own fall from grace. I should have known better than to imagine I could secretly fix this clusterfuck I’ve created.
That’s stupid, not brave. And now Rickie will pay the price.
The office door opens, and Dean Rebecca Reynolds waves me in.
I sneak another look at my phone. There’s no further update from May. So I shove the phone into my bag because I cannot let it distract me right now. I walk into the dean’s office and close the door behind me.
“It’s good to see you,” she says immediately. “I’m still in the dark about why you quit your job last year. And now I hear that you’ve left the university? Could that even be true?”
“Yes,” I say, and my voice shakes a little. Because I’m here to tell the truth. “I made some mistakes last year. I need to tell you some things, and you won’t be happy with me.”
“All right,” she says, her expression grave. “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”
So that’s what I do. “First, I had a sexual relationship with Reardon Halsey, even though I knew it was wrong, since I was his supervisor.”
Her eyes widen, and I tremble. But I just keep on going. I explain how he ended things without drama. And that I’d felt guilty writing his evaluation, but I’d done it carefully.
Then I explain how I’d accidentally caught him throwing away surveys.
She gasps, but she doesn’t say anything.
So I ramble on about my suspicion of his motive. “But of course I couldn’t prove it. My next mistake was confronting him, instead of sharing my suspicions with you. He threatened me so fast my head spun.”
She sits back in her chair at that. But she doesn’t interrupt me.
“And then I was stuck. If I shared my suspicions, he was going to accuse me of horrible things. I’d be thrown out of Harkness, or at least I’d be under investigation. So I panicked. I quit working here. I couldn’t write another recommendation for him, obviously. And I didn’t have any proof. It took me until this past summer to think of a way to prove what he’d done.”
I pull out my tablet and set it on the desk. “I think you’ll find a mismatch between the postal expenses and the survey entries. Last night, I snuck into the team office and snapped this photo of the login information.”
“Lord, Daphne.”
“I know. That was the absolute peak of my stupidity. I wanted to prove it myself, and then write you an anonymous letter about it. But then Reardon saw me, and he threatened me again, and my boyfriend attacked him.”
“Good Lord.”
“Yeah,” I say with a sigh. “This is the hardest, most embarrassing conversation I’ve ever had. But that’s all. That’s the whole story. And whatever happens to me, I deserve it.”
She sits back in her chair and stares at me for a long time. I’m nervous about what she’s thinking. And I’m nervous about Rickie’s case. And my future. But I just sit there and take it. Because I brought this upon myself.
“It’s hard to know where to begin,” she finally says.
“I’ll bet.”
Then she barks out a laugh, and covers her mouth with her hand. “It’s always the quiet ones.”