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“A total gentleman?” Silas asks.
“Yes,” I say.
I don’t say, even though I’m not sure I wanted him to be.
“You don’t trust your own best friend?” I point out, eating a mouthful of chili.
“I believe in trust but verify,” he says. “And for the record, no, I can’t imagine Levi being anything but a gentleman. I don’t know that I’ve ever even seen him hit on someone.”
I take another bite of chili, my mouth already on fire because the butt-burner is hotter than I expected.
“Does he date much?” I ask casually.
So very, very casually.
Silas just shrugs and puts his meatloaf in the microwave. On the other end of the kitchen, my parents are discussing gardening.
“He’s had girlfriends before, nothing serious that I know of,” he says. “Why?”
“Just curious,” I say. “He seems like a catch.”
That gets a frown.
“What?” I say, defensively. “He’s a nice person, he’s smart, he’s interesting, he rescues stranded motorists—”
“Sure, he’s a good catch for someone else,” Silas says, still watching me.
“Yes, obviously,” I say. “Objectively, Levi is a catch. Not for me, of course.”
“Of course.”
“That would be super weird,” I say, shoving more chili into my mouth. It’s way hotter than I meant for it to be, but at least I can blame my red face on the spice level, not on our discussion of Levi, who is absolutely a catch.
“June, come sit down,” my mom calls. “Don’t eat standing up, it’s bad for your digestion.”
I wave my spoon at Silas and head over to where my parents are sitting, grateful for the rescue.Chapter SevenLeviI frown, grabbing an armful of branches and tossing them into the wheelbarrow.
“Your funding is in trouble because of something you didn’t say on a panel?” I ask, still trying to get this straight.
Next to me, Caleb just sighs.
“Pretty much,” he admits. “We were talking about the time-evolution operator, and someone in the audience asked a question about the self-adjoint—”
I clear my throat, and Caleb half-smiles.
“—about complicated math stuff, and so I mentioned a paper I’d recently read that discussed the problem.”
He unloads an armful of branches into the wheelbarrow.
“Except I only named two of the three authors, Prinszca and Yang, and of course Jean Lorien, the one I forgot to mention, is currently an adjunct in my department and has a chip on his shoulder the size of Mars,” my youngest brother says.
“Who spread a rumor that your upcoming publication wasn’t entirely original work, and now it might not be published, and that puts your funding in danger,” I finish.
“Yep,” Caleb says grimly. “You can see why I’m not exactly stoked to spend much time on campus these days, right?”
It’s Sunday afternoon and we’re outside my mom’s house, clearing brush that fell during Friday night’s storm. Sunday dinner is a longstanding tradition for us, and we’ve done it for as long as I can remember.
It’s also a longstanding tradition that we be put to work at some point during the gathering. Eli’s inside, cooking, Seth is playing a game of Mouse Trap with our niece Rusty, and I’m sure Daniel’s making himself useful somehow.
“I’ve been thinking of leaving academia,” Caleb says. He’s standing with his arms crossed, looking out at my mom’s backyard, the big old farmhouse surrounded by forest. “If this is how it’s gonna be, you know? I knew there would be a lot of backstabbing and bullshit, but I really thought I could keep my head down and just do the work.”
“You know the joke about this, right?” I ask.
“The politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low?” he says. “I dunno. They feel pretty high to me right now.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise,” I say.
“Oh, I know,” Caleb says, pulling his hair from its knot and sticking the tie between his teeth as he rakes through it with both hands. “I just feel like I’ve given my life to this. It’s all I’ve really wanted to do. I like the research. I like the teaching. Hell, I even liked the section of remedial trigonometry and algebra I got stuck with two years ago, and I was only teaching that because the temporary department head hated me.”
I almost say June’s having almost the same problem right now, but I don’t because I don’t want to share it with anyone. So instead, I say nothing.
“There are other jobs in the world,” he says. “I don’t know what they are, but I know they exist.”
“Technically,” Caleb admits. “I’m still good to spend next weekend at your place, right? I’ve got a chapter to finish.”
The back door to the house slides open just then and Silas steps through, beer in hand. We haven’t bothered inviting him in years, we just know he’ll show up if he’s in town, which he usually is.
Caleb waves. After a split second I wave as well even as a knot ties itself in my stomach.
