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“You live to fight another day. That’s the exoneration.”

“But what if something else pops up?” Levi lives somewhere in this town but I cannot have him. I cannot even think of him.

“Don’t let it. There are no other skeletons I need to know about, right?”

Levi.

I take a deep breath. He’s asking about the San Miguel study, not about a fling I had a week ago. “No. Nothing,” I lie.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Ronald continues. His voice is strangely distant. I feel very tired all of a sudden. “But keep in mind I would be run out of town if I didn’t at least suggest this: you can sue her for damages.”

“Sue?” I say, my attention momentarily diverted from Levi. “She has not gone to the press, and for that alone I should be grateful.” Of course he’s saying that. He sues her and suddenly there’s money for him to get a part of. All of that pro bono stuff goes away.

“The only reason she hasn’t is because she’s bound by an NDA that’s as sharp as yours, because this is an ongoing investigation. Once it’s not, she’s not bound by that, and neither are you. This could get ugly fast.”

“It’s already ugly, Ronald. Her son is dead. He was given a promise by his country: you do for us and we will take care of you, and they didn’t. They penny-pinched his health care, shamed him for his trauma, and, frankly—” I think of Levi. I catch my breath. “I would want the whole world to burn for how shamefully he and every one of those people were treated. His death was a tragedy because it was avoidable. And he was alone for it. Let her mourn.”

He sighs. “Suit yourself. But if I were you, I would make sure that it’s clear that if she makes allegations like this, there can be legal consequences.”

“I’m not her enemy.”

“I’m not so sure she knows that.”

I put the phone down and open the faculty handbook on my computer instead.

It takes four minutes to find. One sentence, under Professional Conduct: relationships that predate the instructional relationship are not prohibited. It doesn’t say who to tell. It doesn’t say when. It doesn’t name a form or an office.

So I could do it. I could write to Molly Baker this afternoon.

What I would be writing is his name.

It would be a statement. Dated, signed, in a file. Levi Knight, undergraduate, and what he is to me, in a sentence somebody can take out of a drawer in six years and read aloud to a room.

I’m out. I’ve been out since I was nineteen and it has never once cost me anything I wanted to keep. I don’t know that about Levi.

Putting it on paper is a different thing. On paper people look you up and decide about you before they’ve met you.

And I would be doing that to him without asking him.

Here’s the other catch, and it hits before I even get my hopes up. “Predating” isn’t defined. If he was accepted here and registered for classes, that could have been months ago. The fact that he showed up on campus could mean that I broke that clause unknowingly in Washington. The fact that I had been offered, and signed, a contract, even though it was yet to start, means that I was already, to an extent, beholden to the University. They haven’t made it clear, so I look up other such clauses on other University sites around the country. They are clearer, and half of them would have classified him as a student from the moment he was admitted, whether he was present or not.

And if Fairhaven does the same, I’m cooked.

I go back to the Fairhaven University Directory. There is a Title IX coordinator. The name means nothing to me because I have been in this building for six days.

And I sit with my hand on the mouse and run the conversation. Good morning, I have a hypothetical. Suppose a man slept with someone last week who has, since then, turned out to be his student. Suppose he didn’t know. What would the policy say about that?

There is no hypothetical. She is not permitted to hear one. The moment I open my mouth she has to decide whether I am disclosing or fishing, and either way there is a note, and I have spent the whole summer learning what a note does when nobody has to prove it.

Molly, then. I open her contact information and start the email. She has an office hour at 1. I can request an appointment to see her today.

Except I met Molly Baker maybe four times, tops—once when I was doing the in-person teaching demonstration last fall, once at the staff meeting, and the other two times in an elevator. I don’t know a single thing about her that isn’t on a name badge.

Preston I could tell you plenty about just from the one meeting. And Hughes, I know way too much about. Preston and Hughes have not once, in the two hours I have watched them, taken a piece out of each other. Two men that pleased with themselves in a department that small should be at each other’s throats over something. They aren’t. Which means they settled it a long time ago, and I don’t know the terms of their alliance. Only that it exists. Molly Baker moved up in the department by being careful. I have no doubt what Preston or Hughes would do to me if this reached their ears. What I don’t know is if I can trust Baker not to let it reach them.

I close the email unsent. I can manage this. Levi is a good man. He will understand.

And someday, he might even forgive me.