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“Levi, I would have wanted to see this part of you.”

“I don’t even know why I’m crying. I didn’t know her.”

“She was your mother,” he says quietly. “You’re grieving the possibility of knowing her. The answers you’ll never get. That’s a real loss, Levi.”

“So were you,” I say. I study him in the dark. “Please,” I say. “Come away with me. Just a weekend away.”

He doesn’t jerk back. He doesn’t do anything at all, for long enough that I know the answer is going to be yes. I watch him get all the way to it.

Then he shakes his head. “Levi, I can’t do that. You know why.”

“No. Actually I don’t.”

“I’m your professor now.”

“But you weren’t when it mattered. I couldn’t figure it out. Was it because I was in the Army? You felt like I had lied to you about something really important, didn’t you? I’m so sorry.” I turn back to him. It’s the most intimate we’ve been in weeks, and I can’t let it go.

Bastien looks pained. “Normally, that is something that people lead with. Marines, especially. They never let you forget. Why didn’t you?”

I turn. “At home, there are all these old men hanging around talking like they’re still in, you know? It’s like it’s the only time they were alive and they don’t know who they are anymore now that they’ve crawled out of that uniform. I just separated this summer and I still don’t know what I’m doing. But I didn’t want to be that man bragging about past glories. I wanted to be fresh and new, even if it scared me.”

“I understand,” Bastien says.

“Really? Because I feel like I’m making up my reasons as I go along.”

His smile is rueful. “That transition is going to be hard. The first year is the worst.”

“It’s fucking awful,” I confess. “You think, finally, I get to do what I like, wake up when I want, not do shitty jobs, but…”

“But your brothers are all living their lives without you now, you don’t have a gun to keep you safe, and it drives you crazy when people aren’t doing their fucking jobs.”

“Yes! Exactly!” I laugh in spite of myself. “You know my people well.”

He shrugs one shoulder. “It’s been sort of my job.” He looks pained. “I made a mistake in how I treated you. But…” He takes a deep breath and I can see him trying to find the right words. “There’s no good way to say this, but you are a young, vulnerable combat veteran. This is the demographic that I work with. People talk, and they will draw conclusions. And that was before…” He stops and takes a deep breath. “I can’t tell you any more. Legally.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

He looks away. A distant roll of thunder shakes the car. The insides of the windows are starting to steam. “I’ll be okay,” he says. “I just need to keep my nose clean.” He turns back to me. “I’m grateful to you for respecting that.”

“I’m not. I fucking hate it.”

He puts his hand on mine. “I hate it, too. But it’s the way things are for now.”

It isn’t until he’s deposited me on the rain-slicked sidewalks and I’m wrestling with my keys to get back into the building that those last two words hit me.

Chapter nineteen

Bastien

“Non!” Delphine gasps, putting down her coffee and looking appropriately scandalized.

“Absolument, oui!” I declare, leaning back.

“He actually recommended that you assign your own book just for the profit?” she says. “I mean, I knew he was a creep, but there is a lot of power in being the black sheep of the department. Every time he comes to visit me I think he bathes in disinfectant afterward.” She takes a delicate bite of her croissant and rolls her eyes. “Every time I come here, I order this and for a moment I think, maybe it is better than I imagined it was last time.”

We’ve grabbed one of the little tables at the Bean Stop, the coffee shop across Chancellor Street from campus, and we’re being audaciously French, gossiping like fishwives and enjoying pastries and coffee. It’s the first week of October, and the first time since the semester started that we’ve managed to talk anywhere but through the air conditioning vent. Or, at least, I’m enjoying both. Delphine, however, takes a sip and frowns at her cup.

“French roast, they call this,” she says. “Sort of French Revolutionary Roast. They probably made it with the embers of the Bastille.” She puts down her cup and smiles at me. “And that’s on top of ordering you to take the extra class! I miss the best things when I’m out of my office.” She helps herself to a corner of my espresso brownie and then looks astonished when I bristle. “Their portions are too big. This brownie would feed a whole family in Paris.”