“The dean’s office. His secretary was dialing my cell before I’d left the television studio. I felt like a child being hauled into the damn principal’s office. He said the university’s initiating its own investigation. If they try to use this to fuck with me, it could derail everything.”
I knew he didn’t literally mean everything. He would still have me and Spencer, and he’d told me how hard it was to revoke a professor’s tenure. Jason was referring to everything else that was important to him right now—his newfound role as a public intellectual, his plans for the future.
His voice trailed off. I had seen my husband go from the dean’s beloved academic wunderkind to an outsider in a handful of years. After the Wall Street Journal reported that Jason got a seven-figure deal for his book, his colleagues accused him of being a sellout. They liked him better when he published heavily footnoted articles that no one read.
“Jason, are you sure there isn’t something else I should know?” I shut my eyes, afraid of the answer. Maybe there was a flirtation. A moment between an admiring young student and her attractive professor. I pictured all the girls daydreaming about Professor Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark, “love you” etched on a set of eyelids.
I fell for Jason at about the same age. Why wouldn’t they?
He answered immediately. “I swear on my mother’s grave, Angela, nothing happened. It was—damn it, when she walked into my office, I was changing clothes. She must have thought—”
I held my free hand to my face. “Jesus, Jason.”
“What? I ran at lunch and had taken a shower. It’s not like I was naked. I was tucking in my shirt, I think. I was almost done when she walked in or I would have told her to come back later. This girl’s crazy. And damn it, I want a fucking cigarette.”
“Don’t even.” When Jason asked Spencer what he wanted for his thirteenth birthday, Spencer had asked his father to quit smoking. I want you to live forever, Dad. Jason resisted at first, joking that he liked the look on strangers’ faces when they saw him light up after a long run. But he finally quit on New Year’s, successfully substituting gum for the cigarettes he’d taken up while finishing his PhD dissertation.
I didn’t realize I was still scrolling through Wilson Stewart’s Facebook page until I stopped suddenly on a photograph. He was drinking from a highball glass—something dark, maybe scotch. His eyes were glazed, trying to focus on the screen for the selfie he was taking. A thin arm was draped around his waist from behind. A head of dark shiny hair was visible over his shoulder, pale skin pressed against his neck as two lips found the lobe of his ear. No ring, not yet. It was Rachel Sutton.
I clicked “About” on this friend of Rachel’s profile page. He was also a graduate student at NYU. Current work: Fair Share Strategies.
“Jason, do you know someone named Wilson Stewart?”
“He’s one of the interns. Why?”
I rushed to the door when I heard keys in the lock. Jason wrapped his arms around me so tight that I felt a pinch beneath my ribs. I thought I heard him choke back a sob. When he finally let me go, he pressed his forehead lightly against mine and cupped the back of my head with his palm. “Don’t worry, babe. Everything’s going to be okay.”
I could tell he didn’t quite believe it, and was only saying it for my benefit. He knew all I ever wanted was a nice, quiet life together.
10
When I opened the front door for Colin forty minutes later, he gave me a quick hug. “How are you holding up?”
I shrugged.
“Where is he?” Colin asked, his eyes moving up the staircase.
“Kitchen. Eating ice cream.” That was usually my nervous habit, not his.
“How about Little Man?”
“I sent him to school this morning, thinking it would look bad to keep him home. Now I feel selfish.”
“You did the right thing. No use in him sitting around the house worrying about his parents.”
In the kitchen, we found Jason at the breakfast table. He greeted Colin with a “Hey, man” and an extended carton of peanut-butter-cup ice cream.
Colin declined the offer. “A defense attorney named Olivia Randall is on her way over.”
I had already googled her. Based on the number of newspaper articles about her celebrity clients and high-profile trials, she seemed like a heavy hitter.
“Does it make Jason look guilty to hire a lawyer so fast? Especially a big-name criminal defense lawyer?”
Jason apparently had the same concern. “It looks like I’m admitting I did something wrong.”
“Some girl’s trying to destroy you, Jason, and you’re sitting here with H?agen-Dazs like you’re in a Cathy cartoon.”
“Ack ack,” Jason said as he got up to put his ice cream away.
“You’re in denial, friend. This girl started a war with you. She needs to be swatted down like a bug. Olivia Randall will do it.”
I had seen photographs of Olivia online. Dark hair, intense. Pretty. Not entirely unlike Rachel Sutton. I pushed the thought away. What mattered was that she was a good lawyer, and that’s what Jason needed right now.
She arrived fifteen minutes later, dressed in a fitted black skirt and a bright green silk blouse. After quick introductions and professional handshakes, she skipped the chitchat and went directly to business.
“I’m sorry about this, Angela, but you can’t stay—”
Jason immediately interrupted. “I’ve already told Angela everything.”
“It’s not a matter of trust. To protect attorney-client privilege, Colin and I need to speak to Jason alone. And, no, it doesn’t matter that you’re his wife. In fact, having Colin or me around while the two of you speak destroys the privilege each of you shares with the other.”
I already felt like the stupidest person in the room. I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
Colin placed a protective hand on my shoulder. “Angela’s the one who found something online about this Rachel girl that might be helpful. Why don’t we go over that first, and then the three of us can speak privately.”
I opened my laptop from the coffee table as we all got seated. Wilson Stewart’s Facebook page was already pulled up. “This is one of Jason’s other interns at his consulting practice. I found him by clicking on a recent photograph he was tagged in on Rachel’s page.”
Olivia was leaning in for a closer look.
“The photo on Rachel’s page was nothing special—the two of them and a female friend. Strictly professional appearing. But on his page, I found this.” I scrolled down to the photograph of him holding up a cocktail and getting kissed on the neck by someone who looked an awful lot like Rachel Sutton. “He didn’t tag her, so she may not even know that he posted it. But this was only two weeks ago, and supposedly she has a fiancé now. That’s how this whole thing came up—Jason said something that offended her when she told him she was engaged.”
I saw something flicker behind Olivia’s eyes. An idea. Something good, as if she were connecting my information to a fact only she knew. I had been worried that a female attorney might be offended at the thought of trashing the so-called victim, but she seemed pleased by my discovery.
“Okay, that actually helps a lot. Now, I’m sorry, but I’ll need you to leave us for a bit. I promise, Angela, I’m going to do everything I can for your husband.”
I felt like a child being sent away while the grown-ups talked. As I passed Jason, he mouthed a silent thank-you and grabbed my hand for a quick kiss. His lips felt warm against my fingertips.
Twenty minutes later, I heard footsteps on the stairs. I opened the bedroom door to see Colin reach the landing.
“Hey, I thought it would be Jason.”
“They’re still talking. I figured I’d come check on you. Crim law’s foreign to me anyway—”
“Am I being stupid?”
He looked at me, clearly confused by my question.
“Believing Jason. Am I being stupid? I mean, he says he made some sarcastic comment about her getting married too young, and she turns that into a sexual assault allegation? What am I missing?”
I felt myself begin to shake. He stepped toward me but stopped short of touching me. “You’re not stupid. Jason did not do this, okay? I think there’s an explanation.”