“No problem.”
“Is… uh, is Professor West with you?”
“No.” Unease suddenly rises in my chest. “Are you supposed to meet with him or something?”
“No.” She shifts her weight to her left foot, her eyes darting from the lot to me and back again. “Just wondering.”
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
She stares past me again. Her lower lip trembles. Tears flood her eyes.
Oh, no.
“What’s wrong?” I put down my bag and move closer to her, my unease deepening. I know this has to do with my husband.
“He won’t approve my thesis proposal.” Maggie swipes the back of her hand across her eyes. “I told him my dad will freak out if I don’t get it approved this semester because he’s expecting me to apply to law school in the spring.”
“Law school?”
“My dad’s a partner in a law firm and wants me to follow in his footsteps.” She fumbles in her backpack for a tissue. “I have to get a master’s degree to get into law school because my undergrad grades were lousy. So my father agreed to let me major in history because I promised it would take only two years.
“I should be finished already, but I took a year off after Professor Butler retired then when I reentered the program, I had to switch to Professor West. Now he’s being a total hard-ass.”
She wipes her eyes. “My dad threatened to cut me off if I don’t finish by the end of the year since I’ve already been in grad school for three years already. But I can’t even get started until Professor West approves my thesis proposal!”
I have no idea what to say. None of this is my business. I don’t have the right to defend Dean because I don’t know why he won’t approve her proposal. I do know that he has a good reason for his decision, but it’s not my place to explain that to Maggie Hamilton.
“Do you want to go to law school?” I finally ask.
She heaves a sigh. “I don’t know. But my dad’s funding my education and made it clear that’s what he wants. And he’ll have a job waiting for me in his firm, so you know, how can you turn that down? And if I did turn it down, he’d cut me off right now, so… whatever.”
Though I find it difficult to sympathize with a girl who has obviously had a great deal handed to her on a silver platter, I do feel sorry that she’s so upset.
“That sounds unfair,” I say, well aware of the hollow tone to my words.
“Yeah, well.” Maggie swipes at her eyes again and hitches her backpack over her shoulder. “I’m going to visit my parents next week, and I want to tell my dad everything’s on schedule. Maybe… maybe you could talk to Professor West for me?”
“No, I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Please, Mrs. West? I could really use some support, you know, girl to girl?”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat, more firmly this time. “I don’t interfere with my husband’s work. It wouldn’t be right for me to talk to him about a proposal I don’t know anything about.”
Fresh tears spill down her freckled cheeks. “Maybe if you explained about my dad and the—”
“Maggie, really. I can’t help you. But my husband is a reasonable man who has always been willing to work out solutions with students. I’m sure if you talk to him, he’ll—”
“He’ll tell me to review the damned research, like he always does, except there’s so much of it and I don’t know Italian well enough to read all the papers he’s given me. And he totally doesn’t get that I also have to start studying for the LSAT.”
“It sounds like you’re trying to do too much.”
“I don’t have a choice, Mrs. West! I could have started writing in the summer if Professor West had just signed the proposal. Please, will you talk to him?”
“I’m sorry.”
Her mouth hardens into a line. She dashes a hand across her eyes and tries to suppress a hiccupping sob.
“Maggie, if you’d tell my husband what you told me…”
“I have told him. He just cares about his star students like Sam and Jessica.”
“He cares about all his students.”
“Yeah, right.” Her voice is bitter. “Maybe he cares about some of them too much.”
The edge to her remark slices into me. I take a step back, my hip hitting the fender of the car behind me. “What?”
She hitches her backpack over her shoulder. “Sure your husband is willing to work with students, Mrs. West. Especially female students, just like his predecessor. Maybe he’s being such a hard-ass with me because he expects more than a thesis proposal.”
She spins on her heel and stalks back to the street. Part of my brain screams at me to follow her and demand an explanation, but I can only stand there staring after her. I can’t even form a coherent thought.
Was she… is she talking about… did I understand that… ??