Chapter 20
The A-frame is an urbanite’s take on mountain living—small but stylish, with modern furniture and a minimalist kitchen with dark green cabinets and open shelves stocked with white dishes.
Wonder how much rental income it generates each month.
Maybe a few years down the line, once Ian and I have built enough equity in the dream house, we can consider buying a second place like this.
The temperature barely reached sixty today, so I followed the meticulous instructions left by the Airbnb host for setting up a fire in the wood-burning stove in the living room.
Phoebe Bridgers plays over the Bluetooth speaker system—some of the younger girls in my office just went to her show, and I want to make Dottie feel as comfortable as I can.
The grind of tires on gravel announces her arrival.
I pour myself a glass of Chardonnay to calm my nerves. A car door slams, followed by three solid knocks on the door. I take the wine bottle with me to open it.
“Hey!” I say, with a big smile. “Thank you so much for coming.”
Dottie wears nicely fitting jeans and a gray sweater. She’s even put on a little makeup. She cares what I think of her.
“Hi,” she says, eyeing the wine.
“Come on in! Can I pour you some of this? I have red, too, if you like that better?”
“White’s fine.”
I head into the kitchen to get her a glass, but she doesn’t follow. She waits awkwardly in the entry.
“Seriously, make yourself at home.” I wave a hand around. “Take a seat anywhere you want. Or help yourself to some snacks.”
I’ve laid out a whole spread on the kitchen table—chips and salsa, crackers, salami, pretty much every type of cheese the sparse grocery store back in town had available. It’s a mish-mash, but of all the excuses Dottie might think of to leave, being hungry won’t be among them.
She tentatively makes her way to the sofa. “This is a cute place,” she says, her voice sounding steadier.
“It was a lucky find,” I say. “The view from the loft is amazing if you want to take a look up there.”
She shrugs. “I’ve been staring at these mountains for three years. Kinda all blends together at some point.”
So, she’s been here the whole time.
“Listen,” I say, coming into the living room with her wine, and taking a seat on the leather sling-back chair by the couch, “I’m really sorry for just showing up like that yesterday. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
She doesn’t respond, so I keep going.
“But I couldn’t figure out how else to get a hold of you. I get that Professor Bradshaw fucked you over, but why are you hiding out like this?”
“You go first,” she says, a new edge to her tone. “I’ll tell you my story after you tell me who you really are, and how you found me.”
“What do you mean?” I scrunch my face in confusion. “I told you, I’m a reporter. Lisa Waters, at The Chronicle of Higher Education.”
“Lisa Waters is a redhead.” Dottie narrows her eyes. I feel my face flush. “We still know how to use Google out here in the backwoods.”
“Um … Dottie, I’m…”
I knew this was a possibility, but her directness trips me up. Mercifully, she interrupts.
“I obviously can’t judge someone for using a fake name,” she says. “But don’t insult me. It’s time to stop bullshitting now.”
I laugh nervously. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have tried that with you. I heard you were smart—the brightest in the economics department.”
Flattery seems like the right move.
“Heard from who?”
“Your friend Chloe.”
Dottie’s mouth parts.
“Tell me who you are right now,” she demands.
“Of course,” I say. “My real name is Margo—Margo Tanner.” Ian would be thrilled to hear me finally take his last name.
“I should’ve been truthful with you. I only started using the reporter thing because I didn’t want to ruin my chances of getting a full-time offer at Georgetown.
I was a visiting professor there last semester. ”
I thought of the new cover story earlier this afternoon, in case I needed a backup. Given all the practice I’ve had lately, it assembled itself fairly easily.
“One day, a few of us were in the faculty lounge, and Professor Bradshaw had a draft with him of some article he was thinking of submitting, I think to The Economist? Or maybe it was The Wall Street Journal. That part’s not important,” I say, hoping she won’t whip out her phone and try to Google that, too.
“I only glanced at it, but I recognized one of my student’s words right away.
It was a very particular turn of phrase”—through the window behind Dottie, the same massive tree branch that inspired me earlier sways in the breeze—“about how the supply chain ‘snapped like a tree limb in a hundred-year storm’ during the pandemic.”
Dottie’s eyes get wide. She’s buying this.
“I assumed my student must’ve somehow plagiarized Professor Bradshaw, not the other way around, so I asked her about it the next time she was in class.
She swore up and down that those were her words first—that she’d used the same phrasing in an assignment for Professor Bradshaw, too.
Poor thing thought I might be mad at her for recycling her own writing. ”
“Wow,” Dottie murmurs.
“Bradshaw has tenure, and I was a nobody. I wasn’t sure if anyone would believe me, and the girl from my class didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. But it infuriated me, you know?”
She nods.
“Anyway, then I heard about you—the brilliant student who’d vanished.”
Her face brightens ever so slightly. “They still talk about me there?” Dottie asks.
“Yeah, for sure.” I nod enthusiastically. “I heard you’d been a star in Bradshaw’s classes, so I just started to wonder if maybe he’d done the same thing to you.”
“Okay … but how’d you end up talking to Chloe?”
This part’s a bit more delicate. I grab my nearly empty glass from the reclaimed-wood coffee table. “Let me just get a quick refill.” This’ll buy me a little time to review the details once more in my mind. “You need one?”
Dottie shakes her head.
“So, Chloe,” I say, pouring myself a fresh glass in the kitchen, then turning on the sink to rinse my hands.
“Since no one knew where you were, I asked around about who you’d been close with.
” I walk back into the living room. “Another professor, I don’t remember who, mentioned Chloe was your best friend. ”
“Maybe that was Professor Huntington?” Dottie asks, face hopeful. I push away the slightest pang of guilt. Must stay focused.
“Yes, yes, Huntington, that’s right. Anyway, unlike you, Chloe was easy to find. I gave her my dumb Lisa Waters reporter story—like I said, the last thing I wanted was for the higher-ups at Georgetown to find out that I was sniffing around about a tenured faculty member.”
Dottie nods. I keep going.
“So, I told Chloe I was looking into Bradshaw for an article, and that I’d heard a rumor he’d wronged you in some way. I was just trying to see if it rang true to her.”
Dottie leans forward. “And what did she tell you?”
I pause, weighing the gamble I’m about to take. I need to give Dottie a believable reason for why I’d go to the trouble of tracking her down. This still feels like the best option.
“She said she didn’t know of anything for sure, but that she saw an email on your laptop a couple months before you left, in an account she didn’t recognize. She said it looked like you’d written an anonymous message to someone, saying that Professor Bradshaw had lied about something.”
Dottie jerks away, incredulous. “What? How would Chloe have possibly seen that?”
My throat constricts.
“Um, I’m not entirely sure. She didn’t want to give me all the details,” I say slowly. “She said you’d been acting strangely and that she was worried about you. So I think she might’ve been snooping in your stuff.”
Dottie is silent for what feels like a millennium, squinting in concentration, my blood pressure ticking up with each passing second.
“That’s weird,” she finally offers. “I really thought I deleted all that as soon as I sent it.” She’s quiet for another beat as my pulse thunders in my ears. “Well, whatever,” she sighs. “Then what?”
I relax into the chair.
“Talking to Chloe convinced me I was right, so I had a friend who really is a reporter run your name through a database that newspapers use to locate people.” I decide to skip over my little field trip to the courthouse.
“The only contact the database had for you was the address of the antique shop.”
Dottie nods again and swallows the rest of her wine. I stand up to fetch the bottle from the kitchen.
“But why do you care so much?” she asks. “Don’t tell me you just want to do the right thing.”
The Chardonnay glugs into her glass as I pour.
“No, you’re right,” I say. “I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. Bradshaw has something I want, and I need leverage.”
“All right,” says Dottie, leaning toward me again, “what’s that?”
“A spot on the Georgetown economics faculty. They’re not adding any new permanent positions, so the only way I’ll get hired is if someone leaves. And if there was ever a good reason to bounce someone with tenure, it’s ripping off student work.”
“Damn.” She finally cracks a smile. “That’s pretty badass.”
“Thanks.” I laugh. “So, will you help me?”
The smile disappears as she looks down at the knotty-pine floor. I stay quiet so she can think.
“I guess it depends what you need,” she says, her eyes again meeting mine.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened to you, and we can figure it out from there?”
She takes a deep breath, followed by a long swig of Chardonnay. Liquid courage to unfurl the whole story.