Chapter 21
The log in the wood-burning stove pops as Dottie shifts her weight on the sofa, tucking one leg underneath herself.
“It was probably about a month before his book came out,” she begins.
“Bradshaw sent me an email, asking me to come by during his office hours so he could talk to me about something. That wasn’t unusual.
I’d had classes with him for years, and I worked for his dad for a summer, so we were pretty close. ”
I nod, wanting to encourage her to keep going without betraying how ravenous I am for the details.
“So, I went to his office and he had an early copy of the book there, on his desk. He said he wanted to thank me for helping to inspire—those were the words he used—the opening chapter, and that he wanted to let me read it right there, in front of him, before the book came out.”
God, I’m practically salivating. I wish I could record this without freaking her out.
“Now, looking back,” she says, “I know he wanted to see how I’d react—to see whether I was going to be a problem.”
“About what?” I prod.
“About him copying a final paper I’d written for him sophomore year, nearly word for word.”
“Holy shit.” I lean back in the chair, the leather squeaking against my jeans, my mind leaping and twirling like it’s starring in a Broadway fucking musical. “The whole paper? That’s insane.”
“He changed a few things, I guess so it would sound more like him, but yeah, I basically wrote the entire first chapter. The research, the way it’s organized, the specific examples—that’s all mine.”
This is three-Michelin-star delicious. I’m gonna have nothing but fun nailing Curt’s ass to the wall with this, watching him squirm like the smug, silver-spoon-fed, born-on-third-base worm that he is.
“Hang on a sec.” With so much adrenaline coursing through me, I have to stand up.
My work bag hangs from a hook by the front door, so I walk over and retrieve my copy of Falling Apart from it.
Bringing it along just felt like the right thing to do.
But when Dottie sees the bright yellow cover, she grimaces like she’s in physical pain.
“Why do you have that garbage?”
“Sorry,” I say sheepishly. “I was just curious about it. It was thirty percent off, if that helps.”
I flip it open to the first chapter, which, quite cleverly, follows the journey of a dining table destined for Wayfair as a way of introducing the book’s overall theme.
It moves from the rubber-tree farm in Southeast Asia that supplies the inexpensive wood; to the nearby factory that turns the wood into furniture parts on the cheap; to the shipping container that can hold more tables than ever thanks to the ingenuity of using lightweight materials and flat-packing everything in pieces; to the consumer who buys the finished product for the bargain price of three hundred dollars from the comfort of her couch.
It was the most enthralling part of the whole book.
I hold it out for Dottie. “All this is really yours?”
She refuses to take it. “Please don’t make me look at it. Yes, it’s really mine.”
“Sorry,” I say, realizing her pained expression wasn’t a joke. I reclaim my seat, relieved to see her posture soften when I shove the book under the chair. “So, after you read it in Bradshaw’s office, what did you say to him?”
“Nothing. It was like I was numb. I didn’t know what to say, or what to do. I don’t think I ever even looked up from the pages. I just remember not wanting to look at his face. And then I felt like I might get sick, so I just got up and left.”
“Did he follow you?”
“No. But his dad, Curtis Senior, called me the next day.”
“What the hell?”
“I knew him because I’d interned at his hedge fund. I was relieved, at first, to hear from him because I thought maybe he wanted to help.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know, maybe because I was panicking and not thinking clearly? He’d just always been really nice to me.”
“Okay, but what did he really want?”
Dottie laughs dryly.
“He was calling to cut a deal. I must’ve freaked out Professor Bradshaw pretty good, because he ran straight to Daddy and asked him to pay me off so I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
The rage wakes up, unspooling itself in my gut. Curt, you spoiled little bitch. You fucking low-rent Kendall Roy.
“Shit,” I say.
“Yeah.” Dottie pauses for another long drink of wine.
“Curtis Senior said he wasn’t sure he could ever forgive his son and that he’d never been more disgusted with anyone, especially since he thought so highly of me.
” She rolls her eyes at the memory. “I’m sure that was all bullshit.
At the end of the day, assholes always protect their own, right? ”
“Damn right,” I say, seething.
“He said he’d wire me fifty thousand dollars. And on top of that, he’d pay off my student loans. Curt’s fuckup would be embarrassing for the whole family if it ever got out, he said, and all he wanted was for me to feel like I’d been fairly compensated for my work, so that I could move on.”
This would explain the rift between Curt and his dad. That rich old bastard probably thinks he did something noble, but he’s just as evil as his son.
“That’s a hard offer to turn down,” I tell Dottie.
She scours my face. “You think so?”
“Absolutely. You’ve probably made more off that book than Curt has.”
“You don’t think I’m awful for taking it?”
It occurs to me that I’m the first person she’s ever told about this. She’s been carrying it alone for three years. The fury retreats a bit and some sadness creeps in.
“I really don’t,” I say gently. “I would’ve taken it, too.”
She looks down at her sneakers. “I don’t come from very much,” she says. “It was a lot of money to me.”
“Seriously, you don’t have to justify it.” I reach over and pat her knee, hoping I’m not overstepping. “But I still don’t get what made you come all the way out here.”
She lets out a long sigh, and tops off her own wineglass with the remainder of the Chardonnay.
“I started to scare myself,” she begins slowly.
“I felt okay for a little while, you know, after I took the money. I still had a class with Bradshaw, and it was too late in the semester to drop it, so I had to keep going. I just sat in the back and stopped asking questions. But then the book came out, and it was like I just broke. They had a big display for it, in the window of the campus bookstore, and all the fucking press Bradshaw was doing kept getting retweeted into my timeline. It was just everywhere. And I felt this rage like I’d never felt before. ”
I want to tell her she’s not alone. That sometimes, it’s like my own rage is threatening to burn right through my skin and incinerate everything.
“That must’ve been terrible,” I say, giving Dottie a sympathetic look.
“It was,” she says. “I didn’t recognize myself.
And then I did the dumbest thing. I left a review for it on , warning people not to trust Bradshaw.
I made my username three dots—you know, like an ellipsis?
—but I knew Bradshaw would understand that it meant Dottie.
I just wanted to get in his head, you know?
Make him feel some of what I was feeling? ”
I nod.
“I was sure he’d react in some way,” she says.
“He must’ve been paying attention to his ratings.
But I didn’t hear anything from him, which only made me angrier.
” The wine has started to sand the corners off her words.
“So then I sent an anonymous email to a reporter who’d written about the book.
I assumed she’d have to forward it to him. ”
I keep nodding, doing my best to absorb every detail. The fire pops again.
“That was the email Chloe told you about. I’m so embarrassed she found it.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Chloe thinks the world of you. She said she thought you’d be the Fed chair one day.”
This makes Dottie laugh, which makes me feel better about forcing her to relive all this.
“Well, anyway,” she says, a faint smile lingering, then vanishing.
“I was spiraling, and at some point, I started drinking before Professor Bradshaw’s lectures to make them easier to sit through, which helped a lot.
So then I started drinking more, just generally all the time, and going to more parties and stuff with my roommates.
I was never really into any of that before, but it was kind of becoming, like, a self-preservation thing. ”
“Understandable,” I say.
“Then one night…” She hesitates, her eyes drifting toward the fire.
“One night, I went to a party alone.” She toys nervously with a silver ring on her thumb.
“There were these guys who sat in my section at the Mexican restaurant where I worked. They got me to do a couple shots with them when my manager wasn’t looking and asked me to come to their frat after my shift. ”
I remember how humiliating it could be to wait on my classmates in college—bringing them round after round of J?gerbombs, only so they’d be so shit-faced that everyone found it hilarious to duck out without tipping. The rage heats back up to a rolling boil.
“It was after midnight by the time I got off,” Dottie continues, “and it was only Tuesday, so my roommates were already in bed. But I wasn’t tired, and the last thing I wanted was to go home and just lie there thinking about everything, you know?”
I nod.
“The party was, like, crazy packed. Just, like, wall-to-wall bodies. But somehow I found one of the guys in the basement pretty much right away—or maybe he found me, I’m not totally sure.
He handed me some kind of punch, gave me a big hug and all that, but I don’t think he ever even told me his name. ”
My stomach turns, as it becomes impossible to deny where this story is headed.
Dottie takes a deep breath, another sip of her wine.
“You don’t have to tell me anything else.” I whisper it, even though I want to scream.