Chapter 44
Gabrielle
Cal was gone. Physically, at least. His coffee mug sat half-full on the kitchen counter. I rinsed it out and put it in the dishwasher—not out of obligation, just to give my hands something to do.
I’d been drifting all morning—from couch to table to floor to couch again—touching random objects like they could tether me to the present. Like he’d walk back in if I just kept moving. The nerves in my stomach had gone full-time and were billing by the minute.
Speaking of Aunt Suzy… She’d gone quiet ever since I got back from England. Her last message, sent the day I’d landed, was still sitting there:
Good luck with the jet lag, kiddo. Glad you’re home.
That was two days ago.
I hovered, then thumbed out:
Are you free?
Yes
Call?
Sure…
The ellipsis tripped me up. Was it passive-aggressive punctuation? Or just the casual dot-dot-dot favored by anyone over fifty?
I called. Three rings.
“Hello?”
I put on my sweetest voice. “Hi, Aunt Suzy!”
“Hey, hon.” Her voice was pitched oddly stiff. Cable news murmured in the background.
“You busy?” I asked, immediately regretting it.
A rustle. A clatter. “Always.” A door clicked shut. “But I can talk. What’s up?”
I curled up on the couch, phone pressed tight to my ear. “Just…checking in. Haven’t heard from you.”
“Can’t say I’ve heard much from you either, sweet girl.” The endearment hit like a sugar cube with a razor in it. “Did you have a nice time in England?”
I laughed—light, maybe too light. “Honestly? It was incredible. The countryside looked like something out of a fairy tale. The house was unreal. His sister’s wedding was Vogue meets Downton Abbey. And we rode horses! I didn’t break my neck, which—” I caught myself babbling.
“That’s nice,” Aunt Suzy said. Flat as a pancake. “Sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
“I know you’re mad I went, but it really was—”
“I’m not mad you went, Gabrielle.”
“Then what?”
The silence stretched, taut and unforgiving.
Then, finally, she said, “I’m mad you lied to me about it.”
My stomach dropped. “What do you mean, I lied?” I asked, careful to keep my voice even. “I told you I went to England with my boyfriend, stayed with his family, and got back Saturday.”
“Your boyfriend.” It wasn’t a question. “Remind me, who is that again?”
I scanned the room for a lifeline and found only the sun pooling on the carpet and the dull hum of the air conditioner. “You…don’t know him.”
Her spoon clinked, followed by the slow drag of her inhale. “Calvin Green, you told me. Another student from your physics class?”
“I—” The pause was my only defense. “I know him from physics, yes.”
A rustle—papers, maybe. When her voice returned, it held the brittle sweetness of a pie crust about to crack. “So, here’s the funny thing. You know me—I’m nothing if not a diligent aunt,” she said. “I tried to look him up, but I couldn’t find any Calvin Green associated with Page College.”
“No…?”
“But you know who I found instead?”
My mouth went dry. “Who?”
She let it hang, relishing the power. “A dashing physics professor by the name of Cal Hawthorne.”
For once in my life, I had no words.
“I did a little more digging, reached out to a few friends, called in a few favors. Turns out, he’s not just any professor. He was your professor this spring. He’s quite British, and, according to one of his colleagues in the physics department, just spent two weeks visiting family in England.”
I swallowed hard, then found my voice. “How many privacy laws did you have to break to get all that?”
A brittle laugh. “Honey, there’s no such thing as privacy once you’re on the internet. Or in a faculty directory.”
I pressed the heel of my hand to my eye. “I didn’t want you to think—”
“To think what?” Her voice wasn’t loud, but it cut with a serrated edge. “That you were dating your professor? That you got on a plane with a man twice your age and flew halfway around the globe?”
“He’s not twice my age.”
“That’s the part you defend?”
I answered with silence.
Her inhale was shaky, hard. “You should have told me the truth, Gabrielle.”
“You wouldn’t have been okay with it.”
“No,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t have. I don’t know what I would’ve done—maybe thrown a fit, maybe tried to talk you out of it. But at least I wouldn’t have had to find out like some dumb suburban mom on a Dateline rerun.”
“You’re not my mom.” It came out hotter than I’d intended. Acid laced with exhaustion. But I didn’t take it back.
She paused. “No. I’m not. But I’m the closest thing you’ve ever had.” Her voice dropped. “So I’m going to ignore that.”
The silence after that was so absolute I could hear the blood move through my ears.
“Are you going to tell me the whole truth now?” Aunt Suzy asked. Her voice was gentler than I expected, more stunned than angry. “No more redactions. No more ‘Calvin Green’ bullshit. I want the whole story. Start to finish.”
I took a breath and tasted metal. “Okay.” My voice came out thready.
She waited, not filling the space, and let me do the heavy lifting.
I told her everything—the dead battery in the rain, the tea fiasco, the motorcycle ride to Oklahoma, the pull we couldn’t fight, the week on Lake Rayburn, my decision to transfer so we could be together legitimately, and finally, the trip to England to meet his family.
I left out the engagement detail, but only because Cal and I had agreed to keep that to ourselves for now.
“Wow.”
“Yeah…”
“So this is the real deal, then? He’s not exploiting you, coercing you, or abusing his position?”
“Not even a little. This is real, Aunt Suzy.” A beat. “I love him. I really do.”
She blew out a long breath. “You really should have told me sooner.”
“I know. But I’m telling you now. I’ve been accepted—with scholarship—to the engineering programs at both SMU and UTD. I’m choosing SMU, and I’ll file my withdrawal from Page this week. So everything will be…legal.”
Suzy was quiet. Too quiet.
“You’re not saying anything.”
“I’m thinking,” she said finally. “Trying to decide whether to be relieved…or scared out of my mind.”
“I’m not in danger,” I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could. “We’ve been careful. No one at school knows. Well…” I caught myself. “At least not officially.”
“What does that mean?”
“Someone knows something—I just don’t know what or how much. Cal got called to campus first thing this morning.”
A breath crackled through the line. “Gabrielle…I need to tell you something.”
My stomach turned. “Okay…”
Her voice dropped. “I didn’t mean for this to spiral. I just…I didn’t know what else to do. So I sent an email with what I knew and asked the administration to look into it.”
The room went still. “You what?”
“I just…gave them enough to ask questions. To make sure this wasn’t—” She exhaled shakily.
“God, Gabrielle, I was scared. Yes, you’re twenty-five, but this is the first time you’ve really been out on your own.
He’s your professor. What if it wasn’t what you thought?
What if you got hurt and I sat back and did nothing? ”
I stared at the blank TV screen, my heart thudding. I didn’t know what to say. All the words dissolved on my tongue, sour and useless.
“I’m sorry, Gabrielle,” Aunt Suzy said, voice quivering around an unfamiliar burr. “I was just trying to protect you. I hope you can see that.”
I pulled the phone away and stared at it, like it might offer some guidance from the digital ether. Then I pressed it back to my cheek. The garage door rumbled open—low and steady, like a warning bell. Cal was back.
“I can’t talk to you right now.”
Disconnect.
I stood, walked into the kitchen, checked the water level on the kettle, and switched it on. Tea made everything better, right?