Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
When my flight lands, there’s an email from Jade waiting. She asks me to call her. Once I’m home and standing in the kitchen of my apartment, I finally do.
“How are you holding up?” she asks, her voice quiet, almost brittle.
“I’m…well, I’m glad to be home, I guess. I can’t imagine ever coming back to Havenport.”
She lets out a breath. “Yeah. Coming back to work hasn’t exactly been easy. Am I crazy for still being here? I just keep waiting for someone to knock on the door and tell me to go.”
“I don’t blame you for wanting better for your family. But look, I overheard something in Ralston’s office before I left. I didn’t understand all the details, but what I do know is it’s worse than we thought.” She’s quiet while I tell her about the conversation.
When I’m done, her voice shakes. “You’re serious?”
“Yeah. Look, I don’t regret what we did, okay? Ralston was a symptom of a much bigger problem. But that problem is still there. You need to get yourself out. Get far away from Havenport as soon as you can.”
“I never should’ve trusted her again. I’m sorry, Lila. I knew who she was, what she was capable of, and I still let her use me to hurt you.”
A bitter taste fills my mouth. Trust will probably never be something that comes easily to me again, and right now, I’m choosing to trust someone who betrayed me just days ago. “We both know how convincing she can be.”
“I was scared, you know? I didn’t know why I’d come back, and then she offered me the job, and I just wanted so badly for her to have changed.
This position would’ve fixed so many things.
” She sighs. “I did it for my daughter. I want you to know that. It was for her future. But it doesn’t make it okay. ”
“You don’t need to keep apologizing,” I tell her gently. “It worked out in the end, right? She brought herself down. With your help.”
The line goes silent between us for a moment, the weight of unspoken truths settling like dust.
“I guess we’re even,” I add softly. “I didn’t listen back then, and you wanted to believe her now. What matters is that we both eventually learned the truth.”
“And the dean? What about him? He just gets away with it all? The Carlyles are Havenport legacy, and he knows it.”
“I know. But we tarnished one legacy, right? We can do it again.” I have no idea if I believe the words, but I like the way they spark in my chest. Like a dose of hope.
“Feels weird,” she says after another long pause.
“What does?”
She lets out a soft laugh. “To not be alone.”
A few days later, I receive a formal letter from the university’s legal department. Dean Carlyle would like them to offer me a settlement—an invitation to stay silent about Ralston’s behavior in exchange for a check. A payout with strings attached, sealed with a non-disclosure agreement.
I stare at the offer, fingers trembling. The money could change my life. It could pay for additional care for my dad. It could pay for a few years off work to focus on my writing.
I could finally get what I deserve from Ralston.
I’m embarrassed to admit I spend more than a day thinking about it, weighing the options, pricing things out. I rehearse the conversation where I quit my job and try to decide how I’ll explain the money to Mom, especially if I’m not working.
At the end of the day, maybe that’s what makes it easy to turn it down. The fact that I’d have to explain it to Mom.
Then again, maybe it’s a little bit me too.
Money can’t buy my story. Or my silence. It would never make up for all I’ve lost.
I reply to the email with three simple words:
No, thank you.
Weeks pass in silence, and Ralston stays quiet online. The number of stories coming to the website slows down, as does the traction on social media. People have already moved on to the next big scandal.
As for the media, I never heard back from the reporter who reached out before, and no major news stations or newspapers have reported on what happened. I suspect Ralston has won friends and influenced people everywhere to keep it buried.
Then, out of nowhere, an email from the university arrives.
They’ve corrected a paper from more than a decade ago. My name has been added as a co-author, alongside Ralston’s. As I scan their website, I see that there are dozens of others this applies to, where Ralston is now co-author to the papers she built a career on.
There’s no official announcement. No article explaining it. Just quiet changes they hope no one will notice.
I stare at the screen, swallowing my thoughts with no one to hear them. I should feel better, but I don’t. Whatever I wanted, this wasn’t it. This isn’t enough. It’s not justice, it’s a quiet erasure dressed up so they can claim it never happened.
After we ring in the new year, Hayden calls. She tells me Jade finally left Havenport. That she’s working for one of the non-profits Hayden volunteers for. I imagine it means a pay cut, but I don’t ask.
“She told me what you said about Carlyle,” Hayden says.
“He’s still there,” I tell her. “We need to learn who it was he hurt. If we had names—”
“Yeah, Jade says the same thing. I just think… I mean, we won, right? Ralston’s gone. That’s what we wanted, and it worked. We can’t keep doing this forever. Carlyle’s a bad dude, sure, but—”
“He was worse than she was.”
“Not to you.” Her tone is soft, but her words are firm.
There’s little room for negotiation. “Not to me. I’m not saying you’re wrong to want him to be punished.
I would love that too. I’m just saying…you’ve done enough.
Let someone else pick up the fight now. We won our battle. The war is for someone else.”
I let out a noise that sounds like a laugh, but it doesn’t feel like one. “I wish I agreed. Ralston will bounce back, and Carlyle is unscathed. How is that winning?”
“She’ll bounce back, but she’ll never be who she was. And who knows? Maybe she’ll turn on Carlyle anyway. You forget—she’s a scorned woman now, too. Just like us. She has her own battle to fight.”
It’s spring before I hear from Professor Bell. She sends me the contact information of a podcaster doing a story on Ralston.
If you’re still in the fight, Eva wants to talk. You can trust her, I think. Seems genuine. But no judgment if you’re done. People on campus still talk about you, mostly good. You reminded me of why I’m here, Lila. I can never thank you enough for that.
I meet the podcaster, Eva, at a small café down the street. She’s young, with a nose ring and strawberry-blonde hair pulled back into a thick braid. Polite, but there’s a quiet determination in her eyes.
“The series is really about the feminist movement at Havenport, the history of it. I’m doing three parts. How it started. Its peak—around when Dr. Ralston arrived. And the fallout. Professor Bell said you’re the best one to speak to that.”
The noise of clinking cups and low chatter swirls around us. I run my finger along the rim of my cup. “I was just one part of what happened.”
“The website,” she confirms. “Why did you decide to speak out when you did? You must’ve known the risks were huge, personally and professionally.”
I must appear shocked, because she quickly adds, “Professor Bell said you’re a writer.”
Professor Bell lied. And I have the rejections to prove it.
“Silence protects the abusers,” I say finally.
She nods, moving her phone a little closer to me, the red lines moving up and down on the black screen to show it’s recording. “What was it like working with Dr. Ralston? In the beginning.”
I hesitate. I don’t want to make her look good, even for a moment, but I also can’t lie.
“She was…brilliant. Charismatic. A force, and she knew it. She made you feel listened to. Believed in.” My eyes go dark, and I feel my whole body remembering.
“But that was only as long as she liked you. The second you questioned her—even for things like stealing your work—she changed. To be on Ralston’s bad side was to be in the shadows, and she made sure of it.
She took everything away with the snap of her fingers—opportunities, friendships, confidence.
In her classroom, she was a god, and she could make your life whatever she deemed you worthy of. ”
“Did you feel isolated because of that? Caught up in her world?”
“All the time. I think even before things started to go bad, I understood that there was a dark side to being close to someone so powerful. It was in the underhanded comments she made about other students. Particularly female students. The way she could open doors for me and slam them in others’ faces.
It felt good, I guess. But it was always a system meant to protect women like her.
Even if that meant erasing women like me. ”
She nods, listening intently. She’s the kind of person who makes you really feel like she cares. I wonder if it’s an act. “And back then, when you said it changed, did you come forward at that time?”
“I did. I reported it to the dean.” My muscles tense as I remember that day, remember the way he looked at me.
Now I know I was walking into the lion’s den to complain about a cub.
He was never going to listen to me, to help.
“He told me I was probably misunderstanding. That I shouldn’t expect Ralston to help me outside of the classroom or show me special treatment, even if she had in the past. He was determined not to listen.
And it only got worse from there. She tore my work apart until I was failing and had to drop her class.
I lost all connections—even the ones I’d made on my own.
Ralston was powerful enough to make sure I was effectively kicked out of Havenport, even if I was still enrolled. ”
“And what about now? Has the university acknowledged your claims at all?”
I bite back a bitter laugh. “Well, they’ve credited me as a co-author of four of Ralston’s articles. There are plenty more I still don’t have credit on. There was no apology or explanation. Just a quiet correction and an email confirming it had been fixed.”
“Is that what justice looks like for you? Credit where credit is due?”
I’m quiet, thinking.
“No judgment,” she adds, perhaps misreading my silence. “I just wondered if you have a firm picture of what it would look like. Or if it’s even possible.”
“It’s a start,” I say eventually. “I fought for us to be remembered, myself and the other women she stole from. But it’s not a victory until everyone who empowered her is out of Havenport and away from all the women who deserve to thrive on its campus.”
Her eyes widen, and she leans in. “So, you think there are others harming students at Havenport? Claiming credit for writing that isn’t theirs?”
“I know there are. I know there are people who are worse than Ralston, too.” A new idea flashes in my mind. “And I’d encourage any victim to reach out to me. I want to fight for you. I want you to know you aren’t alone.”
Eva’s smile goes somewhat sad. “Thank you, Lila. For sharing your story. For fighting for others.”
“I won’t stop,” I promise her. “Not until they’re all gone.”
And with that promise—to myself and the rest of the world—the weight of my erasure lifts. I have my mission. They didn’t break me. They buried me for a while, perhaps, but I clawed my way back out.
I’m still here.
Still fighting.
Still determined to be remembered—if only by a few.