Chapter Twelve
Alice longed to bury her head in the sand to hide from the biggest humiliation of her life, but she needed to warn her parents of the scandal before they heard it from anyone else.
Maude and Grayson Chadwick were supposed to be retired, but their illustrious lives remained packed with prestigious engagements and commitments, leaving them no time for unscheduled phone calls—even from their own children.
Alice sent a text message requesting an appointment at their earliest convenience.
Her mother replied they would clear space in their calendar at two o’clock.
Alice sighed at the brief reprieve, as if the Sword of Damocles had been lifted from her neck.
Her parents were demanding, accomplished, and hyper-competitive.
Her father had been the secretary of state for two presidents, and now gave high-priced lectures at symposia around the world.
Her mother was a retired economics professor but had spent the past year teaching at Harvard.
Each of them had reached the pinnacle of their respective careers, and demanded their children strive for the same.
Growing up, Alice and her brothers had followed her father’s itinerate career in the foreign service all over the world, which meant she never went to a traditional school but got to study literature with scholars at Oxford.
She spent a semester in Paris to learn French and studied art at the Vatican Museum.
Ballerinas from the Bolshoi ballet taught her dance.
In the summers Alice returned to the family estate on the Potomac River, where her father insisted his children develop their physical stamina.
Each morning he loaded Alice and her brothers into the motorboat and drove them a mile upstream, then dropped them into the river and required they swim home.
She hated that daily swim. She was the only girl and her brothers always left her far behind while Grayson punted along in the motorboat beside her, barking orders at her to swim faster.
After their morning swim, the rest of her days were filled with sailing and tennis classes.
Then lessons in French and German. To this day, her parents insisted on speaking a foreign language at dinner so their skills didn’t fall into disuse.
Alice used to dream about having a mother like Marmee from Little Women, whose gentle voice could ease any heartache, or Caroline Ingalls, who could soothe a child’s fevered brow with the touch of her soft, cool hand.
Alice would gladly live in a little house on the prairie if she could have a mother to whom she could run with every small victory or disappointment.
But no. Her mother was Maude Chadwick, who co-authored a paper on the economic benefits of parental discipline.
At one minute before two o’clock, Alice initiated a face-to-face call with her parents. It was summer, so they were both back at the River House, working from the spacious home library. Her thumbs trembled as she entered the numbers on her cell phone, then began pacing as the connection was made.
Her call was accepted, and her father’s face took up most of the screen on the other end of the FaceTime call.
With his chiseled features and piercing eyes that could freeze a room with a single glance, he looked like a scarier version of Charlton Heston.
Her mother was in the background, still typing on a laptop.
“Alice, what do you need?” her father asked. No greeting. No warm and cuddly inquiry about how her life was going.
“Hey, Dad. Mom, those pearls look amazing.”
Maude looked up from her laptop to touch her necklace. “They belonged to your grandmother. What do you need, Alice?”
She swallowed hard and dove in. “Did Adam ever tell you about why he visited me in London back in April?”
“No,” Grayson said. “I didn’t realize he’d been gone.”
“So you don’t know anything about the bit of trouble I had on the Emma set?”
Grayson frowned. “Get to the point, Alice.”
Her tongue froze and mortification crept up her spine, freezing her carefully-thought-out ways of softening the blow … but really, was there any way to put a good spin on this? Maude and Grayson would weather the blow.
“Just Google my name,” she finally said.
By now, the story had leaked beyond social media to pollute websites all over the world.
Clicking from her mother’s laptop sounded like a hail of distant machine-gun fire.
Her father rotated in his chair to look over Maude’s shoulder.
There was no change in his expression as he leaned forward to scrutinize the screen, but Maude’s face iced over like she’d experienced a blast from Antarctica.
Grayson flicked his eyes back to Alice. “Explain yourself.”
He didn’t sound angry, or supportive, or curious. His poker-faced command had all the passion of a robot.
Alice drew a shuddering breath and told him everything: her misjudgment of Sebastian, the restraining order, and how Adam dropped everything when he flew to London and helped her navigate the avalanche of legal charges.
“Adam was so helpful,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done without him.”
“Grow a spine, Buttercup,” her father growled. “You don’t need a man to defend yourself. And you’re better off without that Sebastian cad. Your misguided pursuit of that man has done nothing but knock you off course for over a year.”
She sighed. “Is it so wrong to fall in love? To want a partner in life?”
“Alice,” her mother reproached, “we didn’t raise you to mope and lunge for a fainting couch over a broken heart. What is this going to do to your tenure case?”
Tenure seemed impossible now; she’d be lucky if they didn’t fire her immediately.
No college wanted a woman accused of stalking to be in the classroom.
“Tenure is probably off the table,” she admitted.
“Colleges always give professors who don’t get tenure a year to search for another position, so I should probably start looking for another job. ”
If anyone would even look at her application without laughing. Unless a miracle occurred, her future in academia looked increasingly bleak.
“I want you to demand a meeting with the head of the History Department,” Grayson said. “Insist on a hearing, open a lawsuit against the people in England who violated the nondisclosure agreement, and fight for your career.”
Anxiety began roping around her chest, forcing her to take shallow breaths. The only thing that could make this day worse was marching back onto campus to demand an audience with the head of her department. “That’s not going to happen,” she said. “I’m not cut out for it.”
“We’ve been very patient with you, young lady,” her father warned.
“Your professorship pays peanuts, but at least it’s prestigious.
If you can’t keep that job, you need to find another one, pronto.
You think lying around and reading books is a job?
The rest of the world gets up and puts in blood, sweat, and tears to earn their daily bread.
I expect at least as much from you. Stand up for yourself, Buttercup. ”
The call came to a quick end after that, and Alice collapsed onto her sofa, gazing around the soft, muted tones of her living room and trying not to cry.
She loved this place, with her collection of books and potted herbs on the windowsill.
In a perfect world, she would teach history classes, read books, defend Jane Austen, and tend her gardens.
Maybe do a little embroidery and entertaining.
She didn’t want to fight for tenure or force herself to belong in a History Department where her colleagues merely tolerated her.
They would never respect any historian who specialized in Jane Austen, and once they saw the gossip coming out of England, their condescension toward her would turn into gleeful disdain.
There were really only two options. The longer, harder option would be to follow her father’s advice, march onto campus, and demand a public hearing.
She’d have to hire a lawyer, break her nondisclosure agreement, and open a can of ugly worms, all merely to fight for the opportunity to continue pursuing tenure.
Her only chance to earn tenure hinged on uncovering the truth about Saint Helga’s existence.
She would have to solve the mystery soon in order to get an academic paper written and accepted for publication before her tenure review.
Even with the new date of the Roost that Brandon discovered, finding the origin of Saint Helga felt more like chasing a ghost than solid history.
Her other option was to give up. Turn her back on all the heartache and stress and simply walk away to start her life over somewhere else.
Neither path seemed appealing, but deep in her heart . . . she was tempted to give up.