Chapter Thirty-Two
Bernie
“Knock, knock,” a voice interrupts my explanation to Alan on a shortcut I’ve found for linking the tabs throughout his workbook.
He looks behind my shoulder with raised brows. “Yes, Dr. Graham?”
Fuckkkk , I think, glancing at my watch. It’s almost one, and I imagine the other team is going to break for lunch soon. I can’t be this unlucky.
“I thought I’d grab Bernadette for a minute before we join the others for lunch. Can you go check in with Sherri to make sure catering gets into the conference room okay, Alan?” Stephen’s a master at asking questions that are really directions. Alan stands because there isn’t really any reason why he wouldn’t say yes. I pick up my laptop and mentally brace myself for whatever bullshit I’m going to endure in the next fifteen minutes.
Following Alan out the door, Stephen steps beside me, steering me from the suite to the elevator. I watch the numbers change on the stainless steel panel numbly; I suppose he’s up in the executive suites with his promotion. We don’t say anything on the elevator or when walking onto the executive floor.
Just like any university, the executive offices always have a little more space, the furniture just a little nicer. A wide curved wood desk sits between two doors, one leading to the president’s suite and the other leading to the provost’s. He waves to their receptionist before guiding me down the provost hallway toward his office. It’s covered in windows and dominated by a large slick wood and glass desk. I don’t bother looking at the art or the awards displayed. Instead, I hover at the door running my eyes over the view; the campus has always felt like a park surrounded by a city.
Stephen walks over to the two leather armchairs he has positioned by the windows and folds his long body into one of them, expecting me to follow. I’d rather sit in front of his desk, but it doesn’t look like I’m going to get a choice.
“Can I get you something to drink?” He asks as I sit down on the creaky leather across from him, resting my laptop on my legs. This chair must be new , I think absently. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and it’s hard to remember the person I was when I loved him. How just a few years ago, I would have been giddy for him to be this close to me, giving me that hypnotic hyperfocus.
“I’m fine. I’d like to get back to the group so…” I sit back in the chair, putting more space between us and crossing my arms over my chest.
“You look beautiful, Bernadette,” he says softly, and I frown. I love this suit, and I don’t want his compliments to ruin it. It’s a soft camel color with a tie closure instead of buttons on the blazer. I’d paired it with a pale rose mock turtleneck, and it makes me feel beautiful. I bought it on a shopping trip over Christmas break with Ash’s mom.
Brushing my fingers against my arm, I remember fingering the fabric, admiring the color but thinking it might make me look washed out, so different from the dark suits in my closet. Sandy convinced me to buy it, giving me the shirt as a Christmas present. I smooth my hand down the wide pant leg and think of Ashish.
“What did you need to discuss, Dr. Graham?”
His frown still does something to me. I can’t quite shut off the part of me that cares about displeasing him. “I’ve been trying to talk to you since you left.”
“I didn’t think we had anything else to say to each other.”
“Really? We were together for almost two years. I was in love with you and nothing? You can’t give me the time of day?”
“You didn’t love me. You don’t even know me.”
He laughs. “I practically built you, Bernadette. You might not admit it, but I know you better than you know yourself.”
Is that how he sees this? Like I was some kind of blank slate?
He’s wrong, he didn’t build me, he broke me down.
“Dr. Graham, I would prefer to keep this conversation professional and not discuss our past history.” I grit the words out.
“Okay, darling.” He leans back with a small smile, placating me. “I want to offer you a job.”
I barely resist the urge to stop my eyes from rolling. Barely.
“No, thank you.”
“Don’t you want to hear the offer? At the very least, you could use it as a counter at Lafayette to get a raise. Be smart, Bernadette.”
His words sting, and I press my lips together, looking out the window. “Fine. What is it?”
“We’d like to offer you a clinical faculty position.”
I snort, but he keeps talking.
“Forty percent of your time would be research and sixty percent of your time would be administrative. We haven’t picked the academic unit your faculty position would be in, but you’d essentially work out of research advancement, continuing the work we stopped after you left your postdoc.”
“Contract term?”
“Three years. But I would be willing to negotiate for up to five.”
My heart stutters in my chest, and I take a deep breath to calm it down, counting each tree I can see outside of his stupid windows.
People outside of academia don’t understand that there are all kinds of faculty positions, each with their own pecking order, their own protections. Tenured professors, they’re at the top of the food chain, protected, and revered—they’re the important ones.
A clinical faculty doesn’t have the same prestige as a tenure track position, but I would have grabbed it with both hands two years ago because it would have felt like an intermediary step, like the postdoc. Working toward something.
Now? It just makes me feel bitter—another reminder that I’m not good enough. A glorified staff position in the same department I was in before, cut off from networking opportunities that might actually get me the job I dreamed about when I signed up for a PhD.
A reminder that I wasted my time working toward something that wasn’t realistic.
“Why?”
“You’ve done great things at West Lafayette, Bernadette.”
I grimace and keep my eyes fixed out the window. I can’t look at him.
“I was very impressed that you were able to get four publications in progress in that time plus the increase in grants your department has earned. But I want you back here. We need your talent, and I want you to continue the work we started.”
Something ugly twists inside of me, pulling on that place in my chest that aches and makes me cry. I don’t want to cry. Not just in front of Stephen. I don’t want to cry about this period anymore.
“No thanks.” I close my eyes and then turn to face him because I can do hard things. “Anything else?”
Stephen's jaw clenches, and I’m not sure what he expected. That I’d just fall all over myself for this chance? “Bernadette.” He says my name like a warning. “You’re being stubborn. Let me take care of this.”
“Because you feel guilty for fucking me over and ruining my career.”
It’s not a question, I refuse to say it like a question. The muscles in his jaw jump again.
“If you would just listen . It was a temporary setback. I promised I would take care of you. I know it’s not the path you wanted or thought you would take, but this is a good deal. With your recent publications and then the work from your postdoc, you’d be in a strong position for a tenured line when someone retires in sociology or public policy.”
“Even if it’s a good deal, I don’t think I can work with you. I don’t want to. I’m starting over. You need to just let it go.”
Stephen subtly grips the side of his chair and spreads his legs wider. He takes up all the space in a room, making it feel smaller.
“Because of Mishra?”
“He doesn’t have anything to do with this,” I scoff.
His smile is pitying. “Bernadette, he has everything to do with this. Don’t you get it?”
I can hear the blood whoosh in my ears and like a small animal frozen in front of a predator, I’m unable to move away even though I know I need to move to save myself. “Wha–what do you mean?”
“You don’t know.” He says the words slowly before pursing his lips. “Why do you think I embargoed your work? If some random engineer can take the model we built to win a five-million-dollar RFP from the Department of Education and doesn’t even have to include us in the grant, we sure as hell need to put it behind a paywall.”
I shake my head at his explanation. That doesn’t make any sense. How dare he blame Ash’s grant for the reason he decided to pull all of our work and try to set up people paying us to consult.
“That’s not—that’s not what happened.”
“Bernadette, I met with him right before he submitted that proposal with MIT. He’d read the white paper we wrote in your first year and reached out to our office. I agreed to help him refine it and use your postdoc formula if he included Seattle State as a collaborator.”
I shake my head and stand. “No, that doesn’t make sense. He would have told me if he used my formula.”
Ash would have told me, wouldn’t he? I think back to our early morning confessions when everything was so tenuous—him holding me against his chest and whispering in my ear. ‘ I knew who you were when I approached you at the bar…’ This can’t be what he meant.
“I don’t believe you. You can’t do that on my behalf.”
“The university owns the IP. We don’t own your dissertation, but we own all the iterations you developed in our office. Plus, the software we built around the formula over the past year.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I start to walk to the door, heart in my throat.
‘ I was inspired by your work.’ Didn’t he tell me that?
“How could it not matter?” he asks, remaining in his seat. He doesn’t need to chase me anymore. “You left me because I pulled manuscripts. But you’re fine with your new boyfriend using your model without crediting you so he can get a five-million-dollar grant? You’ve seen the financials, Bernadette. His firm is making a substantial amount of money on this.”
‘ You’re famous.’ Isn’t that what Ravi had said? That I had changed Ash’s life?
I take shallow breaths and pull at the neck of my shirt.
“I don’t believe you.” I can’t seem to bring myself to leave the office, but I want out. I can’t do this. I hear Stephen’s footsteps behind me before his hands cup my shoulders.
It’s how our last fight started before he pinned me to the wall so I couldn’t leave.
He leans down and whispers the next words into my ear, his fingers getting tighter.
“Bernadette, both of our names were on that paper, but he only reached out to me. You were first author, and he reached out to me . He’s using you, and he knows it, or he would have told you. I know you’re mad at me, but at least we built those things together. Come back. I know you don’t understand why I did what I did. But you can come back. We can start over. You are so talented administratively, surely working with Gail has shown you that? I know you think you want to be a faculty, but can’t you see, you’re a doer, not a thinker. You’re better off helping the experts get grants.”
He slides his thumbs under my collar to press them against the back of my neck; digging into the muscle. I feel like I can’t catch my breath.
“I can give you what you need. Let me decide what’s best for you.” His fingers trace my collar bone and the wrongness of it sets my teeth on edge.
“No.”
It takes all of my courage to say it, but I do. I manage to step away from him and reach for the door. Stephen grips my arm and makes me face him. He’s so tall I have to look up, and I realize how much I hate it. How much I love that I can look Ashish directly in the eye.
“Thank you for the offer, Dr. Graham, but I think I want to decide for myself what’s best for me.”
“Do you think Gail will stand up for you? When you become a very expensive problem? If they have to choose between the two of you?”
“What?”
“You signed non-compete and confidentiality agreements when you started your postdoc. You don’t own the IP on our research.”
I ball my fist and force myself to shrug. “So?”
“West Lafayette has never requested permission or licensing for our IP. We’ll sue for infringement.”
I shake my head. “I never broke those agreements. Everything at West Lafayette has been separate.”
“But will their general council agree? Will they stand up for some replaceable, nobody staff, to avoid a potentially very expensive and public disagreement? Or making Mishra look bad?”
“You can’t do that.”
I try to shake his hand off but he only tightens his fingers. He leans down grazing his cheek against mine. “Watch me, Bernadette. You—belong—to—me. The sooner you realize that, the better for everyone.”
“I don’t belong to anyone.” My words aren’t loud, but I feel their conviction. I reach for the door and step back as it opens. “Thank you, Dr. Graham,” I say a little too loudly. “It was great catching up.”
I don’t turn to look at him as I exit the executive suite and enter the elevator. The computerized voice announces each floor, my brain making it feel like slow motion.
I escape the building and keep walking past the edge of the Quad and into the art building, navigating to their library. I walk through stacks until I find a solo armchair tucked in a corner.
With shaking hands, I open my computer and navigate to the cloud storage with all of the grant information. I open Ash’s original proposal, and there on page fifteen, under the little diagram of the workflow, it says, adapted from Murphy and Graham (2019).
I look at the model, noting the subtle differences, how it looks a little closer to the iterations I made with Stephen, but there are parts that must have been Ash’s ideas.
As I scroll through the document, I can see additions to the proposal that are from my formula, specific words, evidence that they worked together—used my work.
Or, I guess it isn’t mine, is it?
I don’t believe that Ash was using me. He cited what was published, after all. But it doesn't make me feel better. Because Stephen’s right, isn’t he? I’m just a nobody who updates the spreadsheets.
In the end, Ashish Mishra’s curiosity put into motion the worst events in my life.