39. Chapter 39
Torin
Ken
Translation: To know or understand
Usage: Scots word for knowing, often appearing after “dinnae,” a Scots word meaning “don’t”
The last day of term, I head to Professor Moreau’s office with my new thesis proposal.
I finally found something I was excited about after I ditched my last topic, which seems like a hasty decision at this point.
But I can break new ground with it, and, paired with top marks in all coursework, it should qualify me for the assistantship with Professor Drummond.
Now I just have to convince my advisor to let me pursue it.
I knock on Professor Moreau’s door.
“Come in.”
She looks up as I enter, her glasses low on her nose, peering at me over the top of them. “Ah, Mr. Ramsay,” she says. “Good to see you. Come. Have a seat.”
“Thank you,” I say, lowering myself into the chair opposite her desk.
Her office is exactly as I remember it. Nothing aside from the fresh flowers around the room has changed. How is so little different in here when everything is so different for me?
The professor removes her glasses before fixing me with her gaze. “Now, tell me why you’ve been avoiding me.”
She tilts her head in a way that makes me hope she’s teasing. Even after knowing her for nine months, she’s still hard to read.
“Sorry, Professor,” I say, shifting in my seat. “I was working on a new topic for my thesis. It took some time to build my proposal.”
She watches me in silence, eyes tracking over my face. Then she leans forward. “Torin,” she says, firm but not unkind, “my job as your advisor… is to advise. You don’t need to present me with something fully formed before we discuss it.”
“I know,” I say. “I should’ve talked to you sooner. It was just… a difficult term.”
Her gaze lingers before she hums softly and reaches out her hand.
I pass her my proposal.
She picks up her glasses again, settling them back on her nose, then begins to skim, occasionally pausing as her finger traces a line or taps at the margin.
I try to keep still, but my foot has started a restless tap against the floor, and my palms are sweating. I press them against my thighs.
Another page turns. Then another.
After an age, she looks up, and I have no idea what she’s thinking.
“Tell me, Torin,” she says as she lowers her glasses slightly and peers at me over the rim, “why did you change your topic? You were so invested in the loss of Highland culture at the hands of the British government. I didn’t think you would be willing to pursue anything else.”
I sigh. “It’s a long story, Professor.”
“I am a historian,” she says. “I adore long stories.”
I consider how much to tell her. I’ve been keeping it in for so long that a full recap will almost certainly result in tears, and I can no longer tell where certainty ends and assumption begins.
The last thing I want is to drag Beau’s name through the mud if I’ve been wrong, especially after our recent truce.
So I decide to stick with the facts as I understand them.
“I’ll start with the short version,” I say and take a deep breath. “Essentially, I found out that Beau is working on a very similar topic to me, and I want my thesis to be distinct.”
She blinks at me, and her expression is finally one I can read. She thinks I’m an eejit.
“I’m not sure where you got your information, Mr. Ramsay, but Mr. Fontenot is putting his business background to good use and researching the economic consequences of Scottish colonization attempts. I have already approved his proposal.”
I stare at her, my brain trying, and failing, to comprehend.
“But I saw a proposal with his name on it,” I say. “It was about British tactics in suppressing the Highlands.”
She hums softly. “Oui, that was one of many topics he submitted during his first term. He had quite the list when he arrived here, and I helped him refine it over time. He drafted many proposals as an exercise to see where his interests and knowledge overlapped. He expressed interest in Highland atrocities for a time, but he removed it from his list of possibilities at the start of term. He has been pursuing historical economic research ever since.”
Beau met with Professor Moreau immediately after the holidays? Then what were all of those notes?
My mind swims, and it must show on my face because the professor gives me a meaningful look.
“You should know,” she says, her voice gentle, “that when I met with Beau at the start of term, I made him once again go through his full list of possible research topics with me. He had to give me cogent rationale for why each one would or would not work. Only once I was satisfied with his reasoning did I approve his proposal.”
I’m not sure where she’s going with this. “That makes sense,” I say, my brain still foggy. “Did you want to do that with my list of topics?”
“I do,” she says simply. “I think your original proposal was excellent, and so is this one, but I want you to think carefully. Your thesis could define the trajectory of your career. I will approve either, but I require a compelling reason for the one you choose.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I can continue with the work I thought I’d lost. Return to the history I’ve built my identity around, the one I’ve defended, argued, lived for years.
I can shed new light on the government-sponsored cruelty perpetrated against the Highlands.
It’s exactly what I’d wanted, but it doesn’t bring the joy I thought it would.
The fact is, I love my new topic. It highlights the contributions Scotland has made to the world.
It celebrates the country’s early efforts to educate the general populace and all the good that came from it.
From modern, human-centered views on economics, morality, and philosophy, to medical breakthroughs like antiseptics and penicillin, and significant technological advances like tarmac, the air-filled tire, and the telephone, Scotland and her diaspora have changed the course of global history in countless ways.
The Encyclopedia Britannica was compiled and edited in Edinburgh, for Christ’s sake!
Focusing on my country’s beauty has sent a ray of sunshine bursting through my cloudy days, and it’s actually thanks to Beau that I found my new research area.
He bought me a book over the holidays about Scotland’s contributions to modern society, and after reading it, I was intrigued.
I’d already known most of what the author had posited, but it had never occurred to me in the way that he stated.
Given there’s more work to do on the subject, I ran with it, and it’s brought more joy—even during this sad time in my life—than my original topic ever did.
I was able to see Scotland not just as something broken and taken, but as something that endured. That shaped the world. That gave.
Now both paths sit in front of me, equally viable, equally demanding, and I don’t know which one is mine anymore.
“May I have a few days to think about it?” I ask, needing space more than anything else.
She considers me, then inclines her head. “You have one week to make a final decision.”
“Thank you,” I say. I gather my things quickly, the room suddenly too small, my thoughts too loud.
But before I can leave, I turn back, something nagging at me.
“Professor?” She hasn’t looked away from me. “What reason did Beau give,” I ask carefully, “for not pursuing Highland oppression?”
Her eyes narrow. “Mr. Ramsay, I do not make a habit of sharing the details of discussions I have with colleagues.”
Heat rises in my face. “Right. Of course. Sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“That being said,” she says, lifting a hand, “I believe it is appropriate in this instance.”
She reaches for her glasses, sliding them off and setting them neatly on the desk, her gaze settling fully on me now.
“When Beau gave me his reasons for why he wasn’t pursuing each topic, I challenged every one of them, acting as an intellectual sparring partner,” she says.
“However, when we got to the topic of Highland culture, the only reason he gave was that you were already working on something similar and that he refused to move forward with it because, in his mind, it belonged to you.”
I flinch as the blood drains from my face, my stomach lurching.
“If I recall correctly, and I usually do,” she says, one corner of her mouth turning up, “when I asked Mr. Fontenot why he thought you should expand on that research area instead of him, his exact words were, ‘Because I know in my bones that no one could do it better than Torin.’ And on that point, I couldn’t argue. ”
My mouth goes dry, my stomach knotting so tight it hurts. Of course Beau didn’t steal my research or betray me; he would never hurt me intentionally. Even the things he said about me when I left him, he only said because I was pushing him away. He was doing what he had to.
“Mr. Fontenot has remained interested in your original topic,” Professor Moreau continues, “and I provided him with additional reading materials. He never told me why, but between you and me, I believe he wanted to impress you with his knowledge of your research area.”
A tear slips free, running hot down my cheek, as everything rearranges itself in brutal clarity. He hadn’t been competing with me, he’d been choosing me.
My chest tightens, breath catching, something cracking open beneath my ribs that I can’t hold back any longer. All the fear, all the hesitation, all the careful walls I’d built—they give way at once, collapsing under the weight of the truth of what I’d done.
I’d been so scared of falling for Beau and then losing him.
And now I have lost him, haven’t I?
My pulse kicks hard, adrenaline flooding through me, chasing the panic that rises fast on its heels.
But if he cared about me that deeply for that long, then maybe there’s a chance. He might not forgive me for doubting him and for the cruel things I said, but I need to find out because…
My heart beats faster, a realization coursing through me, the blood thrumming in my veins.
I love him. I love Beau Fontenot.
“I have to go,” I say as I rush from the professor’s office.
“Mr. Ramsay,” she calls from her desk, and I stop long enough to see a proper smile on her face when she says, “Bonne chance.”