18. Erik
ERIK
The spirit program clears financial review at nine-twelve Tuesday morning. Football clears five minutes later, which puts Richard Caldwell in my office before I finish attaching the reinstatement recommendation to the board packet.
He comes in carrying the clean audit as if the report personally offended him.
Outside the windows, students cross the quad between classes while two maintenance workers remove temporary fencing from the athletic complex.
Eight weeks ago, I shut down every program attached to the compromised accounts.
Today, the first barriers are coming down.
Richard drops the audit onto my desk. "You understand how this will look."
I finish the electronic signature before giving him my attention. "The accounts cleared review."
"That isn't what donors will hear." He takes the chair opposite me without waiting for an invitation. "Football money sits at the center of the laundering investigation. You shut down athletics, took eight weeks of public criticism, then reinstated football while the investigation remains open."
Liya sits near the windows with her tablet open over the final funding memo.
She scrolls through another page before looking up.
"The spirit accounts are clean. University policy links reinstated scholarship programs to the same active athletic funding pool.
We either follow the written policy or invent a new one because trustees are nervous. "
Richard turns toward her. "Football is not an innocent bystander in this."
"Neither are nineteen-year-olds whose tuition depends on accounts that passed review.
" Liya sets the tablet on her knee. "Keeping them suspended after the audit clears them gives Orell exactly what he wants.
The university starts changing its own rules because his crimes made following them politically inconvenient. "
Richard looks back at me. "You can delay the decision."
I cap the pen I no longer need and put it beside the board packet. "Yes."
He waits.
The office remains quiet except for the ventilation above the conference table. Richard finally leans back, irritation settling into the posture he uses when he thinks patience will become leverage.
"You're not going to."
"No."
He pushes the clean report toward me without opening it. "The board will call this political."
I shrug. "They can read the audit."
"You know most of them won't."
Liya closes her tablet. "Then their refusal to read shouldn't become university policy."
Richard gets up. He straightens the front of his jacket, looks at my signature one more time, then gathers the report he still hasn't opened. "When this causes another donor revolt, I'll make sure the minutes reflect that I objected."
I glance at him. "I expect nothing less."
He leaves with enough force to make the outer door audible from my office.
Liya watches it close. "You enjoyed that."
I move the signed recommendation into the outgoing file. "No."
She smiles. "You're a poor liar before lunch."
"I've had lunch."
"That makes it worse." She returns to the funding memo while I submit the reinstatement. By noon, spirit and football both have official return dates, compliance has the notices, and financial aid begins restoring disbursement schedules.
I don't call Rowan.
My recusal means she learns with everyone else, from the university notice and the spirit-program message that follows it.
I chose that separation because it protects her.
I still dislike sitting at my desk knowing the decision affects Callie's scholarship and Rowan's team while I'm barred from giving her a thirty-second warning.
The restriction is doing exactly what I designed it to do. That doesn't make it pleasant.
Makari arrives after one with a single sheet instead of the Tyler Garcia file. He closes the office door and places the index beside my laptop.
"You asked me to confirm whether the complaints existed."
I read the headings without touching the paper. Three academic-integrity complaints predate the donor reception. Two harassment reports came later, and one involves a student whose name I don't recognize.
I reach for a routing form from the drawer. "Nothing comes through this office."
Makari remains standing while I enter the complaint numbers and route the matter to academic integrity with outside counsel attached. "You aren't requesting the underlying reports?"
"No."
"You asked whether they were real."
"I have the answer."
I add a standing instruction that my office receives no findings, no sanctions, no appeal notices, and no status reports. When I sign, the form makes the separation harder to undo later, which is the point.
Makari reads it after I slide the page across the desk. "Policy doesn't require this much distance."
"Policy is the minimum."
He puts the form into his folder but doesn't leave. "You could've ordered an internal audit weeks ago."
"I could've abused my position because I disliked a student touching Rowan."
His expression doesn't change, though the pause is enough.
I lean back. "She was right. Tyler's conduct toward her doesn't give me authority over what happens to him afterward. If the complaints are legitimate, independent review will establish it."
He frowns. "You've been thinking about that conversation."
"Yes."
"You ruminated for five weeks." He sounds amused.
"Evolution usually takes time."
He chuckles. "That part was already established."
Makari leaves before I decide whether the answer deserves one of my own or just an obscene gesture.
Rowan is at the penthouse when I get home. Her shoes are under the kitchen stool, a casebook lies open beside two highlighters, and one of my sweaters hangs from her shoulders despite several of her own being twenty feet away.
She has taken over one end of the island without creating disorder. Her laptop occupies the center, a legal pad sits at her right elbow, and three tabs mark the section she's reading on evidentiary privilege. A half-finished cup of tea has gone cold beside the book.
She looks up when I put my keys on the counter. "You reinstated the program."
"The audit cleared it." I remove my jacket and hang it over the nearest chair.
"Football came back with us."
I nod. "Funding policy links them."
Rowan closes the casebook around her pen and studies me long enough to make clear she understands exactly how much I dislike that answer. "Callie cried when she got the notice."
I stop beside the island.
Rowan reaches for the tea, discovers the temperature, and makes a face before setting it back down. "She's already rewritten the first practice plan twice. She's happy."
I almost go toward the kitchen before she speaks again.
"Thank you."
The two words stop me more effectively than an argument.
Rowan rests her forearm beside the casebook. "I know you followed the audit. I know you didn't reinstate it for me, and you couldn't tell me before the notice went out. I'm still thanking you."
"You don't owe me thanks for following the process."
"I know." She opens the book again. "I'm doing it anyway."
I turn toward the refrigerator before she gets a longer look at me. Chicken, vegetables, and herbs the house staff stocked yesterday occupy the lower shelf. I take them out, put a cutting board on the counter, and open the knife drawer.
Rowan swivels on the stool. "What are you doing?"
"Cooking."
She looks genuinely stunned. "You have staff."
"They're gone."
"You also own a phone." She watches me take a pan from the lower cabinet. "People bring food when wealthy men call them."
I laugh. "I'm familiar with delivery services."
Suspicion replaces amusement. "Do you actually know how to cook?"
I look at her. "I'm forty-five, not helpless."
"The distinction remains under review." She returns to the casebook, although she keeps checking my progress as if dinner may become evidence.
For the next hour, the penthouse becomes quieter than I'm used to without becoming empty.
Oil crackles in the pan. Rowan turns pages behind me, marks cases, and occasionally reads a sentence twice when she dislikes the first interpretation.
The range hood runs over the stove. Somewhere below us, traffic presses through the avenue.
She interrupts herself while I cut vegetables. "Can a university waive privilege accidentally?"
"Yes."
"That answer is too fast."
I keep chopping. "You asked whether it can."
"I assumed reasoning came with the answer."
"You should ask a better question."
Rowan looks over the top of the casebook. "Your teaching skills remain terrible."
I grin with my back to her. "I'm not your professor."
"Blackthorne should be grateful."
I put the vegetables into the pan before she sees me smile.
The ordinary details affect me more than they should.
Rowan is barefoot in my kitchen with my sweater pushed above her wrists because the sleeves are too long.
Her notes have spread into space that used to hold nothing except mail and a bowl nobody touches.
There are no donors watching us, no cameras waiting outside a ballroom, and no reason for her to be here except that she came home to the same place I did.
That thought stays with me while I finish dinner.
We eat at the island because neither of us bothers moving to the dining table.
Rowan tells me Vanessa challenged the reinstatement procedure before the notice had been public for five minutes.
Callie has reorganized the first practice twice.
Harper believes the credential pattern points toward a person with legitimate access across more than one university system.
I give Rowan the clean findings from the reinstatement audit and nothing about Tyler. That process belongs to independent review now. I refuse to pull it back into my hands simply because the man involved annoys me.
After dinner, she brings her casebook to the sofa while I take the latest foundation report with me. She reads beside me for twenty minutes, one leg tucked beneath her, until the book starts lowering by degrees.