Chapter One
The breeze comes off the harbor with all the salt and brine of low tide, and Ned joins the crush of students winding through campus to their first day of classes. He needs a coffee. He needs a briefcase so he’s not hauling around his scuffed and worn backpack like he’s an undergrad. He also needs his phone to beep with the message he’s waited for all day, but when it finally buzzes in his pocket, he huffs out a sigh.
A favor, Chris has written in the newest email to arrive. Ned purses his lips, stepping out of the swirls of students under one of the quad’s towering maple trees. Definitely not what he’s waiting for, but he reads it anyway, Chris’s explanation of a professor out on emergency leave, an open course and Ned, if you could teach it, please.
He tips his head back and stares up through the branches at the blue, brilliant sky. The leaves are just starting to turn with the first blush of red and gold on the highest limbs. The fall foliage comes earlier in Maine than he always expects it to, no matter that he’s been on this campus for five autumns now.
A favor. It’s an intro course, one Ned can teach in his sleep. He did teach it in his sleep last year, those days when he’d roll out of bed after tossing fitfully all night, his eyes gritty and stinging. Do it, he tells himself. He can email Chris back, go get his coffee, and get on with his evening. Maybe even afford a briefcase one of these days. His thumb hovers over his keyboard, but he shoves his phone into his pocket instead of typing out a reply.
His phone doesn’t buzz again as he jogs across the street, lifting a hand in thanks to a sedan that slows for him. He pulls his shirt from its neat tuck into his slacks and shoulders open the café door. The bells hanging from the knob jingle their cheerful peal over the chatter of students and summer’s last groups of tourists with their beers and coffees. Ned’s stool sits empty against the bar, and he drops his backpack next to it, hiking his elbows on the bar and leaning over it to catch Patrick’s eye.
“Hey,” he says. And then louder, “Hey, Pat, your phone, man.”
“Jen didn’t send you anything?” Pat asks. He dumps an inch of foam from the top of a pint glass, bubbles sliding down into a pool of froth on the metal tray beneath the taps.
“Let me just see it for a second,” Ned says.
“What do we say?”
“And a coffee.”
“We say ‘please,’” Pat says, but tosses his phone over.
Leave it alone, she’ll text you if she texts you, Pat’d said that morning, batting Ned’s phone out of his hands, while Baxter snuffled at their feet, eager for his walk.
Now, Pat taps a finger on the bar to get Ned’s attention. “How was your first class?”
“Fine.” Ned types in Pat’s passcode. Half the students hadn’t shown up, and half of the ones who had will probably drop his course before it meets next. Ned will have a lecture hall full of new faces, and he’ll have to go over the syllabus once again, but it was fine—and fine’s been as good as it gets for so long that Ned’s learned to not complain.
Jen may not have texted Ned all day, but she’s no slouch about posting pictures. Ned’s kid is cute as all hell. Ned scoots his stool closer to the bar and leans over Pat’s phone, scrolling through the stream of photos. Peggy’s got pigtails today, her bright purple backpack over her shoulders, and a grin that looks like it could split her face in two. She’s the absolute most adorable thing Ned’s ever seen, standing there on the front steps to their house.
Jen’s house. Ned bites at the inside of his cheek. He has to remember that—it was their house and now it isn’t because there isn’t a them anymore. It’s Jen’s dark green front door, and Jen’s front stoop, and Jen’s stone walkway. The grass has grown up enough to tickle the bottoms of Peggy’s pink Velcro shoes. Jen never did like weeding those stones. No, that was always Ned’s job.
Ned sighs and Pat reaches over and plucks the phone away. “Enough of that, you depressing lump of a doctoral student you.” Louder, he says, “Hi, what can I get for you?”
Ned wasn’t done looking, but Pat tucks the phone into his back pocket, so Ned pulls his own out. The screen’s still blank, no new notifications over the lock screen picture of Peggy smiling up at him, all dimples and dark brown hair and baby teeth she has yet to start losing.
She will, soon enough. And hell if he isn’t going to be there to see it.
A newspaper hits the bar next to his elbow.
“Black tea with milk,” says the guy who dropped it.
Ned rubs at his forehead with three fingers. On his phone, Peggy’s wearing her teal T-shirt with a giant purple triceratops that he’d gotten her. It’s too small for her now, only a handful of months since he took that picture.
“Milk’s behind you,” Pat says.
Ned locks his phone, pressing his fingers into his temple. First day of kindergarten. What kind of father is he to miss her first day of kindergarten?
“Steamed milk,” Newspaper Guy says. “No foam. Please.”
“Righto, steamed milk, very fancy. Two percent okay?”
You have work. Put on pants, go finish your PhD, and you’ll be done before you know it, Pat had said, smacking Ned on the top of the head just hours ago.
“Skim,” the guy says.
Ned tucks his forehead into his palm. He should go upstairs. He should definitely not ask for Pat’s phone again so he can stare down at Peggy grinning, the morning sun catching on her round cheeks, and the stuffed triceratops sticking out of her backpack. He should let it be. He knows what searching through the pictures Jen’s posted will lead to—Ned’s own kid, balanced on Jen’s new boyfriend’s hip, grinning her grin for the camera.
Pat deposits a cup of coffee in front of Ned. He stares at it. He needs to pour milk into it. He doesn’t have the energy to pour milk into it, and he needs to because that’s how he drinks his coffee. Do it, he tells himself. Just get up and do it. This semester is going to be good. Quick and painless, get up here to campus, do his work, graduate, and get back home to Boston. Milk in his coffee is a good first step toward that. Do it, do it, do it.
Pat leans across the bar, pours a splash of milk into his cup, and then spins the jug so Ned can see the label. “Move your butt, or I’ll put more in.” Pat gestures to the skim milk printed in large letters.
Ned sighs. He shifts, pulling his forehead out of his hand. Stands too, and reaches behind to grab the pitcher of whole milk.
I’ll teach that class, he texts Chris. Typing takes more energy than it feels like it should. He’s going to have a bear of a semester, teaching three courses. He chews at his lip and adds, Thanks. Before he can rethink it, he hits send and opens his email.
A couple of comments on your dissertation draft, Chris has written in the first one. Come see me.
Ned’s stomach dips. Come see me. Ned’s written that to students before. It’s never good.
“Shit,” he mutters into his wrist. He drops his hand and blinks his eyes open and—
Shit.
The sight of Ned’s former statistics professor makes a headache pulse in his temples. Of all the people to run into, freshly back to campus, facing Chris’s critiques to his dissertation, and the semester stretching before him.