“That can be tough. Everyone has their own work to do. Look, I don’t feel safe walking around campus at night. A friend of mine . . . Well, I don’t want to say too much. I kind of based the thesis on something that happened to my friend. That’s the violent part. And I’m worried it’s telling her story in a way I shouldn’t.”

“If it affected you, it’s your story too.”

He sounded so wise. So understanding. Would she ever be grown up enough to sound like she knew what she was talking about? To sound calm and certain?

“I guess so,” she said.

Nye looked like he’d decided something. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll accept this draft in handwritten form. You’re lucky it’s legible. But you’ll have to make it a Word file for the Honors College. You’ve got a couple of months for that since the defense will be in early May. Then you can graduate.”

“I know. That’s how I’ll revise it. On a computer. I promise.”

“I flipped through it a little earlier. What’s up with those pages near the end that are actually typed? For a while, I thought it was some postmodern intertextual commentary. Why did that happen? Did your computer rise from the dead for a few days?”

“No. I borrowed a computer . . . but it didn’t really work out for the long run.”

He drank his beer. His shoulders were slumped, and up close, he looked older than he did in class. Madeline saw lines around his eyes she’d never noticed before, the amount of gray in his dark hair. He’d told them he was forty-three, and that just sounded old. Madeline knew people in their forties could still have a good time, but Connor looked like a great weight was pressing down on him. And she couldn’t stop thinking about what Isaac had told her.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

He looked over, the light catching his brown eyes. “I’m drunk.”

“Anything besides that?”

He lifted the glass to his mouth but stopped without drinking. “You mean, the haunting memory of my wife and son being devoured by a dog?”

Another classic rock song was playing, one Madeline didn’t know. Something about a guy who kept moving on from one woman to another. Then again, maybe that was every classic rock song.

“I’m sorry,” Madeline said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I’m kidding,” he said. “They didn’t get devoured by a dog.”

“I know,” she said.

He perked up some. “You do? What do you know? I’m always curious to hear what’s being said about me. Each new class brings in a new rumor. So what is it now?”