Preston shakes his head. “I didn’t want anything to happen to Sophia. I just wanted her to back off, to let the stuff with Lance go. Then I could keep the department out of the news. I could keep the university administration off my back. Do you know what it would look like for me if that came out? That I knew about Lance’s parties and everything else and looked the other way? I want to be dean someday.”

“So you tried to convince her to back off? You were going to meet with her at her office?”

“I arranged a meeting. After hours, outside her office, so no one would see us together. No security cameras, nothing. She thought she was just meeting with me. But I told Lance about it and asked him to show up. Eventually. I thought if I got the two of them together, if the three of us talked it out, Sophia might cool down. That was my plan. Madeline was a senior. She was going to graduate with honors and move on. And I was getting through to Sophia, talking to her in her car. . . .”

His face looks distant, contorted again, the way it was in the bedroom. Like he’s in pain, remembering.

“Go on, Preston. Something went wrong. Something with—”

“Lance showed up. Early. And he’d been drinking.” He looks right into my eyes. “Connor, I wish to fuck I’d handled it on my own. But Lance got in the car, in the backseat, and he smelled like a distillery. And Sophia reacted like a caged animal. She wanted to get out. She immediately started talking about calling the police and reporting Lance.”

“And what happened?” I ask. “He killed her.”

Preston shakes his head. “Connor, the sad thing is we actually made progress. I’ll give Sophia credit—she listened. She calmed down. She listened. Lance said he was wrong to harass Madeline. He said he got carried away with his students sometimes and got too close to them. And he admitted he drank too much. And he wanted to work on that. Sophia wasn’t ready to back down or let it all go, but some of the edge left her. She was listening, like I said. That’s the damnedest thing, Connor. She was listening. I was bringing them together. I was working it out. . . .”

“So what went wrong?” I ask.

Preston bites down on his lower lip. “Fuck it all, Connor. Sophia just kept asking for more. She wouldn’t take what she was given and be happy. You know?”

“Was she supposed to just ‘take what she was given’? Is anybody?”

“She wouldn’t. She told Lance he should stop having those parties. She said they were risky and encouraged the wrong kind of behavior. Underage drinking. Impaired driving. She said it wasn’t the way a mentor was supposed to act, and he should cut it out.”

“And Lance said no.”