“Come on.” He waves me in, so I follow. Preston wears skinny black jeans, and the sleeves on his checked shirt are rolled to the elbows with pinpoint perfection. He’s a few years younger than I am, a guy who went straight from getting his undergraduate degree to earning his PhD and was on his way to tenure before he turned thirty. He runs the English Department through a combination of cool efficiency and ironic detachment. Everyone assumes he’ll be dean or provost someday. If not at Commonwealth, then somewhere. Behind his back as well as to his face, his colleagues call him “Preston the Politician.”

He closes the door to his book-lined office once I’m in and settled into a chair. Preston breezes around to his side of the desk and sits. He checks his e-mail first, clicks a few things, then turns to me.

“You kind of look like shit,” he says. “You had too much champagne.”

“And that hill is too steep.”

“You need to get to the gym with me. Do some weights. Run a little. Now that so much is going right in your life, you need to rebuild the temple of your body.”

“The temple has a lot of cobwebs and loose bricks, especially after a night like the last one.”

Preston rests his folded hands on top of the desk, which is remarkably free from clutter. To his left sit three framed photos—one of him with his wife, Kelly, and then one photo of each of his daughters. They look perfect enough to have come with the frames. To his right, row after row of books. He teaches postcolonial literature and is known for his high standards, strict adherence to the rules of grammar, and dynamic lectures. Students love him or fear him. Or both.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he says. “In a roundabout way.”

“Last night?”

“Your visitor,” he says, his face becoming more serious. “The one you said was the neighbor up the street?”

I swallow hard. Why the hell is he bringing this up? And what does he know?

He unfolds his hands and rubs at a little speck of dirt only he can see.

“I just want to make sure you aren’t getting into some kind of trouble you’re not going to be able to get out of,” he says.

And then I have to wonder—did he see Madeline leaving my house last night?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

For the second time that morning, I find myself on the wrong end of an interrogation.

This time it’s a friend, but that doesn’t make it feel much better.

“I don’t understand, Preston. And I do need to get some things done before class.”