“Oh. Sure. That’s not what I’m here about. I mean, thanks for telling me. There’s no rush. I don’t have to defend it until . . . When am I supposed to defend it?”

“End of April or the beginning of May should work. In time for your graduation.”

“Cool. Yeah, that’s fine.”

Rebecca recognizes her missed opportunity and curses herself again for being stupid. She could have pretended she’s here to discuss the thesis instead of what she’s really here for. She could have said thanks and left, but she missed her chance. And now she sits across from Nye with him expecting her to have something else halfway intelligent to talk about.

Nye studies her. One of his eyebrows goes up, which is the look he gets when he doesn’t understand something a student says in class and wants to express disapproval without being totally shitty or hurting someone’s feelings.

“How are things going otherwise?” he asks. “Classes good? Life good?”

“Things are good, yeah. It’s cold. Really cold.”

“It’s January. We’ll start to get a break soon. I grew up in Michigan. If we were up there, we’d have a whole lot of winter ahead of us.”

“Totally. Yeah.”

“Did you just want to talk about the weather?” he asks. He has this way of low-key ragging on students when he asks questions. He’s not being rude, but he’s kind of saying, Hey, do you really have anything important on your mind?

Rebecca swallows. Her throat is dry. Chalky. Like she’d been drinking the night before even though she hadn’t. And rarely did.

“It’s about your talk last night,” she says, impressed with herself for how steady the words sound.

Nye’s eyebrow goes a millimeter higher. “What about it?”

“I really enjoyed it. I did. I liked the way you talked about the book and how you wrote it. And answered all those questions. It was interesting. I haven’t started reading it yet.”

“I’m sure you have plenty of other reading to do with graduation coming up.”

“No doubt.” She tries to generate saliva in her mouth and manages to summon a drop. “Anyway, last night. It’s about the crowd, the people who were there. Well, one person who was there.”

Nye straightens in his chair, tilts his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“Okay,” she says, plunging forward. “You’re going to think I’m nuts, but I’m pretty sure I saw Madeline O’Brien in the back of the room last night.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It feels good to say it.

Even though Nye stares back at Rebecca, his face showing nothing beyond the raised eyebrow, and even though he probably thinks she’s the craziest, most irrational person he’s ever met in his life, she’s glad she said it.