I checked my phone—Find My Friends—watching grimly as Dad’s little circle popped up only a few meters away. He was in his office right now.

I turned and headed there, nodding to the guard at the front desk. All the elevator readings were on the top floor, so I jogged up the steps, the burning in my legs nothing compared to how the rest of me felt.

Halfway down the gilded hallway, I heard the echoes of familiar voices, speaking in such an unfamiliar tone that my feet locked in place. I backed up, one step, two, watching for the vent in the ceiling. Just the right spot to hear—

“Since when are you a detective? I mean, come on.”

“Bill, stop, he deserves an explanation.” Nora. Her voice was a purr.

“Damn right I deserve an explanation. And so does every board member you’ve lied to.” Dad, quiet, frothing mad.

All in his office.

“Where did that money go?” Dad growled. “Close to a million missing from the endowment—how are you going to explain that?”

The financial documents. Amberley in trouble. These were the papers Dad had been poring over.

I pressed myself to the wall and listened, watching the hallway for passersby. It was empty. Everybody was at Oscar’s dress rehearsal.

“It was . . . a personal loan,” Bill said, his voice a shade more conciliatory. “It was all meant to be paid back in January. I had my own investments. But then . . .”

“Jesus,” Dad breathed. “You don’t mean to tell me you got swindled too?”

What was happening here? I stared into the vacant hall, listening hard.

Bill put the school’s money in a fund that went bust? What did he mean by “personal loan”?

“A lot of good investors fell for it,” Nora cut in, her voice barely audible. “Some very savvy people.”

“A lot of our donors, you mean.” Dad exhaled with a hiss. He must have been right under the vent. “But why in hell would you take out that much money? What possible reason—?”

“I’m leaving Stephen,” Nora said quietly. “We needed a nest egg.”

“So unnest it,” Dad said.

We? Who is the we? And then, in a flash, I remembered. Nora and Bill-Is-Rusting in that empty room at the Wing Club, the way they’d darted away from each other like repelling magnets. The way she’d looked that day last month when I caught her leaving a taxi with someone else inside—frantic, a cornered deer. The cancelled lunch. The casual lie to her husband.

The way Dad had talked about them for years. Nora and Bill are coming for dinner. Nora and Bill have big plans for the fall semester.

Nora and Bill are ripping off the school.

“The money’s gone,” Bill said bluntly. “We invested it in an off-shore account and the firm got raided.”

His shoes made a squeak, like he was moving forward. I slunk back an inch.