Regina dismissed her concerns with a quick snort. Marianne could picture her smoothing back her perfect hair with glossy, candy-colored nails, or scrolling through spreadsheets on her tablet. “It’s not about the students, though it will help them in the long run,” Regina said. “Representative Tucker has an opportunity to do a lot for our campuses, and that means doing a lot for your students, and I promise you that they are deeply invested, also, in the sanctity of life. So it’s win-win. All around.”

What was she talking about? Marianne asked to speak to Eric, but was told he was on a campus tour. He was taking notes, Regina said, about some of the features and upgrades they might like to have at the Ranch. She tried to imagine what those would be—internet that didn’t cut out with every gulf breeze, perhaps video screens in the classrooms, a new copier and new furniture. A bigger library—it would be nice to have a library instead of the motley collection of weatherworn paperbacks that appeared on and disappeared from the low shelves beneath the window in the dining hall.

But those things weren’t necessary. They were no more the school than the hand-painted sign, so plaintive and homely in the newspaper photograph, was an invitation to be inspired. Between Marianne’s first and second years at NYU, much of their department had been renovated to look like the banquet room of a Four Seasons—with ornate crown moldings, patterned carpets, arched energy-efficient windows that looked out onto University Place. But her professor, the director of the program, had held on to an office in an older wing. There were exposed, clanking heating pipes, a drafty single-paned window, dingy walls covered with poems, photographs, postcards advertising her students’ upcoming books. It always smelled of black tea and orange rinds. When Marianne thought of school—when she allowed herself to go back to a time when her own writing career and adult life seemed possible, even promising—that was where she took herself.

“Would you like me to pass on a message to Eric?” asked Regina.

“Tell him to call me.” It surprised her how much it hurt to hear Regina calling Eric by name.