Verena’s cheeks flush. “Yes and no. I miss the cafés—on the river, you know? And being able to walk everywhere. But I don’t miss the snow. And all the tourists on the weekends.”

My father laughs. “Here, you just have UGA fans.”

It’s always the same questions. Always the same answer. I swirl a thick egg noodle with my fork.

“And how’s life at the university treating you?”

“It’s…” A pause, while she exchanges a glance with my mother.

“Go ahead,” my mother tells her magnanimously. “They’ve heard me complain for years now.”

“It’s just a lot of work. Between all the department and committee meetings, lesson preparations, office hours, and student emails, I haven’t had any time—”

To work on my research or for myself, I finish for her.

“For my research,” she says.

I smirk. I wonder if the boyfriend’s wised up yet. A relationship with an academic is no picnic.

“And, I don’t know, maybe it’s because of the bigger classes, but I’ve already had problems with students cheating.”

My father nods in a way that conveys he’s heard all this before.

“But not just looking at someone’s paper during a test or downloading essays from online—which is bad enough. But I had a student send in one of his friends to take a test for him.” She puffs up her chest, and the German accent underscoring her vowels becomes more prominent. “And then lie about it. As if I wouldn’t notice.”

“They do it all the time in big lectures,” my mother tells her. “It’s especially rampant in Greek life. They’ll send a younger brother in to sign an attendance sheet—”

I put down my fork, thinking of Jay’s professors, the way they deferred to their teaching assistants and grade books. “Wouldn’t you recognize your own students?”

My mother clears her throat. Verena helps herself to another serving of spaetzle.

“I would,” my mother says patiently, “but my classes are capped at thirty. We’re talking about lecture halls with hundreds of students.” She gives me a knowing smile that says, Indulge Verena, she’s new. “On large campuses—cheating’s practically an industry.”

She turns back to Verena. “We’re professors—there to teach, not to police.” A weird nod at me.

I frown.

“Ultimately, it’s on the students if they decide to cheat. We can’t chase down every infraction. Just have to know that that kind of behavior will catch up with them eventually.”

“But what if it doesn’t?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” I fidget in my chair. The room feels hot all of a sudden, and I wonder if my father remembered to turn off the oven and have the sudden paranoid urge to go into the kitchen and check.