It’s only John Grant, Lydia told herself. Lucy Ogilvie’s oldest boy. You’ve known him all your life. And still he seemed as alien and remote as a face on a television screen. John Grant had connections, money, looks, education, position, authority; he had a beautiful fiancée who was his social equal, and on top of all that, he was the new chair of the English department at Ogilvie College.

It had been a stupid idea to make an appointment to see him. She was thinking of turning around when he caught sight of her.

“Lydia?”

A smile broke out on his face. A real smile, one that made the skin around his blue eyes crinkle, but more than that: it made him look real. His voice was deep and a little hoarse and his tone—the word came to mind and she couldn’t dismiss it out of hand—sincere.

“Come on up, coffee’s on and time’s a-wasting.”

The office was a mess. Stacks of boxes everywhere, books in wobbling towers in front of empty bookshelves, a cascade of binders. He held the door for her and she stepped over a small mountain of manuscripts bound with rubber bands to get to the couch. The whole time he talked, asking questions and sometimes answering them himself, but his manner was easy and his tone friendly. He might have spent half his life in the North with his father’s people, but John Grant sounded like Georgia to her, and more than that, he had things to say and he wasn’t afraid to share them. He was in the middle of a story of lost boxes and wayward moving vans when he interrupted himself to hold out a cup in her direction.

“Milk? Sugar?”

Lydia, against all inclination and training, told him the truth: she liked both, in quantity. This didn’t seem to faze him at all, he just loaded up the cup and then brought it over to hand to her. And then John Grant pulled out a white bakery bag, transparent with butter and smelling of browned sugar. “Have a cinnamon roll,” he said. “They’re still warm.”

Lydia studied his face closely, but found no trace of mockery. She had this idea—and very strange it was, too—that she could sit here and devour a couple thousand calories and he wouldn’t take any real note of it.

“So,” he said when she had told him she’d already had breakfast, “what made you decide on Ogilvie College?”

She said the first thing that came into her head. “Probably the same things that brought you back here after so many years.”

That made him laugh out loud. He stood up and went to the window. “This is the best place on earth,” he said. “It gets under your skin.”

Lydia said, “So why did you leave?”