“Good strategy.” When he had made a bundle of the files he said, “What is all this, anyway?”

“For your meeting with the regents. You go from seeing the dean of student life directly to your lunch meeting. Your briefcase is by the door.”

John pulled himself up out of the depths of the couch. “I love it when you talk executive. Faculty club?”

Rob said, “The regents never eat at the faculty club. Thomasina’s. And come right back after,” he added, making herding gestures toward the door. “You’ve got a one o’clock with the registrar.”

“Hey,” John said, “I got here three months early specifically to avoid a panic. Why the rush?”

Rob snorted. “All these years in academia, you should know the way things work. Where there’s a free slot in any schedule, a meeting will be created to fill it. Nature abhors a vacuum and all that.”

“In other words, I’ve landed in a black hole.”

“You wouldn’t be happy any other way,” Rob said, opening the door. “And you know it.”

Patty-Cake Walker stood there, and just beyond her, Miss Zula Bragg and her dog. Miss Zula, who had once seemed the tallest woman in the world, had begun to fold in on herself with age, but the expression in her eyes was as alarmingly astute as ever.

“Miss Zula,” John said, sure that his voice must crack, “what a nice—”

“John,” said the old woman. “A word, if you please. Louie.” She pointed with her cane, and the dog trotted into the office ahead of her.

Patty-Cake said, “Dr. Grant, I tried to tell Miss Zula that you have an important meeting—”

“Not that important. Come in, Miss Zula, please. Rob, would you get some tea and call the dean to reschedule? Thank you, Ms. Walker, that will be all.”

Patty-Cake drew in a sharp breath but she slipped away without protest, Rob just behind her. That left John alone with a seventy-five-year-old woman who had once been the bane of his existence, and who promised to take up that role again, now that he had come back to Ogilvie.

She said, “You’ve gone and thrown your little brother to the lions, John.”

John pulled out one of the deep leather chairs for her. “Rob can take care of himself. I was planning to come by to see you this afternoon. I haven’t been here forty-eight hours yet.”

Miss Zula ignored the chair and walked to the couch, where she settled herself with her gloved hands folded over the head of her cane. Louie jumped up beside her. He had one blue eye and one brown and a companionable way about him. Miss Zula’s dogs always did; she would no more tolerate a surly dog than she would a whining undergraduate.