For a long moment she studied John. Silence was her usual response to excuses; it was amazing how a remorseful student would respond to it by digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole. It was an excellent trick, one of many John had borrowed from Miss Zula to good effect in his own teaching career. But he wasn’t a student anymore, and he couldn’t let himself be intimidated by her, not if he wanted to make a success of this job. That meant working with Miss Zula, who had never found the right moment to retire from teaching, although her doctor—who happened to be her nephew—was constantly after her to do just that.

She said, “Bubba’s waiting for you, is he?” Miss Zula was the only person John knew who dared to call the head of the board of regents by his boyhood nickname.

“I’m not concerned,” John said.

Miss Zula snorted softly. “You’re as bad a liar now as you were as a boy, John Grant. Of course you’re worried. You have to go in there and tell them that I don’t want anything to do with their party.”

John’s eyes strayed to the posters pinned to the board behind the couch and just above her head. There were ten of them, one of which would be chosen as the official announcement for next spring’s celebration. The undergraduates had already come up with their own name for it: the Bragg Bash. A hundred fifty years for the university was not nearly as interesting as the fact that next June would be the fiftieth anniversary of Zula Bragg’s graduation from Ogilvie. Its first black woman graduate, its brightest star, the recipient of every literary prize ever given, this elderly black woman with beetle-dark eyes. In her flowered dress and straw hat and white gloves she looked more the part of a church organist, but she had produced some of the country’s greatest literature.

The Regents were so busy contemplating the media attention, the free publicity, and the bump-up to the endowment that they had forgotten to reckon with Miss Zula’s dislike of fuss.

“It’s the nature of the beast,” John said. “I disappoint them, and they cut my budget. Sometimes the order is reversed.”

She pushed out an irritated breath, her brow drawn down to a deep V. “Do you think you got this job because they have the idea you know how to deal with me?”

John laughed at that. “Not even the regents are that blind, Miss Zula. You’ll do exactly what you want. You always have. And I got this job on my merits.”

“But why did you want it to start with, that’s the question.” She was looking at him closely, her eyes slightly narrowed, as if with enough effort she could see into his head.