Chapter 4: Across the Hall

I went out the side door after her.

By the time I got down the steps, the red curls were already gone around the corner of the library.

I didn't chase her. I had a board lunch.

I sat through three hours of trustees shaking my hand and not meeting my eyes.

Then I walked home.

Home was a single room on the third floor of the north-quad residence hall, the oldest dorm on campus.

My assistant hated it.

She'd found me a condo by the river with a doorman.

I told her I was here to get an MBA, and MBA students live in dorms.

The truth was simpler. I wanted to see the place the way students saw it.

So far I had seen a radiator that clanked all night and a shower that ran cold after six minutes.

I climbed the stairs and stopped at my door.

A girl was sitting on the floor across the hall with her back against her own door, a sketchbook on her knees.

Red curls. Pencil through the bun. Pincushion on the wrist.

She looked up and saw me, and the sketchbook slid off her lap.

"Oh, no," she said.

"Hi," I said.

"You live there? You live in three-fourteen? With the radiator?"

"I live in three-fourteen with the radiator."

"You're the chair of the board and you live with the radiator."

"It clanks in B flat," I said. "I find it soothing."

She stared at me.

Then she laughed, a startled honk of a laugh, and covered her mouth.

"I'm Maddie," she said through her fingers. "Fenn. Junior. Fashion design. I'm so sorry I ran away from you."

"Why did you?"

Her eyes went to my jacket and slid off it.

"You lost a button," she said instead.

I looked down.

The second button on my right cuff was gone. Torn out when the bodyguard grabbed me, probably.

"I can fix that," she said. "Right now. I've got thread that'll match. Please let me."

So I sat on the hall floor in my mother's suit and held out my wrist.

Maddie pulled a tin of buttons out of her room, found one the right size right away, and threaded a needle without looking.

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