Chapter 23: Orientation

On the last Saturday in August, my father carried my duffel bag up four flights of stairs at Westmere.

He wouldn't let me take it from him.

"I carried a lot of lumber for this," he said, on the third landing, red in the face.

My mother followed with a box of dish towels I had told her twice I didn't need.

The room was small, with two beds and a window onto the quad.

My roommate was a physics major from Toledo, and she had already taped a periodic table over her bed.

My father stood in the middle of the floor and looked at the ceiling, the window and the radiator, and he nodded at each one in turn.

"Good wiring," he said.

"Dad."

"I'm only saying."

He put his hand on the top of my head, which he had not done since I was nine.

Then he went downstairs, and my mother cried in the car park, and I waved until the truck turned onto the main road.

At two o'clock, there was a welcome session in the architecture wing.

Eighty first-years sat in a lecture hall, and the director of admissions stood at the front with her World's Okayest Boss mug.

Tobin was not there.

He had told me the week before, with a straight face, that he was recused from the entire building.

"Miss Keogh," she said at the end, "a word."

I followed her into the corridor.

She handed me a cream envelope, and my hands went cold before I saw the crest.

It was the Westmere crest, and the seal was whole.

"Founders' scholarship," she said. "Full tuition, four years. The committee read your portfolio without a name on it."

I stared at her.

"Did Tobin..."

"Mr. Seymour was recused the morning he told me about you. He has not touched your file since May, and he does not know a thing about the vote."

"That's not what I was going to ask."

"I know."

She almost smiled.

"A man named Sutcliffe called my office on Thursday. A cousin, from Columbus. He wanted to know if the family's wing could stay in its name."

"What did you tell him?"

"That the architecture wing is welcome to be called whatever it likes, and that applicants are admitted on their work. He has since donated nothing."

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