My Fiancé Stole My University Acceptance Letter novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Seat

At Westmere, Tobin Seymour tells her the offer was declined by an email from her own address, and holds her seat until Friday noon.

I took the six o'clock bus north with the letter folded in my coat and Lena's spare key still in my pocket.

She had been asleep when I left, with one arm over her face.

I had written her a note on the back of a dry-cleaning ticket: Gone to Westmere. Back for the dinner. Thank you.

The bus ran two hours through farm country, and I didn't sleep.

I kept seeing the white notice on the shop door.

Thirty days to empty the only place my father had ever worked, because I had said no.

I told myself the notice was a threat, and that a threat can be answered once I have a seat to stand on.

I kept thinking about how the old me would have spent this morning.

She would have been in the shop, counting washers into little brown bags.

The Westmere admissions office was on the ground floor of a brick building with a maroon awning, and the line went out the door.

Students stood with folders and their parents.

I stood with a creased letter and a bus ticket stub.

When I reached the counter, a man in a white shirt with rolled sleeves looked up from a monitor.

He was somewhere near thirty, broad through the shoulders, and a thin scar cut through his left eyebrow.

The badge on his lanyard said Tobin Seymour, Assistant Director of Admissions.

"Name?" he said.

"Ciara Keogh. I got an acceptance letter, and I want to confirm my seat."

I slid it across.

He read it, and then he turned to his keyboard and typed for a while.

His face didn't change.

"Ms. Keogh, your seat was declined on May 2nd."

"By who?"

"By you." He tilted the screen toward me. "An email from the address on your application. Thank you for the offer, I've decided to attend elsewhere, please release my place. Signed M. Keogh."

I looked at the words.

I had never written them.

"I didn't send that," I said.

"I figured." He leaned back. "People who decline a place don't usually show up on a six o'clock bus with the letter in their coat."

"How do you know it was a six o'clock bus?"

"Your cheeks are pink, you've got a seat-belt line on your jacket, and the first bus is the only one that gets here before nine."

He said it flatly, and I almost smiled.

"Whoever sent it knew your application number," he went on. "That's printed on the letter. Where's the letter been?"

"In my fiancé's briefcase."

His eyebrow, the scarred one, went up.

"Ex-fiancé," I said. "As of about eighteen hours ago."

"Congratulations," said Tobin Seymour.

I laughed, and it came out cracked.

"I've worked here five years," he said. "I've had parents decline for their kids. I've had a roommate do it once. Never a briefcase."

"Can you undo it?"

"I can't undo it on your word and a letter. Committee can, if you come back with a reply form signed in front of me, with photo ID, before noon on Friday. I'll hold the seat until then."

"Friday," I said. "That's two days."

"That's the deadline on your letter, Ms. Keogh. Somebody used up two weeks of it for you. I can't give those back."

He pulled a form out of a drawer and set a pen on top of it.

I signed my name.

It was the plainest thing I had done in sixty years, and my hand shook the whole way down.

He watched me finish.

Then he took out a small black stamp, pressed it in the corner of the form, and slid the carbon copy across to me.

"That holds it till Friday at noon. After that I can't do anything."

"What do I need to bring?"

"A photo ID and the original of that letter, the one with the cut seal, which I'd now like you to keep very safe."

"I will."

I held out my hand to shake his.

I hadn't planned it.

It was just that nobody had done one kind thing for me all week, and he had.

His hand was warm, and rough across the palm.

He took mine and shook it once.

And then he didn't let go.

I looked down at our hands.

He looked down too, and gave a short cough, and let go a second later.

"Sorry," he said. "Long morning."

I was twenty years old, and I was eighty, and in neither life had anyone held on to me one beat too long.

I put my hand in my coat pocket and kept it there.

"Thank you, Mr. Seymour."

"Tobin," he said. "Everybody here says Tobin. Go get your seat."

I walked out under the maroon awning into the sunlight.

The lawn across the street was full of students lying on their backs with books on their chests.

I stood on the curb and read the carbon copy twice.

Ciara Keogh. Bachelor of Architecture. Seat held through May 15, 12:00 p.m.

Behind me, a car door opened with a quiet click.

I turned.

A long black sedan was parked at the curb with the rear window rolled down.

In the back seat, with both hands on the silver head of her cane, sat Harriet Sutcliffe.

"Good morning, Ciara," she said. "Get in."

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