Chapter 18: The Dean

Mom sat down on the swing, and the chains took her weight with a creak.

Dad stood on the porch boards for a moment with his hands in his jacket.

Then he lowered himself onto the other end of the seat.

The middle cushion stayed empty between them, and the wind moved the swing a few inches without anybody pushing.

I stayed on the step with my back to the rail.

I did not take the middle.

On Monday morning I sat in the integrity office on the second floor of the administration building, in a plastic chair with a clipboard on my knee.

Dad sat in the chair next to mine in his good jacket.

He had said nothing on the way up the stairs except "I'm right here."

Hallie came out of the inner office first, with her parka over her arm and her eyes red.

"A warning on my file, a zero on that lab, and a workshop," she said. "I can retake the course project. She was nice about it."

"She wasn't nice to you?"

"She was nice to me because I walked in myself," Hallie said. "Go. Don't let her scare you."

The associate dean was a gray-haired woman with a stack of papers squared on her desk and my statement on top.

"Mr. Lasker," she said. "Sit."

I sat, and Dad sat beside me.

"I read this on Saturday night," she said. "Ten papers, the dates, the amounts and your name on every line. You did not list a single client."

"They can speak for themselves," I said. "Hallie did."

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