The Professor's Captive Wife novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Nine Seconds

A doctored clip of Eliot saying 'Down. Under the desk' puts him on leave, his ex-fiancee pities Sylvie in public, and Sylvie hears her own laugh hidden in the recording.

I put Faye on speaker and found the page with my thumb shaking.

The post had gone up at 6:40.

It already had four thousand shares.

There was no name on it, only a black square and one line of text.

"This is what Professor Thaxter does to girls who are failing."

Under it was a sound file nine seconds long.

I pressed play.

A girl's voice first, wet and desperate.

"Please, Professor, I'll do anything."

Then Eliot.

Low, calm, unmistakable.

"Down. Under the desk."

Then crying.

That was all.

"Sylv?" Faye said. "Sylvie. Talk to me."

"That's not what happened."

"I know, babe. He looks at students like they're furniture." She paused. "Wait. How do you know what happened?"

I hung up on my best friend for the first time in six years.

Downstairs, Eliot was already dressed.

Grey suit, white shirt, the watch back on his wrist.

He was standing at the kitchen counter reading his phone, and the coffee he'd made was going cold beside him.

"You've heard it," he said without turning around.

"Everyone's heard it."

He held out the phone.

It was an email from the associate dean of the college.

Professor Thaxter is placed on administrative leave, effective immediately, pending review of a complaint of misconduct with a student. He is not to enter the English building or contact the student.

It was signed Dr. Theresa Danforth.

I knew that name.

Everyone at that university knew that name, and I knew it better than most.

She'd been engaged to my husband for a year before I ever met him.

"I'll tell them," I said. "I'll go in this morning and tell them I was there."

Eliot finally turned around.

"You weren't in my office yesterday."

"Eliot."

"Nobody knows you were. Keep it that way."

"Then let me be the one who clears your name. I'm the only one who can."

"And you'd come to ask me for a divorce." He picked up his keys. "Do you want the whole university to know that? Do you want to stand up in front of my colleagues and say what you were doing under my desk?"

"I wasn't doing anything under your desk."

His eyes moved over my face, slow.

"You were doing something."

My face went hot.

"This isn't a joke. You could lose your job."

"I'm aware." He walked past me to the front hall. "Go to work, Sylvie."

The red door shut behind him.

I went to work.

Faye's café was six tables and a blue awning on Wickenden Street, and by eight it was full of students staring at their phones.

I was laminating croissant dough in the back with the butter too cold, so it cracked.

Faye came through the swinging door with a tray of dirty mugs.

"You hung up on me."

"I'm sorry."

"I've been hung up on by better women." She dumped the mugs in the sink. "Table four just asked me if I thought your husband did it. I told them to get out and take their oat milk with them."

"You can't throw out customers."

"I can throw out anyone. It's on the lease. Small print." She looked at me hard. "Did he?"

"No."

"Okay." She nodded once. "Then we hate whoever posted it. Who are we hating?"

The bell over the door rang.

Faye glanced through the round window in the swinging door, and her whole face changed.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

I wiped my hands and went out front.

Theresa Danforth was standing at the pastry case in a cream silk blouse and a camel coat, pearls in her ears, her blonde bob perfect.

She was smiling at me.

"Sylvie. I didn't know if you'd come in today."

The room went quiet.

Every student in the café knew who she was.

"What can I get you, Dr. Danforth?"

"One of the almond scones." She leaned on the glass. "And I wanted to say how sorry I am. Truly."

"For what?"

"For you." Her voice was low and warm and carried to every table. "I told you, at your wedding. I told you what he was. I hoped I was wrong."

A girl by the window put her phone down to listen.

I picked up the tongs and put a scone in a paper bag.

"My husband turned that girl down," I said.

Theresa's eyebrows went up a fraction.

"Did he? How would you know that, darling?"

She waited.

The whole café waited.

I folded the top of the bag twice and held it out.

"Because I've been married to him for two years," I said. "And you only managed one year of being engaged."

Somebody at table two snorted into a latte.

Theresa's smile didn't move, but she took the bag a little too fast.

"Four dollars," Faye said from behind me. "We don't do sympathy discounts."

Theresa put a ten on the counter and walked out without her change.

Faye shook her head.

"I love you. That was disgusting. Do it again sometime."

I didn't laugh.

I took my phone and my earbuds into the walk-in, where nobody could see me, and played the clip again.

This time I turned the volume all the way up and closed my eyes.

I wasn't listening to Eliot anymore.

I was listening to the room around him.

And right after the word desk, so faint I'd missed it four times, there was something else.

A woman's laugh.

Low and surprised.

I knew that laugh.

It was mine.

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