Chapter 18: The Offer

I read the email twice in the hallway outside the lecture hall.

It was short and very polite.

The Sundell Fund would be pleased to offer Miss Tennison a full scholarship at the Colorado School of Mines.

There was a lunch on Thursday at the faculty club.

A statement would be waiting there for her to review.

I handed my phone to Caleb.

He read it and handed it back.

"Now ask me," I said.

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to go and listen to what he wants."

"Okay."

"You're not going to say it's a trap?"

"It's obviously a trap." His mouth twitched. "You didn't ask what I think. You asked me to ask you."

I laughed in spite of everything, and went to find a clean shirt.

The Colorado School of Mines was the school on the poster over my bed since I was fourteen.

My father once drove three hundred miles out of his way so I could stand outside its geology building.

I didn't tell Caleb that. He knew it already.

The faculty club on Thursday had white tablecloths and a view of the whole lake.

Eight donors sat at the round table by the window, gray-haired and tan, with napkins in their laps.

Hailey's father sat at the head of it in the gray suit. Hailey was not there.

"Miss Tennison." He rose and pulled out my chair. "Thank you for coming. These are friends of the Bridge."

An older woman in a green jacket smiled at me.

A man next to her was already looking at his phone.

I sat down and put my hands on my knees.

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