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me. Caldwell jumped to help her. Baz or someone else came to stand behind me in case some chore could be assigned. I waved away the glass that was placed in front of me, then changed my mind and gulped it down.
    Over the glass’s rim, I stared at Doyle. He sat back in his chair, watching the room as though he’d never met a single one of us. I wasn’t crazy. I’d been gone for ten months, and in that time, something had shifted. Around the table, the others leaned in, awaiting instructions.
    “I’m fine,” I said. I could feel a tiny pinprick of white hurt deep in my belly. I’d have to get out of there before my entire department got a show they hadn’t paid for. But first. I looked back at Doyle. “You were saying, Nicholas?”
    Near my ear, Corrine coughed. She tugged on my sleeve.
    Doyle didn’t blink. “Since I have the floor,” he said and stood.
    When he finally turned to face the group, I knew. How did I know? Because it was exactly what I’d told him to do.
    “This summer,” he said, raising his coffee mug in a toast to himself. “I got married.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said.
    Joss had offered us a ride back to our end of campus. In the side mirror, I could see Corrine in the backseat staring out the window, idly tapping her finger on the glass. Outside: a steady parade of students against a background of scenic matriculation. The campus flourished, lush and green, almost hurtful in its hopefulness, the colors of the flowers bright and aggressive.
    “It’s not like I’m the one he married,” Corrine said.
    “You didn’t even mention there was someone.”
    “I saw him with a woman at the organic grocery store buying broccoli crowns. How was I supposed to know rings were next?”
    Joss said, “I thought you broke it off between you, Amelia.”
    We had tried to keep the relationship out of the office, but that was impossible. Everyone knew when he moved in, and then everyone knew when he moved out. And yet I couldn’t help but want to keep what was mine—what had been mine—out of Joss’s mouth.
    “Never mind,” I said.
    “She did,” Corrine said. “She broke up with him, but she still loves him.”
    “Hey.”
    “Not that she would admit it,” Joss said. She drove peering over the wheel like an octogenarian who had forgotten her glasses.
    “Can we not discuss this like I’m not here?”
    “You were discussing it as though Joss wasn’t here,” Corrine said.
    “As though I didn’t know what you were talking about,” Joss said, nodding at the windshield.
    I felt like opening the door and rolling out, but that seemed a bad idea for someone so recently patched together. We were also several blocks from our building. If I survived the pavement, it was still a long walk. “Forget it.”
    “There’s not much you can do anyway,” Corrine said. “Married is married.”
    “Tell that to his first wife.”
    Joss grimaced at me. “Don’t get yourself mixed up in that.”
    “In what?”
    “In keeping score. First wife, second wife.”
    “You weren’t his wife,” Corrine said.
    “Thank you, Cor. I know.”
    “You didn’t want to be, if I remember it right.”
    “It wasn’t just him.” I wasn’t sure they’d know what I meant. Doyle wasn’t the only thing I couldn’t commit to. My research, gone up in that unfortunate barbecue. But the thing about an academic career was that, every year, I got to start over. And teaching had always been my passion. I could always teach. “I couldn’t—”
    “I know,” Cor said. Confirming in my head that she was the only person for whom I’d leap into the void. I smiled at her over my shoulder.
    Joss stopped for a light. We all watched the students scramble from one side of the street to the other. Corrine leaned forward on my seat and stared with me.
    “They seem so young,” she said.
    “They are so young,” I said.
    Joss said, “You two talk as though you’re both a foot in the grave.”
    I didn’t remind her