But with her university courses, the day care and schoolwork she did in the evenings, she hadn’t had time to babysit a parent.
And rather than letting anyone else know that she’d done it again—she’d placed her faith in someone who hadn’t proven trustworthy—she’d taken care of the fallout on her own.
Someday she might learn not to always think the best of people, not to be so quick to believe they were going to do what they said they would—but she doubted it.
“Let’s consider Twain’s ‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,’” Dr. Whittier said, looking straight at Morgan at that Friday morning’s lecture. She was sure he was looking at her because she’d been working on day-care decor yesterday evening rather than rereading the short story as she’d intended. You’d think, with only one last class to complete before graduation, she’d be able to keep up with the homework. He’d assigned the reading material at the end of Wednesday morning’s class, and although she’d read everything by her favorite American writer, she hadn’t read “Hadleyburg” since before Sammie was born.
Her son was ten.
“Twain was sixty-three years old and in Vienna when he wrote this story,” Whittier was saying. Didn’t matter how blistering the Tennessee sunshine made their city, the man always wore a tie. He’d left his jacket and long sleeves at home, but still…
Of course, the man did things—sexy things—to that ordinary tie. Things she was convinced no man had ever done before.
“Someone provide us with a quick overview of the plot,” Whittier said. He glanced her way.
Morgan’s stomach gave an irritating leap. She remembered the basics, but…
His gaze moved on. Her stomach didn’t settle.
Yes, she was attracted to her English professor. She and every other female student at Wallace University.
“It’s about, um, the corruption of an honest town.” One such female creature quickly grabbed the opportunity to snare Whittier’s attention. Bella Something-or
-Other was thin, blonde, about twenty, and didn’t have one responsibility on those perfect shoulders or one line on her equally perfect face. “Hadleyburg is known for its honesty. Then some guy sends money to someone in town for a good deed and everyone in town tries to claim the good deed to get the money.”
The Richardses, Morgan remembered. They were the old couple in Hadleyburg that the stranger sent the money to for safekeeping.
“Right,” Whittier said, and Bella preened. Sick. The girl was just sick.
Morgan tried to let her sleepless night catch up with her. To be bored in English class just for once. More to the point, she tried to be bored with the man who taught her favorite class.
“Hudson Long, a Twain biographer, claims that Twain uses this story to depict the pessimistic attitude that he had toward himself and the human race in general. Would you agree with that?”
He was asking the class.
“No.” Morgan blurted the word against her better judgment. She was as bad as the kids, preening for the man’s attention. Her better judgment had deserted her sometime between leaving her mother’s womb and landing in her cradle.
“Why not?” Whittier’s gaze was all hers.
In four years of being in the man’s classes, she should be over getting warm every time she had his attention.
But, recently, they’d been talking more.
“Because I think it’s unfair to label the man as pessimistic just because he had the ability to see deeply inside the human condition and then was giving and talented enough to bring out his vision in such a way that we can all take honest looks at ourselves.”
“So you think you know more about Mark Twain than an official Twain biographer?” His brown eyes were not unkind as he met her head-on. Instead, they had that peculiar light of enjoyment that kept her up nights.
“I’m not saying I know more than a Twain scholar,” Morgan replied, aware of the other, mostly younger students watching her. She felt ancient at twenty-nine. “But I agree with another Twain biographer, Jerry Allen, who says that Twain wrote ‘Hadleyburg’ because of all the maliciousness that he saw in mankind and the hopelessness that was our plight if we didn’t change. I think Twain was giving us a view of ourselves, exaggerated, as an analogy.”
Whittier’s responding smile did it to her again. “Good answer,” he said, walking back over to the other side of the room.
His legs were long and firm and he moved with the grace of an athlete.
“I happen to agree with Ms. Lowen…” he was saying when Morgan’s phone vibrated against her hip.
She never went to class without that phone. Being the single parent of a strong-minded boy wasn’t easy work. Sammie always came first.
Morgan tried not to be too obvious as she glanced down at the screen, although Whittier knew about Sammie. Knew why she kept her phone on during class, and encouraged her to do so.