“No. He told Detective
Miller that he knew I wasn’t guilty because he’d done his own checking. The point is, he did doubt me, and that’s okay.”
“How can you say that? If he loved you, if he knew you well enough, he’d have believed in you and—”
“It’s human to doubt,” Frank said, staring her right in the eye. “It’s healthy to doubt. The beautiful formula for humanity has two major counterparts, head and heart. The head brings doubts to keep you in check. The heart propels you forward to keep the head in check. It’s a perfect system when we let it do its job. Cal let it do its job. He doubted me, but his heart knew I was innocent. He was compelled by his heart, he lived by his heart, and his doubts had him double-checking me just in case his heart was leading him wrong.”
There was freedom in what Frank said. Huge freedom. If she could accept it.
“Where you were concerned, he listened only to his head when it came to our troubled past. He should have told you about Claire Sanderson before he asked you to bring Sammie to our home.”
“He’s really moving to Louisiana?”
“He accepted a position there.”
“Did he tell you I rejected him?”
“No. He hasn’t mentioned you at all.”
Her thoughts tumbled around one another. Minutes passed.
“I’ve said what I came to say.” Frank opened the car door, got out and closed it behind him. She watched him go.
* * *
CAL WROTE HIS LETTER giving notice to Wallace University, effective immediately. It was the fifth such letter he’d written. He knew he was giving them too little time to find a replacement. And yet, his decision to leave felt right. The job in Louisiana beckoned. He and his father would probably do well to have some time apart after so many years of being joined at the hip. They had to find their own lives.
In the fourth-floor office he’d grown quite fond of, he read the letter one last time, hit Print, put it in an envelope and tossed it in the intercampus mail bin on the edge of his desk.
“Excuse me, Professor?” The words came at the same time as a knock on his partially open door.
“Come in.” He turned toward the door, knowing that he’d just made the right decision to leave. He was hearing Morgan’s voice, and would continue to do so as long as he stayed there.
“I was wondering if I could ask your opinion on something?”
The voice was still Morgan’s.
And so was the body attached to the voice.
Cal didn’t move. Except to say, “I’d be happy to try.” He assumed she was seeking some kind of academic advice.
Still, he couldn’t believe that she’d come to him for advice of any kind. He’d lied to her. And Morgan was sensitive to being misled.
It had been a few weeks since he’d seen her. She was thinner. Too thin. And still gorgeous. Her jeans and tank top were new to him. Her hair longer and loose. He liked it that way.
“I have a problem.” She was staring at him. He liked it.
“I’ll help if I can.”
“I screwed up. I doubted where I should have believed and believed where I should have doubted and I don’t know how to fix that.”
His world stopped spinning uncontrollably. Just like that. There was no sound. No big ringing of bells. No huge bounding waves. No knock on the head.
Just, very simply, what had been grossly wrong was suddenly right.
He didn’t have to think. His heart spoke. “I think the best thing to do is to understand that everyone makes errors in judgment. They’re part of the human experience.”
When she opened her mouth to speak, when he saw that her lips were trembling, he started to tremble, too. “Is there a way to make things right even when there’s been a very severe error in judgment?”