Chapter Two

Jude

I continued to stare at the door to the hallway even after Veronica disappeared. I wished that she had remained there longer instead of rushing out so quickly. I hoped that she would return. I hoped that she would change her mind on her way down the hallway and come back. But even when she didn't, the impact of her there lingered. I could still remember her vividly from the semester that she was in my class. The image of her the first time that I laid eyes on her was still as bold in my mind as if it had only just happened. I had started that semester with very little expectation of anything remarkable about the weeks that lay ahead of me. My Alumni Professorship was something I valued, but I had begun to feel stagnated and what I had experienced thus far of the students who populated my classes hadn't filled me with optimism that that was going to change.

Then Veronica came in.

She was running late and came rushing into the lecture hall a few moments after the class had technically begun. Breathless, the color high on her cheeks and her eyes wide, she was captivating. I was struck by her immediately, and when she turned those eyes directly to me, catching me in a stare that was so blue I could distinctly see the color even in the dim lighting of the lecture hall, I felt locked in place. It was a reaction that I was not familiar with, one that I had never felt with that intensity since the moment that I had first seen my wife so many years before. I thought that I would never feel something like that again and it burst inside me like a shock of electricity, almost taking my breath. At that moment I didn't know how I was supposed to respond to that feeling. Part of me was angry. I was never supposed to feel that again. I was never meant to have that rush or for the fascination to take over that way again.

The rope had stolen that from me. There were times when I believed that it had drained more from me than it had from her. At that moment the exhalation drawn from her lungs had become only air, but mine had remained breath. I drew it in almost frantically then, trying to find the last remnants of her, pulling them into me so that they didn't dissipate completely. This was all that I could do and I continued to do it, the frenzy aging to ritual as the years slipped by. She had become ephemera, an essence in the world around me, but I was here, solid contrasting with intangible, though she still seemed more real. I lived each day with that rope around my neck, rough on my skin though no one could see it. The rope had been her punishment. Living with the memory of it became mine.

Seeing Veronica for the first time at once felt like cool air and fire, both reviving me and reminding me of the emptiness inside. I had learned to live with it, never thought that I would experience anything else, and the sudden attraction had been like a powerful shock through me. I watched her come down the aisle of the lecture hall, her eyes scanning the rows beside her looking for a seat. The flush on her cheeks had deepened slightly and I knew that it was now not from running, but from the self-consciousness of her new classmates watching her struggle to find a place to settle. Soon she realized that the only place that was left in the hall was the seat in the very center of the front row, directly in front of my podium. It would mean that I wouldn't lose her in the sea of other students, something that I both hoped for and dreaded.

She lifted her chin as she walked directly toward it, placing her bag on the floor before she took her place in the seat. As she sat, the hem of her skirt rose up over her thigh, revealing a long scar near the top. Her hand grasped her skirt, tugging the fabric down so it concealed the scar, then rested over it as if trying to cover it even more. I wondered what could have caused such an injury then, and now as I sat in my office I thought about it again. While it could easily have been caused by an accident when she was younger, I couldn't help but question whether the scar had something to do with what happened that night. What she had called a joke from the boy that I had sent scrambling away from her had been distasteful and I could imagine that it would scare most people. But Veronica's reaction had been extreme. She hadn't just been frightened. She had been terrified, and even when she knew that she wasn't really facing any threat and had been safe in my office, she seemed deeply shaken.

That intensity came from something. There was something happening in her mind that she wasn't willing to share with me. As much as I wanted to know what it was, I also knew that there was no reason for her to open up that way to me, especially if it was about something as serious and painful as would justify that type of response. Veronica had remained in the same seat throughout the entire semester, even when she had every opportunity to move to another. It meant that we were able to build a connection, as tenuous and unspoken though it was with the very little actual interaction that we had. That connection showed me that she was smart and insightful, and sexy in a quiet and reserved way. She carried herself in a way that showed a sort of self-assuredness that was difficult to find in people her age, but there was still something in her eyes, something about the way that she looked at me, that told me that deep within her there was a timidness, a lack of true confidence. I wanted to explore that, to learn more about her and what had crafted the hardened exterior around the vulnerability.

I had tried since that first moment that I saw her, and harder the longer that she was in my course, to not feel the attraction to her. I didn't want to allow myself to feel and acknowledge the draw to her, much less to actually act on it. I was far older than she was, the streaks of gray through the dark hair at my temples a testament to having lived twice the life that Veronica had. Even beyond that, though, I was her professor. The very fact that she had come into my course put a barrier between us. The reality was that I was an Alumni Professor with a personal wealth that well exceeded anything that would necessitate work, much less the earnings of most professors. But I valued my position. I had thrown myself into my studies after my wife's death, losing myself in the words and thoughts of others when I felt like I would never be able to find my own. Over years they had come to define me, to be as much a part of me as my flesh and blood. Though I had found myself in a slump by the time that Veronica came into the lecture hall, the teaching starting to feel stale and unsatisfying, I still had the hope that I would rediscover the passion that I had had. I wanted to find the thrill, the energy that had filled me when I was able to bring insight to my students.

I rediscovered that awakening in Veronica. When I taught the seminar I often found myself focusing only on her. It was as though the other students faded away and everything closed in on the single clear point that was her, sitting in that front row seat, her eyes locked on me as she absorbed everything that I said. Those eyes were the reminder of why I couldn't allow myself to acknowledge how much I wanted her. Now, though, I couldn't push away the thought that she was no longer my student, no longer in my charge. The instant and intense draw that I felt toward her was still startling, but I no longer felt the obligations of my professional life hanging over me. The university had no rules against faculty and adult students dating when the student wasn't currently enrolled in the professor's courses. Besides, I didn't even want to date her. I didn't want a relationship. I only craved her. I wanted to touch her, to taste her.

Gathering my briefcase, I turned the lights off in the office, locked the door, and headed out of the building. I could hear the music from the party streaming through the air and I wondered where Veronica was among the revelry. She had mentioned a man named Javi, but she had referred to him as her roommate rather than giving him any sort of romantic title, but I had learned over my time of teaching that these students had no qualms about maintaining purely sexual relationships with each other under the blanket descriptors of "roommate" or "friend". This served my purposes well, but the thought of Veronica having such a relationship was repellant. I didn't want to consider, regardless of my lack of any true bond to her, any claim to her, that there was someone else who was exploring her body the way that I wanted to. I intended for that lack of claim to only be temporary, and when she did come to me I wanted to touch flesh and indulge in hidden curves that had been waiting, aching for the attention.

Even if I couldn't, though, I would be more than happy to put in the time and effort to remove any thoughts of another man before me before crafting my own searing memories in her mind.

I put my back to the sound of the party and made my way to the parking deck. The voice that began to stream out of the speakers when I turned on the car prattled on without seeming to reach my mind. I didn't remember what it had been saying when I got out of the car earlier that morning after arriving at the campus and I didn't have any idea where it was headed now. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get into listening to audio books. I knew of colleagues that listened to them voraciously, turning them on every time they were in their car and even when they were in their offices working or at home flittering through the mundane tasks of the day. They raved about surrounding themselves with the books, as if they would somehow absorb them through their skin. I couldn't do it. I had only just gotten accustomed to reading off a screen and feeling as though I was fully connecting with the book in front of me. Even then, I could only rely on devices for the contemporary pieces I read. If I was returning to the classics or the largely forgotten works from generations ago that were like my old friends, my most loyal family, I needed the weight of them in my hands. The feeling of the binding in my palms and the smell of the pages as I sank further and further into the narrative was a part of the experience.

I didn't want another voice in my mind shaping the way that the words fell. Those voices gave the words emotion and weight and I selfishly wanted that for myself. I wanted to see each word as it strung together with others to craft sentences and paragraphs. To be able to decide for myself the purpose and impact of that single word. It was often the tiniest, most overlooked of words that I found to be the most powerful.

My house loomed dark at the end of the driveway when I approached it. I reminded myself for what felt like the millionth time that I needed to remember to turn on the porch lights before I left in the morning, or at least ask that the housekeeper do it sometime in the afternoon if I was going to be on campus late. That way I didn't have to creep toward the darkened shell and encounter the jarring blast of the motion-activated lights positioned along the hedge. I had lived in the home my entire life and had been the one to have those lights installed, and yet they still startled me every time they burst on when the rest of the house and grounds were darkened. Having other lights on lessened the effect. It wasn't a reaction that I felt good about, but it was one that I hadn't been able to shake myself of. I told myself that that just meant that the lights were doing what they had been intended to do.

I stopped my car and climbed out. The driver whose services I rarely used for more than moving my vehicles around the property stepped out of the small cottage to the opposite side of the drive from my house. He took the keys from me without a word.

"Thank you, Aaron," I said.

He gave a single nod as he drove toward the back of the house where he would bring the car to the carriage house that had been converted into a garage to house my father's extensive collection. Most of those vehicles had since been replaced with my own, but I kept a few of his, tucked in the corners.

As reminders.

Out of spite.

I walked into the house and stood for a few moments in the foyer as the silence settled around me. When my grandfather lived in the mansion it was never this still. There were moments of quiet, but the cavernous rooms and darkly paneled hallways were always alive. The house was always teeming with a very formal staff who had been put in place to handle virtually every task of the household and much of my grandparents' lives. When my father inherited it, he trimmed down the staff somewhat, but still maintained a highly trained force that took care of most of the tasks of life, including much of the responsibilities of raising me. My mother died when I was very young, leaving me an only child with a father I might see for half an hour over supper at night and possibly for an outing or two each month. The rest of the time I was with the staff who had cared for me from the day that I was born. Though it was something I admitted only to myself, I felt a stronger longing for the nanny and cook than I did for my own mother.

Those women had loved me, nurturing me like their own when I was little, but as I got older, their services weren't needed any longer and I was left largely on my own. That loneliness was something I carried deep within me, shaping me in a way that I could still feel. It was that loneliness that had led me so passionately into the arms of my wife, drawing her to the altar and into this mansion so quickly after I met her I felt like it wasn't until we were sharing these rooms that I really got to know her. That was the greatest journey of my youth.

It was also that loneliness that led me to dismiss nearly all the staff from the house. Within days of my father's death and my installation as the owner of the estate I had reduced the legion of people who constantly swarmed the house to only a cleaning staff, a cook, and the driver who I kept on call to move my vehicles around the property and drive me when I didn't feel like taking on the task for myself. Offering the staff my gratitude and generous severance and sending them on their way left the house quiet and emptier than I had ever experienced it, but it hadn't increased my loneliness. Instead, it seemed to soothe it in a way. The overwhelming staff represented the source of that emptiness inside me and removing it seemed to allow me to live in a new way. My wife and I spent time alone together, never wondering if one of the staff was going to walk into the room or stand at the ready at the door, and I knew that when the time came for us to welcome our own child into the home, it would be raised only by its mother and father and not by a servant who would one day walk out of its life leaving it confused and questioning.

Now I preferred the solitude.

The thought brought a familiar twist to the center of my chest and I shoved the door, allowing the sound of the slam to shock me away from the shadow that was creeping into the back of my mind. I left my briefcase in my study and walked into the dining room. As usual, my dinner was waiting for me at my place. No matter when I arrived home from the University, there was always food waiting for me as if it had been prepared freshly and served just as I was walking through the front door. I didn't know how Annmarie, the cook, always achieved that feat without any forewarning from me, but it was something that I was grateful for each day, one of the ways that made the house feel like my home rather than like I was still visiting my grandfather.

I ate in silence, my eyes scanning the pages of one of the well-worn books I kept on a low shelf against one wall, my gaze bouncing over each of the familiar words almost in recitation rather than actual reading. They kept me company as I ate and when I swallowed the last bite I replaced it on the shelf among the others, not bothering to mark my place. After a shower I settled into the library, choosing another book from the round table beside my favorite chair. I knew that my days of being able to relax in the evenings and read were numbered. The stretch between the summer semester and the fall would soon end and I would have to fill the hours after I got home with slogging my way through classwork, exams, and tiresome essays written by students who had been told too many times that they were intelligent and insightful. I could only hope that in the new wave of students that would soon be filling the seats of the lecture hall there would be at least a few who would engage with the class and show some promise.

Like Veronica.

The massive clock in a distant sitting room drummed in my chest, chiming an hour closer to dawn than to sunset and I set the book aside. Before going to bed I turned away from the library and walked into a section of the house that was once filled with hope, light, and energy, but that had now been left darkened and uninhabited for many years. I didn't go into this wing frequently and when I did, I didn't allow myself much time there. I walked past the light switches to the end of the hall and then turned to walk up it again. As I passed each of the rooms I reached out and touched the knobs, making sure that they were still locked. There was no reason that they shouldn't be. No one else came into this section of the house. No one else had a key to the rooms.

Satisfied that they were all still secure, still slumbering in time, I walked out of the wing and back toward the area of the house that was still inhabited, still alive. I went into the bedroom that I slept in alone and always had. My wife had never slept in this room with me. I had never slept in the room she had again.