Page 52 of Grave Matter

“Are you married?” I ask. Like a gun, point-blank, like I should have asked Professor Edwards instead of assuming.

He blinks but doesn’t seem taken aback. “No.”

“Girlfriend?”

He gives his head a small shake. “No.”

“Boyfriend?”

A smile. “No.”

Relief floods my veins, though it still doesn’t explain the lipstick.

Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one-night stands. You’re probably not the first student who wanted to jump him. There was probably a girl just like you.

I push that voice away.

“I did have a fiancé many years ago,” he says, his voice a little gruff now. “Keiko Lynn. But when I started here, she couldn’t handle it. She thought she could, but this wasn’t the life for her. Living on a boat in one of the most remote locations on the coast. The isolation, the fog, the rain. My work. She broke it off and moved back to Japan.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, feeling dumb now.

He shrugs lightly. “Nothing to be sorry about. Everything happens for a reason. Why do you ask?”

“I’m just curious,” I tell him. “You’re a neurosurgeon. That’s quite the catch. You’re also someone who says he used to wander but now…doesn’t. I just wondered if you had a family somewhere. Michael had mentioned he has a house in?—”

“When did you speak to Michael?” Kincaid says abruptly, his eyes blazing.

“Uh, last night. When I went to see Everly.”

His jaw clenches, his fingers start picking at some tape at the corner of the table where a crack in the wood has formed.

“Something wrong?” I ask. The change in his demeanor is razor-sharp.

He doesn’t say anything. “No. I’m just not fond of him.”

I exhale noisily. “Whew. Well, that makes two of us. He gives me the fucking creeps.”

That brings out a slight smile, though his gaze is still hard. “Good. Stay away from him.”

A thrill runs through me. He really is protective.

“But why? He’s the COO.”

“Just trust me,” he says. “He doesn’t have your best interests at heart. He doesn’t have anyone’s best interests at heart. If it were up to him, I wouldn’t be counseling anyone or teaching. I would be back in the lab. I would be doing something I don’t want to do. That I would have to refuse to do. He doesn’t care about the students, no matter what his speech said. He only cares about profit.”

“And Everly?” I’ve been wondering how she can be married to him when they seem so different.

His expression goes neutral. “Everly cares about more than profit.” He looks away, licking his lips. “It was her idea for the counseling.”

“So who was the first person that died?”

“You’re a morbid one, aren’t you?”

I shrug.

“Farida,” he says quietly, staring down into his coffee. “Farida Shetty. We chalked it up to a troubled mind. She was from India, she’d been missing her home already even before she got here. The isolation made it worse.”

“How did she kill herself?”

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