Page 58 of Best Offer Wins
She tentatively makes her way to the sofa. “This is a cute place,” she says, her voice sounding steadier.
“It was a lucky find,” I say. “The view from the loft is amazing if you want to take a look up there.”
She shrugs. “I’ve been staring at these mountains for three years. Kinda all blends together at some point.”
So, she’s been here the whole time.
“Listen,” I say, coming into the living room with her wine, and taking a seat on the leather sling-back chair by the couch, “I’m really sorry for just showing up like that yesterday. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
She doesn’t respond, so I keep going.
“But I couldn’t figure out how else to get a hold of you. I get that Professor Bradshaw fucked you over, but why are you hiding out like this?”
“You go first,” she says, a new edge to her tone. “I’ll tell you my story after you tell me who you really are, and how you found me.”
“What do you mean?” I scrunch my face in confusion. “I told you, I’m a reporter. Lisa Waters, atThe Chronicle of Higher Education.”
“Lisa Waters is a redhead.” Dottie narrows her eyes. I feel my face flush. “We still know how to use Google out here in the backwoods.”
“Um… Dottie, I’m…”
I knew this was a possibility, but her directness trips me up. Mercifully, she interrupts.
“I obviously can’t judge someone for using a fake name,” she says. “But don’t insult me. It’s time to stop bullshitting now.”
I laugh nervously. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have tried that with you. I heard you were smart—the brightest in the economics department.”
Flattery seems like the right move.
“Heard from who?”
“Your friend Chloe.”
Dottie’s mouth parts.
“Tell me who you are right now,” she demands.
“Of course,” I say. “My real name is Margo—Margo Tanner.” Ian would be thrilled to hear me finally take his last name. “I should’ve been truthful with you. I only started using the reporter thing because I didn’t want to ruin my chances of getting a full-time offer at Georgetown. I was a visiting professor there last semester.”
I thought of the new cover story earlier this afternoon, in case I needed a backup. Given all the practice I’ve had lately, it assembled itself fairly easily.
“One day, a few of us were in the faculty lounge, and Professor Bradshaw had a draft with him of some article he was thinking of submitting, I think toThe Economist? Or maybe it wasThe Wall Street Journal. That part’s not important,” I say, hoping she won’t whip out her phone and try to Google that, too. “I only glanced at it, but I recognized one of my student’s words right away. It was a very particular turn of phrase”—through the window behind Dottie, the same massive tree branch that inspired me earlier sways inthe breeze—“about how the supply chain ‘snapped like a tree limb in a hundred-year storm’ during the pandemic.”
Dottie’s eyes get wide. She’s buying this.
“I assumed my student must’ve somehow plagiarized Professor Bradshaw, not the other way around, so I asked her about it the next time she was in class. She swore up and down that those wereherwords first—that she’d used the same phrasing in an assignment for Professor Bradshaw, too. Poor thing thought I might be mad atherfor recycling her own writing.”
“Wow,” Dottie murmurs.
“Bradshaw has tenure, and I was a nobody. I wasn’t sure if anyone would believe me, and the girl from my class didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. But it infuriated me, you know?”
She nods.
“Anyway, then I heard about you—the brilliant student who’d vanished.”
Her face brightens ever so slightly. “They still talk about me there?” Dottie asks.
“Yeah, for sure.” I nod enthusiastically. “I heard you’d been a star in Bradshaw’s classes, so I just started to wonder if maybe he’d done the same thing to you.”
