He stayed in his office a long time after she left.
He hadn't planned to. He'd meant to gather his things and go home the moment the door closed behind her, the way he did most evenings, but instead he found himself sitting very still in the dark building, the desk lamp the only light on the whole floor, replaying the conversation with the specific, unproductive thoroughness of a man who knew he was going to do this and had stopped trying to talk himself out of it.
He had told her about Marcus. Actually told her, out loud, the real version, not the sanitized faculty-meeting version he'd been giving Dale for eighteen months. He turned that fact over and found, to his mild surprise, that he didn't regret it. He'd expected to — had braced, walking into tonight's session, for the particular
