Read Online Sandrine's Case (9780802193520) by Thomas H. Cook - Free Book Online Page B

for my response, his gaze neutral, save for the supplication, as if Coburn were a homeless shelter whose residents my staying on would cast into the cruel cold.
    It was impossible for me to guess whether he thought I’d killed Sandrine. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Being a distraction is, itself, a sort of crime, the minimum penalty for which is the loss of your job. I suppose that, had I considered my circumstances more clearly, I would have expected this to happen. Even so, I made a little show of being treated unfairly. After all, as I might have reminded him, my trial had not yet even begun. But it had by then become obvious to me that the presumption of innocence was a legal nicety the athletic program at Coburn College simply could not afford.
    â€œBut what am I supposed to do, Charley?” I asked helplessly. “I mean, if I resign.”
    â€œWell, perhaps you could work on your novel,” he answered.
    â€œI haven’t worked on my novel in twenty years,” I informed him coolly. “My novel is a dead baby.”
    He looked at me expressionlessly though I could tell that he regretted he’d been unable to use the book myth most of my colleagues entertained, their way of convincing themselves they still had something to say along with the will and the talent to say it.
    â€œI see,” Charley said. “Well, at any rate, I’m sure you’ll find something to do.”
    He had no moral ground to stand on and he knew it but that couldn’t matter either. He had other responsibilities. Coburn was the bottom rung for him, a springboard to some later, more distinguished college presidency. He was young, with miles to go before he slept, and he would not let my current predicament get in his way.
    I knew all this, but losing my job would be so ruinous I was compelled to state the simple, if humiliating, truth. “I have bills to pay, Charley,” I told him. “Big bills. Legal bills.”
    Higgins shook his head. “I sorry, Sam. I truly am. And I hope this whole unfortunate matter will clear up in time.” His gaze turned stony. “But for now I’m afraid the board has left me no choice. We could be sued, you know. I don’t know for what, but some lawyer could figure something out, I’m sure. We are responsible for our faculty, for exposing our students to our teachers.”
    So no alleged murderers on board, I thought.
    â€œIf I don’t resign, you’ll fire me?” I asked.
    â€œIt would be suspension without pay,” Charley answered.
    â€œYou’ve already thought this through,” I said. “Laid out the steps if I refuse to resign.”
    â€œI’m afraid so.” He shrugged. “I hope things eventually clear up and I can reconsider your appointment,” he added. “After you’ve resigned, I mean.” He shrugged again. “Until then,” he said, and shrugged a third time.
    Until then I would be out of work.
    No, not “until then.” Forever.
    No matter what the outcome of my trial I would be radioactive at Coburn College. And beyond Coburn, what college would hire a professor who’d brought such a cataract of bad publicity to his school?
    And so I’d left the president’s office knowing full well that I would never teach again, but the loss of my job had paled compared to this other loss, the one made painfully obvious by Alexandria now sitting at the wheel of my car, the loss of the traditional powers of fatherhood, the fact that I had become a kind of invalid to my own daughter.
    This was not a subject I wanted to discuss with her, however, and so I said, “How do you think it went in court today?”
    She turned on to Crescent Road. “Okay.”
    Her voice was flat, inexpressive, a nod to the fact that she simply had no way of knowing how it had gone, what the silent members of the jury might now be thinking. With that recognition, the inexplicable