Page 9 of I Still Love You (Citation Needed)

I nodded. “I don’t want to push her to tell me more either. She was rattled after Jorge left so I had her go back to the hotel. I’m going to bring her dinner.”

“Smart plan! I’ve heard about him at some local committee meetings. He got Lois’s back hair up, so I’m curious,” Grace said before taking a sip of her drink. “His boss, Andrea, is married to a man who’s always at war with Carrie Woodhouse. He’s losing now that the Northangers have entered the community to build the theme park.”

I raised an eyebrow. I liked Carrie after talking with her and I knew my friend Emma did as well. I couldn’t help but be suspicious of people causing problems for people I liked. “Do I need to be worried?” I asked. “Jorge mentioned his boss wants to edit EncycloWiki entries.”

Grace shrugged. “I suspect she’s trying to find things for him to do. Plus, the event was in a space that Carrie built with the help with our Economic Redevelopment Office and some state-level supporters. They want to take her down a peg. I wouldn’t worry too much this was probably part of the stupid war Bart thinks he’s fighting. What was Carrie’s reaction?”

I shook my head. “She wasn’t there when it happened. From the moment I started talking to him to his exit was less than five minutes.”

Grace took a deep breath. “You know how small town politics happen. It may be insignificant to you, but it means everything to the locals.”

“I’m intrigued that Lois is weary of him. Are Andrea and Bart friends with Mason?” I asked in a low voice.

Grace laughed as she looked at her watch. “It took you twenty minutes to bring up his name! I’m impressed. I thought you would have launched into a rant about him as soon as you saw me.”

I blushed, knowing she was right. It would have taken less time if it hadn’t been an eventful day. “What’s going on with him?”

“No, I don’t think these people are friends with him, but they travel in the same circles. Lois is typically a good judge of people, other than how she judged you that is. I think you met Heather today and no, he’s not dating her. I don’t think he’s dating anyone,” she said with a smirk.

I shut my eyes and let out a deep breath. I knew she could read me well, but this was impressive.

“I wasn’t even worried about that,” I said, hoping my face didn’t betray the lie. “I want to know more about his tenure problem.”

Grace looked off into nothing as she thought about her response. “Be wary of Heather. She thinks she’s the next Lois Fairfax, but she doesn’t have any power yet and she’s frustrated. As for Mason, it’s not going well. As I mentioned last night, the department initially denied him tenure and Lois told them to reconsider.”

I sat up, shocked that anyone in the sociology department would openly go against the university president’s desires. It said more about how the department viewed their former colleague than it did about Mason’s situation. Wouldn’t they make it easier for someone in this situation to get tenure? There were probably others who felt like this pulled the rug out from under them with this shift in priorities. It didn’t really matter. Mason must’ve seen the writing on the wall.

Grace and Denise were my only sources of information since I graduated. I ignored most of the alumni stuff sent. I didn’t have the desire to give them money when I felt so betrayed. Lois Fairfax, Mason’s dissertation advisor and supposed mentor, had been promoted to provost right before my graduation and then to president a few years ago. It hadn’t been an easy transition for her, but she seemed to play the political games well. It was the theft of my work to increase accessibility on campus that fueled my anger. I never got a bit of credit for the research I did and reports I wrote to convince her and other campus leaders to invest in their campus infrastructure. I had tried to play the political game rather than turning it into a legal battle. She had made it personal.

It had come out of the blue during our last year as students, after Mason had proposed. I was making plans for our future to start a group that would support students as EncycloWiki editors. I wanted to give Mason an easy reason to leave Lacock with me. I thought we were having dinner with Lois to deescalate the growing tension between us over these accessibility issues. I’ve never known why she thought she had been invited, but I’m pretty sure she was ready to strategize on how to advance Mason’s academic career. That was how she typically supported him. I would co-author articles with him while she manipulated the politics on campus to benefit him. I was sure her way would backfire.

That night, instead of agreeing to come to the apartment and letting us cook for her, the new provost insisted we go to a restaurant. I was annoyed, but no more than I usually felt when I had to interact with Lois Fairfax. She picked one of the more expensive restaurants downtown. Not only was the restaurant inaccessible for me, but I wasn’t sure who was paying for dinner. Mason and I both ordered something inexpensive and refused alcohol. We couldn’t afford more than salads. Dr. Fairfax noticed but did nothing to suggest she would be paying. It was just another tick on the list of things that annoyed me about our new provost. It was clear to me she assumed we wanted to pick her brain or were celebrating her promotion, so we would treat her.

“Congratulations on your promotion,” Mason said and raised his glass of water.

“A toast,” Dr. Fairfax said as we all clinked our glasses together. “To making new things happen for all of us.”

I thought I knew what she meant at the time. The administration at Lacock State had picked Lois for her ambition to grow the university. They were firmly a teaching university, catering to students who needed more support. The faculty were evaluated for tenure on how they supported students and their involvement in the community. There was an expectation to get published, but I knew Grace had published a book to get tenure. The requirements weren’t rigorous and most faculty got tenure. At the time Lois wanted to increase the rigor for tenure, but as we sat at this dinner, that seemed so far away. Mason and I were more focused on defending our dissertations and getting jobs.

I took a sip of my water and considered what to ask her. “What do you have planned to make happen first?” I asked.

I knew I was pushing a button, but I couldn’t help myself. Things were ready to come to a head. Not only did this change my accessibility battle plan, but she had been ignoring Mason for months. We were in the last year of work before we defended our dissertations. I had plans within plans for my future, already collaborating and publishing. Hints of job offers had already started. Mason seemed to be stuck. He was enjoying the classes he was teaching, but I was sure he would want to leverage his time at Lacock State to get a better job at another university. He wasn’t networking and applying for jobs. He wasn’t worrying about publishing articles, happy to be a second or third other on those he helped with.

Dr. Fairfax’s promotion meant she was no longer going to be advising graduate students, but it was too late for Mason to find a new advisor. They had to see this through together. I was ready to take over and push him to finish and get a job. What I realized was that her new position gave her more political power, and she thought I wanted to leverage that to benefit Mason.

Dr. Fairfax smiled at me as if we shared a secret. “I think we’re going to start making this campus more accessible for people like you, Penny.”

I kept a smile pasted on my face as my brain yelled in frustration. I felt Mason’s hand at my elbow. “I’m glad you’ve finally had a change of heart,” I said through my teeth.

“Did you know we only use fifty percent of our classroom space because it’s not accessible to students with disabilities?” Dr. Fairfax said as she took a sip of her martini.

I blinked, not sure how to respond to her repeating data I had given her in the space committee meeting where they decided how to allot space on campus. “Yes, I’m the one who had Mee pull that data for our presentation to the space committee.”

Mee, the head of the Registrar’s office, was my greatest ally within the administration. She and I had been combing through data for months to put together the report Dr. Fairfax was now explaining to me. She had found another job shortly after I graduated and we still kept in touch. I had worked with her at other universities to help increase accessibility.

Dr. Fairfax continued without batting an eye. “Not maximizing the space we have means we are losing money. We can’t accept more students, schedule more sections of classes, and students get frustrated with their experience, thus increasing their chance of transferring. It’s going to take years to become a better ranked university and get federal research grants, so we have to rely on tuition until then.”

I turned to Mason and blinked a few times. This, again, was information I had shared at a meeting being repeated back to me as if that wasn’t my research.