The Professor's Secret

Professor Lyle Ashford keeps his office door half open and his office hours late. He quotes Rilke, smokes imported cigarettes, and remembers everything a student lets slip about herself. This semester, everything he remembers is about Ana.

The whispers start in the library stacks: a professor and a coed, after hours, door closed. Ana knows what it looks like. She also knows the office holds stranger things than gossip guesses. There are questions about her languages, tests disguised as essays, and names he asks her never to repeat.

Ashford has a secret, all right. Make that two. The campus has guessed one of them, and Ana is about to find out that both are true.