Free Grey Matters by Clea Simon Page A

sorry.’
    ‘Well, what have you been doing?’
    ‘I’ve been a little busy.’ They stepped around the last of the tour group and up to the curb, just as the light gave them the okay to cross. Perfect timing, thought Dulcie. She was very tempted to give the younger student a piece of her mind, but not when she had to use all her breath to keep up.
    ‘Well, you can catch up on your own time.’ Raleigh stepped into the street. ‘But basically, I’m looking at the postmodernist novel-drama interplay from a semiotics standpoint.’
    ‘Wait.’ Dulcie grabbed her student’s sleeve, stopping them both in the middle of traffic. ‘This is an undergraduate thesis? In the English department?’
    ‘Well, yeah.’ A car honked, and the two kept walking. ‘I started out in philosophy, but then I met Cam and he convinced me that what I was doing would really stand out in English. I mean, aren’t most of the theses just more re-readings of some old texts?’
    Dulcie bit her lip and then made herself take a breath. They’d reached the coffeehouse, but she was no longer convinced she could sit down with this woman. ‘Something like that,’ she managed to say.
    ‘Well, that’s what Cam said, anyway. And so when he suggested I wait a year, I . . . oh, I’m sorry.’
    To Dulcie’s horror and surprise, the pretty undergrad suddenly put her mittens up to her face and started to sob.
    ‘It’s so terrible,’ she managed to say. ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘No, it’s fine. There, there.’ Dulcie reached up to pat the slim girl’s shoulder with one hand, while rustling around in her pocket for a clean tissue with the other. ‘It’s okay.’ She had no idea what to say. Mr Grey would have been so much better at this. He, at least, could have leaned in, offering his soft, warm bulk for comfort. In lieu of a similar act, Dulcie found a tissue that looked clean enough and handed it over as she ushered her student to a table. Raleigh wiped her eyes and blew her nose. When she looked up, she was trying to smile. The attempt made her look younger, and Dulcie dismissed her earlier reservations.
    ‘Raleigh, if you don’t mind me asking, when did you last have something to eat?’
    ‘Oh, I had an egg-white omelet for breakfast—’ Dulcie cut her off and ordered two bowls of split pea soup and an oversized chocolate chip cookie to share. Maybe Mr Grey had taught her something about creature comforts after all.
    Twenty minutes later, Raleigh had resumed her equilibrium and Dulcie had eaten most of the cookie. But along the way, Dulcie had also gotten the rundown on the willowy senior, if not her thesis. The pampered only child of a bi-coastal couple, Raleigh Amesbury Hall had whizzed through some of the finest prep schools in the world. Whizzed through – or burned out of. The slender brunette blushed slightly as she described running off for a weekend with her Classics tutor at Everett. But from the way she described her career, Dulcie began to understand her confidence. This young woman had long been the most brilliant star in whatever firmament shone overhead. Probably the prettiest, too. Dulcie also had the sense that she hadn’t ever really lost anyone before. Not to murder, at any rate.
    ‘I am sorry, Raleigh.’ She poured the last of the organic peppermint tea into her student’s mug. ‘This has been a huge loss for all of us.’
    ‘Well, yeah.’ Her voice had gotten soft. ‘Of course, Cam was a bit of a dog.’
    ‘Oh?’ Dulcie hadn’t heard any negative gossip about her late colleague. Women tended to like him, but as far as she knew, he hadn’t been breaking any hearts. Then again, if he had a tendency to hit on undergrads, he’d have wanted to keep that secret. Such relationships were considered a serious breach of ethics. ‘Raleigh, was there something going on with Cameron?’
    ‘God, no. He might have impressed other girls, but, really, I’m so over that whole routine: staring into your eyes and acting