CHAPTER ONE

      “...SENATOR ROBERTS FACES some tough questions ahead.”

      The TV announcer’s dramatic voice echoed as Kat opened the doors leading to the stairwell. She took the steps two at a time and burst into the hallway.

      “Professor Driscoll!”

      Kat turned to see her teaching assistant chasing after her. “Not now, Amanda. I’m late.” Kat hurried down the hallway.

      She was due to administer a final exam to juniors at Hillsdale College and didn’t want to come up with an excuse for being late because of her mother. Again. She especially didn’t want to look bad in front of the dean.

      Almost running through the door of the classroom, Kat stepped onto the stage and set her papers on the professor’s table. She opened her mouth to silence the room. Her voice stuck. Fifty students stared at her like she’d grown two heads.

      “You guys are eager to start the exam,” she said nervously. Something was wrong. She glanced at the clock on the back wall. Only a minute late. Was she wearing her shirt backward? She looked down at her clothes, and then chaos broke loose.

      “Is it true?”

      “Why didn’t you tell us?”

      “What does this mean for you?”

      “Are we still taking the exam today?”

      Kat blinked as the questions flew at her. What’s going on here?

      “Professor Driscoll!” Her out-of-breath teaching assistant huffed up to the stage.

      “The dean asked me to administer the exam so you can deal with the situation.”

      “What situation?”

      Amanda stared at her, openmouthed. “You haven’t seen the news?”

      A pit formed deep in Kat’s stomach. She shook her head. “What’s going on?”

      The cacophony of questions from the students intensified. Several were on their feet, holding out cell phones. Kat turned to see telltale flashes.

      “Go to your office, don’t talk to anyone and turn on the news. Go!” Amanda said.

      Kat pointed the TA to the sheaf of exam papers, then turned and fled. Two more faculty members tried to stop her, but she blew past them. It can’t be Mom. She’d just come from making sure her mother was medicated and tucked away in bed. Had she done something in the fifteen minutes it had taken Kat to make it to campus? She vividly remembered being pulled out of class and into the principal’s office in high school. The principal had the TV turned to the local news and asked Kat if the woman walking around in a bathrobe on Main Street was her mother. Indeed it was, and the media had filmed Emilia Driscoll in all her half-naked glory. Not one of the reporters had thought to call for help.

      How had her mother pulled off a CNN-worthy stunt in the last few minutes?

      Kat ran to her closet-sized office and shut the door. As an assistant professor, not tenure track—not yet, anyway—she got an office with barely enough room for a desk and two guest chairs. There was a TV, a necessity for any political-science professor, along with the musty smell of an office without a window.

      Pressing the power button on the TV, she waited for CNN to come up. It was the default channel during election season. The image filled the screen. She dropped the remote.

      Her own face stared back at her. It was her faculty picture. The unflattering one where her blond hair looked lifeless, her blue eyes tired and her cheeks paler than the white background. It was her post-breakup face, the face of a woman who’d been lied to by someone she loved, cheated out of her much-deserved faculty position and forced to start over at a new college. One bad media story had done that to her. Three years had passed, and Kat was not that woman anymore.

      The volume was too low, so she searched the floor with trembling hands for the remote and turned it up, stabbing at the buttons until she could hear the announcer.

      “...and we’ll come back to this developing story.” Her picture disappeared and they went to commercial.

      She let out a scream of frustration.

      “Are you okay?” the professor next door called through the thin walls. She forced a breath into her lungs.

      “Yes, sorry,” she mustered. While her colleagues seemed nice enough, she wasn’t close with any of them. That was a mistake she wasn’t going to make again.

      “It’s understandable.”

      Kat went behind her desk and turned on the ancient computer. The boot-up screen was maddeningly slow. She didn’t have a smartphone—an expense forgone because of the cost of the data plan on top of the pricey device. Once she got a promotion, she would treat herself to a tablet computer.

      She punched in her log-in and password, keeping an eye on CNN. They were still on a commercial break. As soon as she was logged in, she opened the internet