Her Amish Christmas Gift. Rebecca Kertz

the distance her old friend put between them. Even when that semester ended, he was still a faculty member, and both understood—without speaking to each other about it—that the teacher-student relationship had to be kept that way. But Eric had to be near her, had to be with her. They met off campus many times, and during those times, Cassidy reverted to her wordless ways. They brushed hands in a jazz club. He breathed in the scent of her neck as he pulled out her chair at a coffeehouse. Finally he found himself at four in the morning, sitting with Cassidy under the huge oak on the quad, the entire campus asleep around them.

      I’m sorry, Doctor, Eric said in his mind. What I said, what she said, the promise we made—this is the second moment I can’t let myself remember.

      “No problem,” the doctor said.

      What Cassidy and Eric had vowed to each other kept him wide-eyed awake, excitedly alive, until Cassidy’s last semester as a senior. Then something… A toothache had sent Cassidy into emergency oral surgery, and she was laid up. Eric had tried to help her keep up with her work, but stubborn Cassidy had pushed him away, wanted to do everything herself. He’d seen less and less of her, and when he had seen her, she was pale, thinner, with bags under her eyes as big as coin purses. That last time he’d seen her, two days before her graduation, she’d been in the library, scribbling madly into a notebook. When he’d tapped her on the shoulder, she’d jumped, stared at him with frightening, bloodshot eyes, and bolted from the library, mumbling an apology, or something that sounded like it.

      Graduation day dawned. A horde of black-robed seniors hurtled themselves off the main building’s stone stairs, shrieking with joy. Eric waited in the spot they’d chosen. Waited with a locket in his sweating hand, the one he’d wanted to give Cassidy as they began their new future together. The quad emptied around him as he stood alone in that moment…

      “I understand,” the doctor said.

      Eric was glad. That third moment he couldn’t let himself remember, that one was the hardest. The one he’d had no explanation for—for ten years.

      He clutched the empty plastic cup in his hand, crumpling it, and suddenly a smiling flight attendant was there. He dropped it in the trash bag she held out and leaned back again.

      He never searched Cassidy out. He’d refused to. His pride wouldn’t let him. But now, Professor Gilbert needed help from his former students to save his job, and everyone knew reliable Cassidy Maxwell would do anything for a friend. One conversation with a fellow Saunders alum and suddenly Eric was over the Atlantic Ocean, traveling to another continent to bring the only woman in his heart back into his life.

      The main lights in the cabin blinked out. People around Eric reached for headsets and neck pillows, reclining their seats back.

      “I’ll let you get some sleep. Good luck on your trip,” the doctor said.

      Eric knew the luck wasn’t for him, but decided to take a little anyway. He was about to need it.

      All he’d ever wanted to do was to help people. That’s why he became a professor. He wanted to teach young people, guide them, assist them in any way he could in making decisions that could affect the rest of their lives.

      Now, there was one person Gilbert Harrison was powerless to help. Himself.

      Gilbert laid his head down on his cluttered desk. His forehead knocked several file folders to the floor and he heard papers scatter, but he didn’t bother to bend down to pick them up. He just closed his eyes and listened to silence. It was nearly midnight, but he couldn’t go home. These days, it was hard to leave his office, because each time he did, he was forced to wonder if it would be the last time.

      He’d done so much in this office, for so many students, for so many years.

      The Board of Directors’ investigation, led by the vindictive Alex Broadstreet, was a humiliating chapter in Gilbert’s professional life at Saunders University. So far, he’d had his name dragged through the mud and he’d been forced to ask former students to return to campus to appeal to the board on his behalf. It was ironic, considering they didn’t even know the half of what he’d done for each of them, but he had taken a chance that their successes as alumni could sway the board and save his job. The only job he ever wanted to do.

      And just as a candle of hope had begun to flicker, it was blown out again when he got Eric Barnes’s phone call today. Eric had called from Logan International Airport, about to board a plane to London to bring Cassidy Maxwell back to Massachusetts.

      “Are you sure you want to do that?” Gilbert had asked after a stunned pause.

      “Ella Gardner and I had lunch last week,” Eric had answered. “She told me about you, and your trouble there at Saunders. Are you all right?”

      “I’m hanging in there,” Gilbert had answered honestly.

      “Look, you know you’re everyone’s favorite professor. It’s our turn to help you. I’ve thought this over. I know—Cassidy—would want to help you if she could. And I’m going to London to ask her.”

      He can barely say her name, Gilbert had thought. Eric was as afraid to face Cassidy Maxwell as Gilbert was, though for entirely different reasons. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Gilbert said, measuring his words. “She’s now Ambassador Alan Cole’s chief go-to girl.”

      Good for her, he thought silently, in spite of his growing fear. “She has a busy schedule. Don’t bother her with this, with my problems.”

      “You know her, Professor. If she finds out about this later, she’ll be angry no one told her.”

      “True,” Gilbert had been forced to admit. “Why not just give her a call or e-mail her?”

      “I think she’ll be more likely to come back if she’s summoned in person. Besides…” His voice had trailed off and Gilbert had waited a moment before Eric added, “Phone calls and e-mails are too easy to ignore. And she’s done an admirable job of ignoring me for the past ten years. For your sake, I need to talk to her in person.”

      “For my sake, huh?”

      Gilbert could tell by the silence that perhaps a decade wasn’t long enough to heal a broken heart. “Are you sure you are ready for this?”

      “It’s time,” Eric had said shakily, then more forcefully, repeated, “It’s time.”

      “What if she doesn’t…”

      “I don’t plan on dragging her back by her hair. I’ll tell her what’s going on and leave it up to her.”

      Gilbert had sighed then. Eric knew what dire straits his old professor was in. If Gilbert protested any more, Eric would grow suspicious, and he couldn’t afford that. He’d wished his former student luck and hung up.

      Then he’d sat here in his office chair, without moving, for hours. His anxiety, already high from his job crisis, had expanded until he felt he’d be eaten from the inside out.

      He lifted his head and looked out the tiny window next to his desk, but saw nothing but his own reflection. That was the last thing he wanted to see: Gilbert Harrison staring into himself. He snapped off the small desk lamp and sat in darkness. He could see the outline of leaves against the sky. When a breeze blew through, the leaves fluttered slackly, beginning to lose their hold on the branches. In harsh New England winter afternoons, Gilbert could see the Liberal Arts building across the street. In late spring, the lush greenery again obstructed his view. He had noticed this every year—for thirty years.

      In the last few weeks, he’d seen his past come back to him: Saunders sweethearts David and Sandra Westport, crack attorney Nate Williams, the still-beautiful Kathryn Price, sharp-as-a-tack Jane Jackson, a transformed Dr. Jacob Weber. He’d been glad to see each of them. His heart had puffed with pride as he’d examined their older, different faces and heard their stories.

      But Cassidy Maxwell might come back, as well.

      Her former classmates had gotten