Reputation(10)
“This hack makes everyone look unprofessional,” Tina says with a shrug.
“Wonder who exposed him?” Marjorie turns to the coffeemaker to refill her to-go cup. “Someone put Greg’s shit all over Facebook. There are tons of e-mails on the hack server, though—why’d they target him?”
“Guess he has some enemies.” Tina’s gaze returns to me, and there’s something about it that seems smug. Could she know? “I’d be surprised if Strasser came in today. If that happened to me, I’d hide under a rock forever. Move out of the country.”
As if on cue, Marjorie’s phone pings. Her eyebrows shoot up. “Speak of the devil. Dr. Strasser has come down with the flu. Awfully convenient! He’s asking Alice to reschedule his surgeries.”
“Coward,” Tina spits. She glances at me once more. I pretend to fiddle with my Fitbit.
In a fragrant cloud of bubble gum and hand sanitizer, Tina hurries away to speak to Alice in scheduling. Marjorie is off to attend to recovering patients. I busy myself at the desk, staring at the stack of memos that temporarily replaces some of the data we’d stored on the network, but my mind is thudding. I need to know.
I head for the ladies’ room and shut myself in a stall. It’s not hard to find the link to the database where all our Aldrich e-mails have been dumped. I find Greg Strasser’s folder right away. After scrolling through his inbox and finding nothing incriminating, not even a weird Amazon purchase, I open his trash folder—and voilà. There they are, a whole list of them, practically the only messages Greg threw out. His e-mails are titled things like Sucking your sweet tits and I came over and over just thinking about you and I love looking at your juicy ass. I feel dirty just reading the words.
But maybe this scandal is a good thing. Greg will focus on it for a while instead of me. It might make him pliable. Agreeable. I might be able to effectively get my point across and get out of him what I need.
My breathing begins to slow. Yes, I’m going to speak to Greg. And I’ll make him see my side. I have to.
5
KIT
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 2017
On Wednesday morning, pre-work, I wander the cheese department of Whole Foods with Aurora in tow. My daughter searches out a brand of low-fat mozzarella string cheese she insists she must have in her school lunch. I’m still in a fog from the night in Philly. All I think about are Patrick’s dancing eyes. The strong grip of his hand. The feel of his lips on mine.
Did it really happen?
That night in the hotel, I’d lain awake, praying he’d knock on my door. I both wanted it and dreaded it. After he didn’t show, I felt disappointed. Our bond had been so instantaneous, so powerful—the opposite of what I have with Greg. I can’t even recall the last time Greg looked at me with such intensity . . . and I don’t know if he ever will again. Maybe I shouldn’t have squandered the opportunity.
But then I told myself, thank God nothing happened. I have everything I want right here. Okay, so my husband and I had a truncated honeymoon phase. Greg and I got together during such a fraught—though terribly romantic—time, but it’s hard to keep those intense feelings up. I fell into Greg’s arms after my first husband died very young and very unexpectedly. Greg was a white knight on a steed. But I don’t need rescuing anymore.
Or perhaps our disillusionment with the marriage is because we didn’t vet one another properly before making a commitment. I was busy being the shocked and fragile widow, Greg was so good as the character of the admired hero . . . but those aren’t our real selves. Once we stripped off those costumes, maybe we weren’t as interesting to one another?
Still. I’m not giving up. Perhaps Greg and I just need a vacation alone, a better one than the trip we took to Barbados over the holidays. Maybe we need to take up a new hobby together. Or maybe I should push couples counseling again. I’d brought it up as recently as our Barbados trip, insisting that a friend from college had used a great therapist who was only a few blocks from our house. Greg’s reply had been “Oh great, we’d tell her all our problems and then see her out later at the local grocery store, buying toilet paper. No, thanks.”
I pick up a wedge of Gouda. Drop a box of crackers into my cart. Then my phone buzzes. I hope, irrationally, that it’s a text from Patrick—that he’s somehow found me. But it’s Amanda, my assistant. You need to see this.
Attached is a screen grab of the hack database I already know about—I was briefed about the Aldrich hack as soon as I got off the plane from Philly and have already met with the PR team to strategize talking points if I happen to be interviewed, as the university president’s daughter. On a server, for public consumption, are the inner lives of more than twenty thousand students like my daughter Sienna; administrators such as myself; athletes; my father, the president; and even students from years ago, like my first husband, Martin.
And speak of the devil . . . it’s Greg’s folder of e-mails that’s open. As a hospital employee, he is on the server, too. Several e-mails to someone named Lolita Bovary are circled.
I frown. I’ve already looked through Greg’s e-mails. I looked at my own, too, and Sienna’s, just to be sure there isn’t something I’m missing. But these e-mails are from Greg’s trash folder, which I hadn’t thought to open.