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at Poppy. “I’m serious.”
    Poppy managed to compose her face, although she looked as though she might dissolve at any second. “Sorry,” she said. “We won’t tell.”
    “It’s about . . .” Olivia mouthed something Etta guessed was Opal.
    “Opal?” Poppy asked. Olivia spun toward the table where Opal Waters ate. Opal wasn’t there. The seat between Director Hardin and Major Mills was empty.
    Olivia glared at Poppy and surveyed their surroundings again.
    “Sorry,” Poppy whispered.
    Finally Olivia leaned back in and waved Etta and Poppy closer, until their faces were inches from each other’s. “Opal is having an affair with someone at the academy . . .” The words all ran together and Etta couldn’t make out the last few.
    “Who with?” Etta whispered.
    Olivia’s eyes shifted from Etta to Poppy. “A student.”
    Poppy gasped. “Jordan?”
    “What? No. Why would you say that?” Olivia frowned.
    Poppy frowned too and looked down. “I don’t know. I’m only guessing. I mean, because they’re both gone right now.”
    Olivia reclined in her chair, her dark eyes glazing over. “I don’t know who it is. Just that it’s a student.”
    “How do you know any of this?” Etta took another gulp of water.
    Olivia shrugged and took a bite of her stew, crinkling up her face as she swallowed.
    “Everyone makes fun of Opal,” Etta said, thinking of Mallory’s lampoon of the poet. “Who would have an affair with her?”
    “It’s true,” Olivia whispered. “Trust me.”
    “Then tell us who told you,” Poppy said.
    “If you must know . . .” Olivia’s mouth spread into a forced smile, and she waved at someone behind Etta. Etta clenched her napkin in her hand. If someone distracted Olivia before she divulged her source, Etta felt capable of shouting at the person. But then Olivia returned her attention to Etta and Poppy. “Robert told me, and he has reason to know.”
    * * *
    Later that afternoon, the windowpanes rattled as gusts of wind rolled through the clearing in front of Etta’s cabin. She tugged her hat over her ears and zipped up her raincoat. She wasn’t about to miss her run. She’d lived through her share of tornadoes back in Landon. Mother Nature wasn’t going to deter her with a little wind.
    She walked to the door, stepping over Olivia’s navy Penn State sweatshirt, which was twisted with a T-shirt and a pair of wool socks, and reached for her key, which she’d set on Olivia’s desk. She drew her hand back and stared at the desk. Gleaming on top of a stack of papers was the promise ring Jordan had given to Olivia.
    Etta picked it up and rolled it in her hand, examining the tourmaline—the red center edged with green. Etta slipped it onto her finger. It felt heavy and loose. She held her hand in front of her and closed her eyes. She’d tried on her mother’s plain gold wedding band once. Just as then, Etta tried to imagine the sensation of a ring settling a place for itself in her flesh, of the weight becoming so familiar it was invisible.
    The ring’s hexagonal setting was the only thing that exposed it as an antique. Jordan had boasted that his great grandfather had given it to his great grandmother over a century ago in Saint Petersburg, and that when his grandparents had fled Russia after World War II, his grandmother had worn it across the Atlantic to the west side of Chicago, where it was handed down through another generation of Jordan’s family.
    And here it was haphazardly placed next to Olivia’s stacks of papers and strewn discs, beside her frog-shaped tape dispenser and a half-drunk can of flat diet soda—except Olivia must have left it deliberately. But why? Was she meeting with Robert North again?
    Etta laughed. It was just like her to plot some sort of dramatic romantic tryst where there was none. Olivia was probably just working in the ceramics studio. Etta shook the engagement ring into her palm and set it back on Olivia’s desk.
    Etta left her cabin