"There's a picture of me in the backyard," I said. I felt tears burning the backs of my eyes, but I tried to keep them down. I did not want him to see me so vulnerable.
"The backyard?"
"They must have come through the forest and taken the picture from there," I said. "They're watching me. No matter where we are, they're there."
"Brynn, I'm sorry." Eliot's hands pressed down on the kitchen counter, his fingertips white with the pressure. "This is my fault. I need to talk to you about this."
My lips trembled and I set my jaw.
"About what?"
"You read the newspaper today?"
I blinked back the tears.
"Yes," I said. "I only understood part of it, but I think I know what you're talking about."
"I have to explain—"
"Csilla told me about what happened before you left Hungary ten years ago," I said. Eliot's mouth closed. He looked at me without any hint of emotion in his face. I felt a chill run through me.
"What did she tell you?" he asked quietly.
"Is it true?" I couldn't keep the hysteria out of my voice. "Is it true about the escort? I looked it up. The news from ten years ago. I didn't believe her. But—"
"Brynn."
"Just tell me if it's true! My voice echoed in the empty kitchen. I couldn't believe that he would lie to me. "The articles I looked up all said the same thing. Tell me they're lying."
Eliot stood silently, his eyes on the paper darting from left to right to left again. Deciding what to say.
"You confessed, you were sentenced, you left Hungary," I continued. "Is that true?"
"Brynn," Eliot said, closing his eyes.
"Is it true?!" There was no way it could be possible. No way that he had slept with an underage escort. It was Eliot!
"Brynn," Eliot said, looking up at me. His face was full of sorrow, and I felt a cold sinking in my stomach. "I need to confess something to you."
"I never realized that the past would come back to torment me like this," Eliot said. I couldn't breathe. The air around me felt like cement.
"So it's true?" I said, shaking my head as if that would turn everything around.
"No," Eliot said, leaning over to take my hand. "Well, partially."
"Partially?" I could barely feel his fingers on mine.
"Not the worst of it. It's true I confessed, I was found guilty. But I never hired any escort, underage or otherwise. Brynn, you know me."
"I know," I said. My breath came out in a rush, and I could hear my heart start to beat normally again. "I know. That's why I couldn't believe it. But you confessed? Why?"
"Can we sit down?" Eliot asked. He looked weary, ten years older than normal.
"Sure," I said. I let him lead me to the living room couch, and he sat clasping my hands in his. It reminded me of sitting on the bench, the day we first met. I had been wary of him then, a total stranger. I felt that way now, like I was sitting next to a stranger I didn't know. Somebody whose mind I couldn't understand.
"Ten years ago," Eliot said, "Otto had given me a position on one of the government boards, a sinecure, really. I never did any work for them, but they wanted my academic prestige for their project proposals."
"Your brother. I've never met him."
"No? You will soon. He used to be more involved in my career. Always getting me accepted to this committee or that one. And then this happened."
"What happened? Did someone frame you?"
"No, no, nothing like that. It was Otto. He—he hired an escort. I doubt he knew she was underaged, he's never been interested in young girls, but he paid for it over the phone using a credit card, and it was traced back to him."
Eliot took a deep breath.
"He came to me for help, and I agreed to take the fall for him."
"You? Why?" I asked.
"Why not?" Eliot smiled sadly.
"What do you mean, why not? You threw your reputation away. People think you're—they think—" I couldn't even finish the sentence. Eliot sighed, his voice pained. I could feel the hurt radiating from him.
"Brynn," he said. "When Clare died, I was ready to kill myself. I didn't know what to do. I was lost. I didn't want to stay in Budapest a second longer. Everything here—" and here he waved around in the air, the entire house in his gesture— "everything reminded me of her. I couldn't walk down the street without seeing her face. I couldn't function. How could my life be any worse?"
He smiled suddenly, and his eyes met mine.
"I never dreamed that I would meet a woman like you, Brynn. I never knew that I could find love like this."
"So that's why you left Hungary?" I said. "Because of Otto?"
"If he had been found guilty, his life, his career, his family would have all been destroyed," Eliot said. His lips pressed together, his face pinched. "There was nothing left in my life to destroy. So I told him I would confess."
"And you came to America."
"It was an easy decision," Eliot said. "The judge who decided the sentence was close with Otto. He might even have known that I was innocent. But he gave me the option of circumventing the probationary period by simply staying out of the country for three years. And after three years, I decided to stay in California."
"Does Marta know?"
"Yes," Eliot said.
"But she's still with him." I thought of how happy she had seemed when I first met her. She'd told me that she owed Eliot a great debt. Now I knew what that debt was. It made me hate her a little bit, that she was okay with having Eliot take the blame for something he didn't do. And I hated Otto, the brother I had never met, for being the kind of person who would commit that kind of crime and then let his family take the fall.
"It tore them apart for a while," Eliot said. "I can't know what happened between them. Who knows what goes on between two people who love each other? But she stayed with him, and he's never strayed since, at least not as far as I know."
"Thank you for telling me," I said. I sat quietly on the couch, trying to make sense of everything.
"Brynn?"
"Yes?" I looked up into Eliot's face crisscrossed with furrows.
"I would never do something like that. Not to you. Not to anyone. I love you."
"I know." I breathed in and out. "I love you too."
"Does it matter very much to you, though?"
"What?" I asked.
"You know now. I'm not the sterling prince you thought I was. My reputation isn't...exactly what you imagined."
"I don't love you because of your reputation, Eliot."
He lifted my chin in his cupped hand and pressed a kiss onto my lips. His breath was warm, sweet, and I nuzzled his cheek after he broke the kiss. My lips grazed the white seam of his scar.
"I want you," he whispered. I froze at the words. My body ached for him, but my mind was thrown into fear by the desire I felt.
"Tonight?" I forced the question out.
He paused, his fingers caressing my face.
"You're worried, Brynn. Is it because of this?"
"No," I said, shaking my head. "I just—I'm not ready." I was scared that he would push the issue, but he waited a moment and then kissed my forehead.
"Then let's go to sleep," Eliot said.
That night I slept in his arms, my back against his chest, his arms cradling me. I did not see the moon, or any of the familiar constellations, for I made Eliot close the window shutters while we slept.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Eliot
“The heart has its reasons whereof reason knows nothing.”
Blaise Pascal
Eliot could not find a proper time to tell Brynn about the riot, and he brushed it away by telling himself that she should not have to deal with yet another thing to worry about. She seemed in a better mood in the morning, and he drove them both to the Academy.
"I've got to talk with the director about this paper," he said as they walked up the steps. "I'll come by afterward to see you in the library?"
"Sure," Brynn said. He leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek and she smiled at him before turning down the hall towards the mathematics library. She was so beautiful. He did not want to hurt her. No. Better to keep her safe. The protests should be over soon, in any case, and then they would have only the press to worry about.
He knocked on the director's door.
"One moment," the director said, opening the door with a phone pressed to his ear. "Dr. Herceg! I'll be finished with this shortly."
Eliot nodded and sat outside of the office. He rifled through the magazines on the coffee table. The last one had his face plastered across the front page with a photo of Brynn inset. Convicted Sex Criminal Finds Another Victim, the headline screamed. Eliot dropped the magazine in the trash can and leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes. No more of this. It would die down soon, he hoped.
"Dr. Herceg?" The director waved him in. "Let's hear about this paper you've got."
Flustered, Eliot stumbled through his explanation of the algorithm they'd been working on. He could see the director frown in places that were incomplete, and he struggled to justify their process.
"The initial results are very promising," Eliot finished lamely, his voice belying the content of his words.
"Initial results." The director took his eyeglasses off and wiped them on his shirt. "How long have you been working on this?"
"These results have all been finalized in the last year," Eliot said. "We've finally finished the basic framework for this algorithm."
"My daughter Csilla showed me the paper you have her writing up with a few other students. It was impressive, no doubt."
"Yes," Eliot said, sighing in relief. "They've all done a wonderful job."
"But," the director continued, "I had hoped that your work would end up being a bit more...substantial."
"We're set up very well with this work," Eliot insisted, although he knew that his findings were lackluster. They hadn't solved the major problem, he knew. "We have the framework set up to begin working on the general solution."
"Coming from you, Dr. Herceg," the director said, "I have to say, this is disappointing."
Eliot's right eye twitched, the one near the scar. "We have a strong foundation—"
"I understand that you've been having some...personal trouble. With the media."
"If the Academy can do anything to help with that," Eliot pleaded. "Perhaps issuing a statement—"
"We can't," the director said flatly. The look on his face told Eliot that there was no chance in arguing.
"This is unacceptable," the director continued. He rubbed his nose, pinching it between his long fingers. "I don't know what's happened in the past ten years, Eliot. You used to produce such fine mathematics. Paper after paper of brilliant theorems. This—" he waved at the paper in front of him—"this is work I would expect from any junior professor."