The Twisted Thread by Charlotte Bacon

would happen. Charlie’s family had gone to Armitage for four generations. A playing field was named in their honor. Charlie was bound for Yale, where his brother, father, and grandfather had gone. Matt looked at Gordon Farnsworth. They’d let him in on a full ride, the local kid. They’d placed faith in him. They had expected him to fulfill it.
    It would have been so easy to bow his head and say, as Charlie clearly expected him to, “I’m sorry.” It might have led to the problem being handled in house, without Penn or Yale any the wiser. But Matt hadn’t chosen that course. Thinking of his parents’ stricken faces as he told them what had happened, he looked at the headmaster and said, “I didn’t do it. It’s exactly the opposite of what Charlie is saying. He knows it. He will always know it,” which was greeted with howls of protest (Charlie) and the slightest of hesitations (Farnsworth). Both of them had been punished, with a letter to Yale that affected nothing—Charlie’s parents were paying full tuition—and a letter to Penn, which reduced Matt’s financial aid package, a move that then required he take a twenty-hour-a-week job cleaning toilets; it paid better than anything else on campus.
    Matt had moved back to his parents’ house that morning and spent the last two weeks of school as a day student. He had walked in graduation, assiduously avoided Charlie, grabbed the diploma from Farnsworth’s outstretched hand, and promised himself never to come back. He’d never attended a reunion, returned to the area rarely to see his family, and stayed in touch only intermittently with a couple of friends who had belatedly taken his side against Charlie’s. From the alumni magazine, which he read against his better intentions, he learned that Charlie had married someone whose last name was Frelinghuysen and that he’d had twin boys.
    It was a relief to see Vernon trotting toward him. It wasn’t often Matt let himself think about what had happened in such precise detail—Charlie’s tear-streaked cheeks, the V of worry between Farnsworth’s brows—and it was troubling that the emotions the experience stirred were still so bitter. Vernon, whom Matt sometimes called his personal barometer, looked at him and said, “Caught in your tangled past?”
    The light was growing paler. They had an enormously long day ahead of them. Matt should do nothing other than say, “Get lost, Vernon,” and start segmenting the tasks they had into manageable pieces. But he didn’t. He stopped and looked at Vernon with his red skin and beaky nose, a person who would never fit here, a person he trusted every working day, and said, “There’s something I should tell you.” They were walking toward Porter McLellan’s office; he was first on the list, followed by the girls who had looked after Claire—if they could get access to them—and the teachers in Portland.
    Vernon was adjusting the strap of his computer bag. He took all his notes on a laptop and considered Matt’s pencil and pad affectations. A patch of sweat showed on his shirt. Heat shimmers were already rising from the freshly cut lawn. “You mean about the shit that went down about you cheating?”
    A blend of violation, embarrassment, and admiration mingled in Matt. “You are one tenacious bastard,” he said.
    â€œThe old biologist told me yesterday, or at least a version.” Vernon hoisted his bag up higher on his shoulder, obviously harder than he’d intended, and Matt saw that his partner’s primary reaction was hurt. He wanted to have been trusted enough to be told. He would have in his place.
    Fuller, of course. And Matt understood Vernon’s response. It was what you did with partners. You told. They knew what you ate, how you smelled, when you showered. It was marriage without a bed and bills in a lot of ways,