THE LABYRINTH
Clouds drifted slow and ceremonial over lawns manicured within an inch of theology.
Barnett House hid behind ivy and good manners. Down a narrow corridor, an office wore its life honestly: scratched desk, filing cabinets that groaned when coaxed, a cupboard crowded with plaques—linguistics, peace studies, even faculty sport, because someone had needed a goalkeeper and she’d been it.
Marie Richards sat amid a low mountain of theses and half-finished applications. A laptop purred beside a cooling tea. Forty-seven, though she’d deny the arithmetic, she wore her grey streak like a choice, not a surrender.
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