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“I got a bit lost in work, sorry.” Kamryn shoved the folders onto the desk and closed her laptop, dropping her reading glasses on top of the lid. “In all honesty, I got the glasses because I’ve been staring at the computer way too much lately.”

Elia stared hard at Kamryn. “Maybe you shouldn’t work so much.”

Kamryn snorted and shook her head. “Impossible right now.”

Guilt slammed Elia hard. She had no doubt that this was because of her and because of Yara and Susy and Heather bringing up her whole sordid past in one go. And Elia hated it. She just wanted to make it all go away so that maybe she could go back to living in peace again. Not that she’d done too much of that before.

“Did you want to talk about the bachelorette party tomorrow?” Elia asked, sliding onto the edge of the mattress while Kamryn continued to stare at her.

It wasn’t the reason she’d come in there, but it would at least be a distraction. Then again, hadn’t she wanted to avoid distracting herself any longer?

“No.” Kamryn sighed heavily. “What I want, right now, is to go back a few more weeks and live like I didn’t know any of this.” Kamryn waved her hand over the papers. “These are the personnel records, kind of. They’re the complaints that I’ve found, and I’m trying to piece them all back together.”

“How many personnel files were wiped?” Elia wasn’t sure if she should even be asking that question, or if Kamryn could even answer it.

Kamryn sighed again and ran her fingers through her hair, closing her eyes. “More than just yours, so that’s a bright spot in your favor.”

“Unless they think I erased everyone else’s files to make me look innocent,” Elia mumbled and stared at the odd design on the carpet under her feet. She shivered, the cold air hitting her skin in a way she didn’t expect it to.

“I think it was Miller.” Kamryn frowned.

“Really?” Elia looked directly at her. She could imagine Miller doing something like that. In the last few years, he’d definitely taken liberties in other things and thrown his weight around with the board, but there was no reason he’d go into her personnel file and erase that. He’d been fully aware of what had happened, just like he should have been.

“I don’t know who else would have access to do it other than Jessup, but from what I can tell, there were files erased after Jessup left.” Kamryn sat next to her, their shoulders brushing. “I don’t know yet. I just started looking through everything tonight. I need to meet with the team on Tuesday—so I’m going to miss the next practice again—to go through even more of this.”

“Kam, the kids need you at practice.” Elia hated that she felt like she was trying to guilt Kamryn into everything. But if the kids were going to trust Kamryn to actually teach them, then she needed to be present.

“I know they do, but right now, I think you need me in those meetings more.”

Elia needed her there? That thought warmed her from the center of her chest. Kamryn did actually care about her, she just had to remind herself of that.

“Are you my knight in shining armor?” Elia meant it to sound like a light tease, but it didn’t. It sounded pathetic, like she couldn’t even manage to stand up for herself anymore and needed someone else to do it. That thrill of hyper-independence reared its ugly head, and Elia wanted to latch onto it.

But it had also been her downfall more times than she could count.

“Hardly,” Kamryn answered. “If anything, I’m the bodyguard you never wanted.”

“What?”

Kamryn frowned and then ran her hands over her face. “What I didn’t tell you was one of the conditions that I agreed to in order to allow you more freedom.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Yara wanted to bring down the hammer on you, put you on restriction after restriction, and I refused to do it.” The stress lines in Kamryn’s face were so tense. This was weighing so heavily on her, and she was right back to that guilt. “I agreed to one, and that was it.”

“Which one?” Elia wasn’t sure that she wanted to be asking that question. What would it mean for her ultimately? Could she even continue teaching? Had she already broken the rule that she didn’t even know was in place.

“I get to supervise you, closely, while you’re with students.” Kamryn grimaced. “You already do everything else on their list aside from having a paid person to observe all your interactions with students.”

Elia shuddered. She really was being thrown back eighteen years ago, wasn’t she? “I had to do that for a while during the initial investigation.”

“I know,” Kamryn answered. “Yara was quite forthcoming with that information. And that you were required to pay for that person’s time.”

“I was,” Elia whispered. It had been a strain on her finances, but Abagail had managed to give her a loan at the time, along with a place to live. “I was under a microscope, as I would expect with anyone accused of something like that.”

“Yet they still allowed you to teach afterward.”

“Because Rylann confessed that she’d made it all up.”