Chapter Text
The brick facades of Boston University felt particularly heavy under the gray September sky of 1986. For Dr. Sally Jones, the weight wasn’t just the architecture; it was the stack of Mycenaean pottery slides in her leather satchel and the small, warm hand gripping hers.
“Mommy, can I see the gold masks today?” Annie asked, her voice echoing in the marble hallway of the Social Sciences building. She was a miniature reflection of Sally, right down to the bright ginger hair, though hers was currently tied in two messy pigtails.
“Not today, Annie,” Sally said, her voice soft but firm. “You’re going to sit in the back of the lecture hall with your coloring book. If you’re very quiet, we can go to the Dairy Queen on Commonwealth Ave after.”
Sally’s babysitter had bailed at the last minute with a “stomach flu” that sounded suspiciously like a hangover from a Duran Duran concert. With no other choice, Sally had marched her six year old onto campus, praying the Dean of Faculty wouldn't notice.
As they reached Lecture Hall B, Sally stopped short. The heavy oak doors were already open, and a booming, melodic voice was drifting out, a voice that definitely didn't belong to the scheduled janitor.
“...so there I was, knee-deep in a bog in the Hebrides, convinced I’d found a Viking burial site, only to realize I was actually excavating a very old, very confused sheep,” the voice chuckled. A roar of laughter erupted from the students.
Sally peered inside. Standing at the lectern was a man who looked less like an academic and more like he belonged on the cover of a synth-pop album. He was tall, dressed in a wrinkled corduroy jacket, with hair so bleached-blond it practically glowed under the fluorescent lights.
“Excuse me,” Sally said, stepping into the hall. “I believe there’s been a scheduling error. I’m Dr. Jones. I have the 2:00 PM slot for ‘Introduction to the Bronze Age.’”
The man turned, his blue eyes crinkling. He checked a chunky digital watch on his wrist. “Ah, right you are. I’m Tim Halloway. Archaeology. I suppose I got a bit carried away with the '82 dig story.” He spoke with a thick, rolling Scottish lilt that seemed to vibrate in the drafty room.
Annie peeked out from behind Sally’s trench coat, her eyes wide. “Are you a treasure hunter?”
Tim grinned, leaning over the podium to look at her. “Something like that, lass. Though mostly I hunt for broken pots and very old trash. And who might you be?”
“I’m Annie. My mom knows everything about the Mycenaeans.”
“Does she now?” Tim looked at Sally, his expression shifting from a playful grin to an appreciative, albeit slightly sheepish, smile. “My apologies, Dr. Jones. I’m the ‘new’ veteran here, four years in, and I still can’t keep the bell schedule straight. I’ve heard your name. The paper you published on the Lion Gate was... well, it was rigorous.”
“Rigorous is one way to put it,” Sally replied, her professional guard sliding into place. She began unpacking her slides, her movements precise. “I prefer ‘accurate’. Now, if you’ll excuse us, Professor Halloway, the Bronze Age waits for no one.”
Tim gathered his notes, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to leave. He lingered at the edge of the stage, watching as Annie dutifully climbed into the front row and pulled out a box of Crayolas.
“Tough break on the sitter?” he asked quietly, his tone dropping the theatrical edge he used for his students.
Sally paused, a slide in mid-air. She looked at him, ready to be defensive, but his expression was surprisingly kind. “It’s been a long week,” she admitted, the exhaustion of a single mother momentarily flickering behind her serious blue eyes.
“Tell you what,” Tim said, adjusting his satchel. “There’s a faculty lounge three doors down with a functional kettle and a tin of shortbread I haven't finished. If you and the wee treasure hunter need a hand with the ‘Bronze Age’ aftermath later, I’ll be there. I owe you five minutes of your lecture time back, anyway.”
He gave a small, mocking salute and headed for the door, his bright hair a beacon in the dim hall.
Sally watched him go for a second longer than she intended. She remembered hearing about the “Scottish Archaeology guy”, the one who spent more time in the field than in the library. She hadn’t expected the bleach or the charm.
“Mommy?” Annie whispered, already coloring a Trojan horse in bright purple. “He’s funny.”
“He’s loud, Annie,” Sally corrected, though she couldn’t quite suppress the small, rare smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Now, hush. Let's talk about Agamemnon.”
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The heavy oak doors creaked open as the clock struck three, releasing a tidal wave of bored sophomores and frantic note-takers into the hallway. Sally stood at the mahogany lectern, methodically clicking her slide projector off and tucking the glass plates back into their velvet-lined slots.
Annie was already standing by the front row, her coloring book tucked under her arm. “Mommy, did the people with the gold masks have snacks?”
“I’m sure they had very sophisticated snacks, Annie,” Sally said, her mind already pivoting to the three chapters of reading she had to transform into a lecture by tomorrow.
As they exited the lecture hall, the smell of burnt coffee and old paper guided them toward the faculty lounge. Sally had intended to walk right past it, her plan was always home, dinner, bath, work, but as they reached the door, the scent of something buttery and distinctly non-cafeteria-grade wafted out.
“The shortbread man!” Annie whispered, tugging on Sally’s sleeve.
Sally hesitated. She was a woman of routine, and Tim Halloway was the embodiment of a disruption. But Annie’s eyes were hopeful, and Sally’s own blood sugar was plummeting. She pushed the door open.
The lounge was narrow, filled with sagging plaid armchairs and a low-slung coffee table littered with The Boston Globe. Tim was there, his long legs stretched out, boots crossed at the ankles. He was no longer the performer at the podium. He looked tired, his bleached hair slightly mussed from running his hands through it.
“Ah, the scholars return,” Tim said, brightening instantly. He hopped up and gestured to a small tray on the table. “I kept the kettle warm. And I promise, Annie, these cookies weren’t excavated from a tomb.”
“Thank you, Professor Halloway,” Sally said, her tone professional but softening as she sat on the edge of a chair.
“Tim, please. ‘Professor Halloway’ makes me feel like I should be wearing more tweed and fewer stains,” he said, gesturing to a smudge of dirt on his cuff. He poured a cup of tea for Sally and handed a shortbread biscuit to Annie. “So, Dr. Jones, Sally, how did the Mycenaeans fare today? Did the students appreciate the complexity of the shaft graves, or were they mostly staring at the clock?”
“A bit of both,” Sally admitted, taking a sip of the tea. It was strong and dark, exactly how she liked it. “It’s hard to compete with ‘treasure hunter’ stories about sheep in bogs.”
Tim laughed, a deep, melodic sound. “Hey, the sheep is a cautionary tale! It teaches them that the most obvious answer is usually a mistake. Archaeology is 10% digging and 90% realizing you’re wrong.” He leaned forward, his expression becoming more genuine. “I read your dissertation on the socio-economic structures of Pylos. It was brilliant, if a bit... stern.”
Sally raised an eyebrow. “Stern?”
“You don’t leave much room for the ‘maybe,’ do you? You like the hard evidence. The clay tablets. The facts.”
“Facts are the only thing we can rely on,” Sally said, her voice carrying a trace of the armor she’d built since Lucas died. “Speculation is for novelists.”
“And for people who like to dream about who held the cup before it broke,” Tim countered gently.
Annie, who had been busy drawing a “treasure map” on a napkin, looked up. “My mommy says the cups tell us about the kings.”
“They do, lass,” Tim said, winking at the girl. “But they also tell us about the clumsy person who dropped it at dinner. Everyone has a story, even the people who didn’t get their names on a gold mask.”
For a moment, the silence in the room wasn’t the usual stiff faculty silence. It was warm. Sally looked at this man, this loud, bleached-blond Scotsman who seemed to find a story in every shard of glass, and felt a strange, unfamiliar spark of curiosity.
“We should get going,” Sally said abruptly, standing up and smoothing her skirt. “Annie has a bath, and I have a pile of ‘Intro to Anthro’ papers that would make even Agamemnon weep.”
“Of course,” Tim said, standing as well. He towered over her, but he didn’t feel imposing. “I’ll be here most Tuesdays. If the babysitter is ever ‘sick’ again, I’ve always got more shortbread. And maybe a story about a Viking who lost his socks.”
“We’ll see, Tim,” Sally said, her hand on the doorknob.
As they walked down the hall toward the faculty apartments, Annie skipped ahead. “Mommy? I think Professor Tim is a good storyteller.”
Sally looked back toward the lounge door. She was a woman of facts and bronze and ancient, unchangeable history. But as she felt the cool Boston air hit her face, she found herself thinking that maybe a little bit of speculation wasn’t the worst thing in the world.