The Veritas Conflict by Shaunti Feldhahn Read Free Book Online Page B

living in, much less who his wife was going to be—or even if he’d have one. He put a firm stop to that common mental refrain. Lord, You know the plans You have for me … and I’ll trust You until You reveal them .
    Robinson Hall loomed in front of him, and he stepped aside from the entrance as scores of people streamed out. Ian was taken aback by how young they looked. This had to be the new freshman class—a bunch of eighteen-year-olds. Ian was only twenty-three, but he felt old by comparison.
    He jogged up the steps to the third floor eager to hear the reason for being summoned to Mansfield’s office. These hallways echoed also. The dark wood, high ceilings, and oversized doors had once been slightly intimidating but were now as comfortable as home. After the most perfunctory of knocks, he banged open the door labeled Office of Professor William Mansfield.
    The man at the desk jerked and dropped a book on the floor, then laughed and put a hand to his heart. “Ian! It’s not fair for a young man like you to try to put me in my grave before I’m ready!”
    Ian came around the desk as the older man rose from his chair. They slapped backs like father and son.
    “Mansfield, I get you every time because you always concentrate so hard. One day that’ll get you into trouble.” Ian spread his hands as if capturing a vista in front of his eyes. “I can just see it now—you’re in a big faculty meeting, Professor Pike calls on you for your scintillating insights … and you stare blindly into space as you mentally reviewthe latest colonial texts unearthed in Boston.”
    Professor Mansfield snorted. “No, I’d be mentally calculating the odds that Pike would call on me for anything . Well, welcome back! Sit down, sit down.” He gestured toward a chair then asked about Ian’s summer as he bustled around to get coffee and sugar from a sideboard.
    Over the rim of his coffee cup, Ian studied his mentor, noticing as always the thick shock of silver hair, sparkling gray eyes, slim reading glasses, and the casual assurance that seemed to rest on the revered professor like a suit of clothes. Ian had met the professor five years before at a dessert party held in the older man’s home for the freshman members of the Harvard Christian Fellowship. He had told the awed young people that they might feel like aliens in a strange land and that he would be there for them if they needed someone to talk to.
    Even more surprising, he had meant it. The members of HCF had quickly gotten over their reverence for the proclaimed author of more than twenty books, someone they were as apt to see on television as in their classroom. He had told them all to call him Mansfield (“only my dear wife called me William”), and they had promoted him to instant grandpa status. He had invited Ian and many other students to join him and his church family for Thanksgiving and Easter dinners, when the students couldn’t get home to their own families. And in Ian’s sophomore year the professor had driven him to the airport and sat with him in the terminal when the shattered young man learned he had lost his parents to a driver high on cocaine.
    Over the next two years, Ian spent a lot of time helping the professor with administrative chores while asking him questions about everything from colonial history to dating to graduate program options. He had gradually realized he was being groomed for something but never came right out and asked Mansfield what it was. The day Ian stepped into Mansfield’s office waving an acceptance letter to Harvard Law School, the professor had offered him a graduate teaching assistantship on the spot. Such a coveted position—TA for the most popular history class at Harvard—was not lightly given, especially to a first-year graduate student.
    And the following year, when Ian had stood before a packed classroom of students with blank notebooks and pens at the ready, he had glimpsed the depth of trust his mentor was