Ellie was interrupted by a knock on the door of her office on campus and resisted the urge to growl. She was deep in concentration grading the final exam essays from her undergrad course and really wanted to finish and get her grades submitted as soon as possible. She couldn't enjoy the summer vacation with her family while work was hanging over her head. She wanted to have two whole months free to help Alan in the vineyard and help Ethan with Maddie and spend some quality time with all of them. And she wasn't going to get to do that if people kept bothering her!

"Come in," she called, trying not to sound begrudging about it.

The door opened and Darryl, the head of the department, walked in. He was younger than Ellie, which annoyed her, and he was extremely charming and charismatic, which annoyed her less. But he was a good boss and mostly left her alone to teach and do her research as she chose. Though why he was coming to bother her now was a bit of a mystery.

"Hi Darryl," she greeted. "What can I do for you?" Hopefully that wasn't rude. Hopefully she could just get him out of here quicker.

"Hey Ellie, I just wanted to pop in and chat, if you've got some time."

She was very wary of this so-called chat, but she allowed it. "I'm grading finals, but I can take a break. What did you want to talk about?"

"You," Darryl said simply.

"Me?" Ellie started to worry if this was more of a social call than a professional discussion. Or even worse, whether this forty-year-old man was hitting on her. She subtly lifted her left hand to push her hair back so her engagement ring was on full display.

"Yes, you." Darryl came to sit down in the chair on the other side of Ellie's desk. He gazed over at the framed photos on the credenza against the wall. Not a lot of people had framed photos anymore. Most people just kept them digitally. But Ellie still had old photos from days gone by, when she was in school and when her kids were little, and now that they had Maddie, she made a point of getting some of her favorite photos printed and framed.

Ellie watched him look at the pictures and waited for him to say something. He was taking his time.

"Beautiful family," he noted.

"Thank you," she replied.

He opened his mouth to say something and then suddenly did a double take. "Wait, is that Alan Grant? And Ian Malcolm!?" he asked excitedly, pointing at the picture Ellie had of the three of them from a couple Christmases ago that Charlie had insisted on taking. The Jurassic Park Trio, he called them. Ian thought that was hilarious and Alan hated it. Ellie was somewhere in the middle between them, as was usually the case.

"Yes," Ellie answered. "The three of us have known each other for a long time. We've kept in touch. Family friends now." She was referring to the fact that Ian was friends with her family, which included Alan, but she wasn't going to volunteer that precise information unless pressed. She and Alan were well-known in some circles, and sometimes people in those circles paid attention to the fact that they were romantically involved. Then and now. Sometimes people noticed and sometimes they didn't. Most people didn't really care, which was how they preferred it.

Darryl looked at her in awe. "You know, Dr. Grant was a hero of mine when I was a kid."

Ellie snorted laughing. "Oh Alan'll love it when I tell him he's my boss's childhood hero."

"Well, that first book of his is over thirty years old by now. I was probably twelve when I read it. Didn't understand a lot of it, but I read it. I liked his a lot more than Bakker's."

"Okay, that he will like to hear," she conceded.

"You're going to tell him about me?"

"Sure. He'll ask me how my day was, and I'll probably tell him about this conversation."

Darryl's eyes went wide. "You live together? I mean, I know he retired, but he lives around here?!"

Obviously Darryl was one of the small circle who knew about Alan Grant and didn't know about Ellie's involvement. Strange. She would've assumed he would do some better research before hiring her. This should be an interesting revelation. "He is retired and we do live together. He bought us a house out in Saratoga. He's my fiancé." Ellie pointed to her left ring finger as a visual aid.

"Oh wow. Oh man, I had no idea!" Darryl looked back at the row of photos and found the one that she knew he would notice next. "Wait, is this the two of you too?"

Ellie hummed affirmatively. It was a picture taken on that last dig they'd done together. The dig where John Hammond had descended upon the Montana desert and popped their champagne and changed their lives forever. In fact, Ellie was pretty sure that picture was taken less than a week before Hammond showed up. Alan had a similar picture in his tent on the dig in Utah where she'd found him to ask him to go to Biosyn with her. Ellie's picture was one she'd kept all these years, wondering what if for two decades and hiding it away in a box because it hurt too much to look at. Now, she was proud to display it and look at it all the time. She'd been so young, wearing those unflattering jeans and thick flannel top that made her overheat in the desert climate but protected her fair skin from the ravages of sun along with that dumb hat she always had. Alan had been young, too, in retrospect, though he hadn't seemed young to her at the time. He had a bandana round his neck and his trademark Indiana Jones hat, and she remembered very distinctly pushing it off his head and grabbing that bandana to pull him in for a kiss.

"How long have you known each other?" Darryl asked in awe.

For whatever reason, Ellie found herself launching into the story. "He was my professor when I was finishing up my PhD. He was a big help to my thesis, actually. And after I defended it and got my degree, I worked on a couple digs with him. We were both at the original Jurassic Park, and we sort of lost touch after that. For a while. I got married and had two kids and took a step back from my work for a while. He kept on doing everything he's been doing. And then after Jurassic World, I got back into field research and all the effect the prehistoric flora and fauna were having on the natural world now. Which led me back to Alan to help me with some things, and we wound up at Biosyn and testifying to Congress, and about a year after that, you hired me and we moved out to California." It felt strange to sum up the last thirty years of her life in about ninety seconds.

Darryl chuckled in some kind of disbelief. "That's pretty crazy, Ellie."

"I guess it is. But I think we're through with crazy for now. I've got one son who just finished college and the other who is now living with us and raising our infant granddaughter. Alan and I have run away from a T. Rex more times than most people, so we're trying to live a little more quietly from now on," Ellie told him.

"Well, that makes what I came here to talk about a little easier."

She frowned, not liking the sound of that. "What did you want to talk about?"

"You've been teaching at Stanford for two years. And when you first came on, we discussed an adjunct role for a guaranteed three years and option to extend. After two years and seeing the student evaluations you receive, I'd like to open the topic of renegotiating your contract," Darryl said, suddenly all business.

Ellie's stomach dropped. She and Alan had made a home here. She liked this job. She liked her students. She had thought they liked her. Could she possibly have been horribly wrong?

Darryl continued, not leaving space for her to reply. "I was hoping you might consider making a lateral move from adjunct to tenure-track. Our usual track requires five years of fulltime teaching and all sorts of other requirements, but no other academic has your qualifications. You've put in two years here, and the students just love you. Your classes are popular, and your grad students are improving in their other courses after the benefit of your teaching and mentorship. Given all that, the school would be willing to grant tenure after next year."

"Oh my god," Ellie breathed. This wasn't what she was expecting Darryl to say at all.

"If you're interested, we can go over the contract terms in writing. But if you'd prefer to remain an adjunct for next year and then reevaluate, I won't bore you with details."

Ellie's head was swimming. Tenure at any university was a big deal. Tenure at Stanford was a really big deal. And Ellie had moved around so much over the years that she'd never anticipated tenure was in the cards for her. She figured she'd be like Alan, going from school to school, research grant to research grant, following the money that allowed her to do her work and eventually retire.

But maybe there was another option. An option that allowed her to build her home at this school and in this area, especially now that Ethan was going to take classes at San Jose State and Maddie was with them and Alan was now so passionate about his little vineyard.

"I am theoretically interested," she told Darryl. "Go ahead and bore me with the details in an email, and we can go from there."

Darryl brightened immediately. "Great! I'll get things started." He stood up, eager to get it all moving. But he paused. "Oh, and…um…do you think…"

"I'll bring Alan to campus one day so you can meet him," Ellie interrupted, knowing exactly what Darryl wanted to ask.

He blushed slightly but beamed with excitement. "Cool," he answered.

Ellie chuckled as Darryl bounded out of the room and closed the door behind him. Yeah, she thought to herself, this was all pretty cool.