Art Tuttle

Quick Facts

• Role: Former Caseham High math teacher; a beloved mentor whose ruined reputation becomes a cautionary backdrop to the novel
• First appearance: Recounted in others’ memories; sole on-page scene is a tense grocery-store encounter
• Key relationships: Addie Severson; Eve Bennett; Nate Bennett
• Physicality: A gentle, Santa-like presence—short gray hair, bushy white eyebrows, a belly that once made him a “dead ringer” for Santa; after the scandal he appears disheveled, in a too-tight turtleneck, open-toed sandals with white gym socks, and smells of whiskey
• Narrative function: Dark precursor whose downfall foreshadows later accusations and reframes how the community reads “kindness,” boundaries, and power

Who They Are

At heart, Art Tuttle is a nurturing, fatherly teacher whose warmth once knit the school community together: the colleague who mentored new staff, the man who brought his wife’s brownies, the perennial Santa at the holiday party. The scandal detonates that image, turning him from campus caretaker into social pariah. Art’s story is less an arc within the main plot than a lingering shadow over it—how quickly a life can be reinterpreted, and how acts of care can be recast as predation once suspicion takes hold.

Personality & Traits

Art’s defining quality is care—he notices struggling students and overextends himself to help. After the scandal, those same impulses read as naïveté at best, dangerous boundary-blurring at worst. The grocery-store scene crystallizes the reversal: the gentle mentor now jittery, paranoid, and desperate to be believed.

• Kind and fatherly: Recalled as “genuinely the nicest person” on staff; he mentors new teacher Eve, offers comfort (and his wife’s brownies), and dresses as Santa at the staff party—rituals that signal trust and community.
• Dedicated educator: He tutors Addie for free, gives rides, and folds her into family routines by inviting her to dinner with his wife. These gestures later supply ammunition against him, showing how context can recode intent.
• Beloved—and emblematic: Among the most popular teachers at Caseham High, his fall shocks the community, exposing how fragile institutional trust can be.
• Paranoid and broken: Post-firing he’s disheveled, smells of whiskey, and grips Eve’s arm with bloodshot urgency, warning that Addie is “not well.” Whether this is delusion or belated truth, the scene shows a man cornered by a narrative he can’t escape.

Character Journey

Art’s trajectory is a tragic collapse that unfolds mostly off-page but reverberates through every hallway conversation. Once a universally trusted educator, he loses his job and his public identity in the wake of a scandal that retrospectively reinterprets his kindnesses as threats. When Eve meets him in the grocery store, the transformation is stark: from the staff-room Santa to a man hissing warnings, his authority and dignity stripped away. Art’s fall dramatizes the destructive force of rumor and the power of narrative framing, a core instance of Appearance vs. Reality—how the same facts can tell opposite stories depending on who controls the lens.

Key Relationships

• Addie Severson: Art’s relationship with Addie Severson begins as paternal support after her father’s death—tutoring, rides, and attempts at stability. After the scandal, his perception flips: he calls her “not well,” implying manipulation and danger. The shift underscores how dependency can be read as either care or control, and how accusation can weaponize intimacy.
• Eve Bennett: A mentor to Eve Bennett, Art is initially her model of kindness in a new job. Eve wants to believe in his innocence, yet the scandal seeds doubt; their grocery-store encounter compresses that tension, showing trust curdling into fear and pity.
• Nate Bennett: Unlike his wife, Nate Bennett is convinced of Art’s guilt—“If you think Art Tuttle isn’t a creep, then you’re blind.” Nate’s certainty spotlights the staff’s divided moral landscape and foreshadows Nate’s own willingness to fix narratives to his advantage.

Defining Moments

Even though much of Art’s story is told in retrospect, a few moments define both his character and the community’s reaction to him.

• Tutoring and caretaking Addie: He offers free tutoring, drives her home, and invites her to dinner with his wife. Why it matters: These actions become “evidence” of Abuse of Power and Predatory Behavior, demonstrating how intent can be overwritten by interpretation.
• The scandal and job loss: Art is dismissed from Caseham High, and his reputation collapses almost overnight. Why it matters: It shows the speed at which institutions protect themselves by sacrificing individuals—and how quickly communal memory rewrites the past.
• Grocery-store encounter with Eve: Disheveled and smelling of whiskey, Art grips Eve’s arm and warns her about Addie. Why it matters: The scene injects dread early, reframes Addie in the reader’s mind, and reveals Art’s desperation to reclaim a narrative that has already condemned him.
• The staff Santa persona: Annual holiday cheer once aligned his image with generosity and innocence. Why it matters: That iconography—jolly, trustworthy, paternal—is later turned against him, intensifying the sense of betrayal.

Symbolism

Art symbolizes the fragility of reputation in a culture primed to read motives through fear and rumor. His “Santa” body becomes a shorthand for benevolence that the scandal corrupts, transforming a communal mascot into a cautionary emblem of how perception can be weaponized through Deception and Manipulation. He is the novel’s walking warning: boundaries blurred in good faith can be reinterpreted as moral failure, and once a narrative sticks, it remakes the person.

Essential Quotes

He was genuinely the nicest person I had ever met, always ready with a comforting word or one of his wife’s famous brownies. And every year at the staff Christmas party, Art would dress up as Santa Claus, because even without the red suit, he was a dead ringer.

This memory compresses Art’s reputation into concrete images—comforting words, homemade brownies, and the annual Santa ritual. It captures how his body and habits once signified safety and community, a baseline that will later make the accusations feel both shocking and narratively irresistible.

"Listen," he says, "you need to be careful around Addie Severson." My mouth feels dry as I look into his bloodshot eyes. "Art, do you need a ride home?" "No, that’s not what I’m trying to say!" His jaw clenches in frustration. "Look, I kept my mouth shut for her sake, but that girl is not well. There’s…there’s stuff you don’t know."

The grocery-store conversation reframes Art not as aggressor but as alarmed witness—and possibly as unreliable narrator. The bloodshot eyes and clenched jaw stage his desperation; his insistence that he “kept [his] mouth shut” hints at a prior ethics of protection that has now backfired.

Nate’s eyes darken. “If you think Art Tuttle isn’t a creep, then you’re blind.”

Nate’s hardline judgment distills the staff’s polarization into a single sentence. By closing interpretive space—“you’re blind”—the quote shows how communities enforce consensus, making it nearly impossible for someone like Art to reclaim nuance or context once branded.