Part 7
Five months later, Emma arrived at the West Briar public library six minutes before the committee briefing, still wearing the black slacks and low shoes from her shift at the same teller window in Ashford. Her Meridian badge lay in the open pocket of her tote. She had returned only after her separate employment appeal ended with the bank adding a final finding beside her statement that marked the disputed claims inaccurate, correcting her personnel file, and withdrawing the confidentiality condition.
She set her tote beside Elias at the interview table. Chosen through West Briar’s open volunteer notice, she had spent the previous three interview afternoons disagreeing with him about application plans. Elias focused on whether a plan could survive a financial shock. Emma noticed whether it left room for sleep.
Two slots on that afternoon’s schedule were marked WITHDREW. The first awards were a semester later than Elias had planned; the foundation’s privacy rules let him see only the empty slots and the dates each person had stopped responding.
Their next-to-last interview was with a woman named Tasha Bennett. She arrived ten minutes early in a navy jacket that had been altered at home; the left sleeve was a little shorter, and pale tailor’s chalk remained near one button. She carried a plastic folder secured with a grocery-store rubber band.
Elias waited until Tasha gave her name before opening the scoring sheet.
Tasha was thirty-nine and worked nights at a hotel near the airport. She wanted to finish the respiratory-therapy program she had left when her father’s health failed. Her grades from fifteen years earlier were uneven. Her recommendation from the hotel manager was specific about her ability to calm stranded travelers at two in the morning.
Emma opened the interview. “What would make it possible for you to stay enrolled this time?”
Tasha looked from Emma to Elias, then at the closed leather folder between them. “Money,” she said. “But not only tuition. Everybody wants to pay the college. Nobody wants to pay the woman downstairs who can sit with my father from six until I get home.”
Emma wrote something in the margin of her page. “How many evenings a week?”
“Three. Four during clinicals.”
The questions became practical. Bus route. Work schedule. Clinical placement. What her father could do alone and what he could not. Tasha’s shoulders gradually lowered. Halfway through, she took the rubber band off her folder and showed them a calendar covered in three colors of ink.
Elias asked one question too early, beginning with, “Have you considered—”
Emma touched the corner of his paper.
He stopped. “Sorry. Finish.”
Tasha did.
When the interview ended, she gathered her calendar and slid the rubber band back around the plastic folder. At the door, she turned.
“Mrs. Carter,” she said. “Was she a teacher?”
“Student services,” Elias replied. “She kept bus passes in a recipe box under her desk. She asked about rides and care hours before she opened a transcript.”
Tasha smiled. “I think I would’ve liked her.”
After she left, Emma opened the leather folder. It had become too scarred for business meetings, but Elias still used it for the fund. Inside were the current committee sheets and Grace’s first handwritten outline.
Emma tapped the interview rubric. “Section two. No planning for the applicant before the applicant finishes.”
“I stopped.”
“After I touched your paper.”
Elias looked at the printed instruction and moved his pen below it. “Noted.”
Emma added a check mark beside the instruction. Elias laughed before he could stop himself.
The next applicant appeared in the doorway wearing paint-spattered work pants and holding a paper cup in both hands. Emma moved the leather folder to her side of the table. Elias pointed to the empty chair and waited for the man to tell them his name.