Part 2
“But he really does—” Nora began, and Ms. Rusk raised her hand. Nora stopped before the rest of it could come out.
“We’re not arguing. An apology, please.”
“I’m sorry.”
The teacher nodded toward her seat. Nora walked back without the folder, aware that she had just told everyone the teacher was right. She couldn’t work out how to take the apology back without getting in trouble again.
Mia sat beside her at lunch. She looked at Nora’s untouched sandwich, then toward the other children, and shifted her milk carton from one hand to the other. Nora waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, Nora arranged the apple slices with their red edges facing the same way.
At dismissal, while Ms. Rusk was talking to a boy at the door, Nora went behind the desk. Her folder lay under a torn spelling worksheet. She pulled it out, brushed the pencil shavings off the cover, and put it in her backpack without asking.
On the walk home she held both straps tight. She didn’t know whether taking it was another thing she would have to apologize for.
Beth was folding towels when Nora came through the kitchen. She knew from the slow way her daughter set down her bag that this wasn’t a day for asking whether she wanted a snack. She moved the laundry basket off the other chair.
“Come sit with me.”
Nora stayed standing. “She put it in the trash.”
Beth laid the towel flat. “Your folder?”
“And I had to say sorry.”
The sound of the refrigerator seemed suddenly too loud. Beth wanted to call the school with Nora still beside her and make someone explain it. Instead, she got down on one knee, which hurt after the morning’s shift, and asked Nora to look at her.
“Was there anything in your presentation that you knew wasn’t true?”
“No.” The answer came without the little pause Nora had begun putting before everything else.
“Then you didn’t owe that apology.”
Nora rubbed her sleeve across her nose. Beth waited until her daughter’s breathing settled before asking for the whole sequence. She wrote down the teacher’s words on the back of a grocery receipt, then turned the paper over when Nora started watching the pen.
They took the folder out together. One corner had folded under in the wastebasket; Beth reached to flatten it, then left it alone when Nora pulled it closer. She asked whether Nora wanted to keep the project on the table or take it to her room. Nora chose her room.
That night Beth called Adam after bedtime. She told him about Monday first, then Tuesday, keeping the receipt beside her so she wouldn’t turn what Nora had said into what she feared.
“In front of the other kids?” he asked.
“Yes. She made her apologize.”
He was quiet long enough that Beth checked the screen. Then he asked where the folder was now.
“Nora got it out of the bin. It’s in her room.”
Something scraped against his end of the phone. Beth pictured him setting down the chair he often leaned back in, but she couldn’t know. She waited for him to speak.
“I’m going to ask to finish here early. I want to be home tomorrow.”
“And then?”
“Talk to the school. Bring the information they say they need.”
Beth leaned back against the kitchen cupboard. “She still has to be in that room after we leave it, Adam.”
“I know.”
He called again before Beth went to bed. His supervisor had cleared the early return; he and Flint would travel back with the team that night. He’d spoken about a short supervised school visit, too, and would arrange it with the office in the morning. He couldn’t promise what the teacher would do. He could promise to be there.
Beth checked on Nora before turning off the hall light. Her daughter was asleep with her hand against the wall, and the folder stood between the bed and the nightstand. Beth left it exactly where it was.
On Wednesday morning Nora took a worksheet from the stack without looking toward Ms. Rusk. The folder was in her backpack again, although the presentations were over. She couldn’t think of a safe place to leave it.
During math, she heard two people stop outside the classroom. Adult voices came through the door: the school secretary’s, and a lower one Nora couldn’t quite place while the teacher was speaking. She kept her pencil on the subtraction problem.
Then came a knock. Ms. Rusk went to answer it, holding her red pen with the cap in her other hand.
“Mr. Ellis checked in with us,” the secretary said. “The office approved a brief visit. The dog is to stay with him.”
Nora looked up.
Her father stood outside wearing the uniform from her drawing. He had taken off his cover, and a visitor badge caught on the edge of his shirt pocket. Beside his left leg sat a brown dog with a dark muzzle and ears that came to two sharp points.
Nora could see the small scar above the right one. She put her pencil down very carefully, because if she moved any faster she thought she might knock everything off the desk.
“I’m Adam Ellis,” her father told the teacher. “Nora’s dad.”
Ms. Rusk glanced toward Nora, then stepped back far enough to let him through. Flint rose when Adam moved and sat again just inside, where there was room beside the bookcase. A child made a soft kissing sound; the dog’s ear turned, but he stayed with his handler.
Her father looked across the desks until he found her. Nora had spent two days trying not to be seen in this room, and now she couldn’t make herself look away.
“My daughter told you about my job,” he said. “I’d like to understand why she was made to apologize for it.”
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