Chapter 10
At eighteen, I signed my first foundation document with Mrs. Reyes beside me.
It was an approval for the transportation program I had helped choose the year before. Students who stayed after school for tutoring or activities would have a way home. Ms. Avery explained every page before I signed.
“You can ask us to go through it again,” she said.
“I know.”
I did ask about one figure. She showed me how it had been calculated. Then I signed.
Dad waited outside the conference room. When I came out, he searched my face.
“How was it?”
“I understood what I put my name on.”
He smiled. “Your mother would have liked that answer.”
The foundation hosted a small gathering that afternoon. Students, staff, and families came to see the new shuttle and the projects it would support. Nobody arrived by helicopter.
Mrs. Reyes stood with Eli near the garden display. He was finishing his last year at Bellmont and had been accepted into an environmental studies program. Nia, now preparing for college too, kept taking photographs of us when we were not looking.
Dad stood near Mom’s photograph. His hair had more gray in it than on the day he walked across the athletic field. When I joined him, he handed me a small box.
“I was supposed to give you this after the meeting,” he said. “I’m early.”
Inside was Mom’s necklace. The stone she had kept now sat in the space Sophia’s shoe had left empty. I could see which one it was if I looked closely. Its setting was a little newer.
“I asked the jeweler not to polish away every mark,” Dad said. “I thought you might want it to still look like yours.”
“I do.”
He fastened it around my neck. Mrs. Reyes saw us from across the room and came over.
“Your mother wore it when she signed the first papers for the school fund,” she said.
I touched the pendant.
“Were you there?”
“I was. She made me read every page with her.”
Dad laughed. “She made me read them twice.”
I looked at the document I had just signed. Mom had left me her work, but she had also left me people willing to sit down and explain it. That was the part I had needed most.
Near the door, Dr. Lewis was speaking with a group of students. Bellmont had kept the new reporting process in place. Mrs. Reyes still worked at the school because she wanted to, and the students knew her name. She had stopped letting me call her Mom only in whispers at school.
I called it across the room when I needed her.
Sophia came to the gathering near the end. She was leaving for college in the fall. We had learned to speak without stepping around what happened, though we were not close.
She stopped beside the garden display.
“The benches look good,” she said.
“Eli designed them.”
“He made me carry enough wood for both.”
I smiled. She glanced at the necklace.
“I’m glad you can wear it.”
“So am I.”
She waited a moment, then thanked me for letting her work in the garden after her suspension. I told her Mrs. Reyes had made that decision.
“I know,” she said. “I thanked her too.”
When Sophia left, I felt no need to follow the old story any further. She had to live with what she had done and with what she chose to do next. I had my own choices to make.
At sunset, the last guests went home. Dad helped Ms. Avery stack chairs. Nia put away her camera. Eli carried plants back to the greenhouse.
Mrs. Reyes found me by the two benches.
“You’ve been quiet,” she said.
“I’m thinking about that day on the steps.”
She sat beside me. “What about it?”
“I used to remember everyone laughing.”
“And now?”
“I remember you opening the library door. I remember Dad asking whether I was hurt. I remember you both staying.”
Mrs. Reyes put her arm around me.
“Always.”
Dad came down the path carrying three paper cups of lemonade. He handed us two and sat on my other side.
For a while, we watched Eli lock the greenhouse and Nia call goodbye from the gate. The shuttle stood ready for its first route on Monday. Students would climb into it without needing to know my name.
I rested my head against Mrs. Reyes’s shoulder. Dad’s hand found mine on the bench between us.
The necklace was warm against my skin. The garden was full of voices I knew, and I could hear them clearly.
May you like
“I’m ready to go home,” I said.
Dad rose and offered me his hand. Mrs. Reyes took my other one, and we walked down the path together.
