Page 2 of Unforgivable

“We’ve had an incident, unfortunately.”

“Is Charlie okay?”

“Yes. She’s fine.” She sighs and I brace myself. “She bit one of her classmates.”

“She did?” Oh God. I thought we had moved on from the biting. “I can’t believe it’s happening again,” I say. “Who did she hurt?”

“Valerie.”

“Valerie? But they’re friends.”

“Not anymore. Can you come early and pick her up? And we should have a chat.”

I glance at my watch. Five past three. I am supposed to be here until five-thirty. Maybe Jack could do it. “Have you tried her father? He was going to pick her up later anyway, he’s probably at home—”

“She asked for you, Laura. She wants you.”

She wants you.Is it terrible that those three little words send a ripple of joy every time I hear them? Even when it’s because she took a chunk out of another child?She bit someone. She wants you.

“I’m on my way.”

I put my phone away and when I look up, Summer is smiling at me, her arm outstretched with the envelope in her hand.

I take it from her. “Unfortunately, I have to close up. Family emergency. Are you free tomorrow? Would you be able to come back then?”

“Yes, of course. Is everything all right?”

“Yes, everything is fine. Just a minor…hiccup.” I slide her envelope in the drawer. “I’ll be here from nine am. What’s a good time for you?”

She smiles. “Nine am would be just fine.”

Minutes later, Summer is gone and I’m fumbling with my bag, fishing for my keys. I’ve texted Jack to let him know what’s going on and I’m about to call Bruno to tell him I have to close early but then I remember Gavin saying he’d be back. I call him, explain the situation. He says he’s still at the bank but he’s almost done and he should be back in fifteen minutes. I’m doing three things with two hands. I’ve still got the phone wedged in the crook of my neck and I’m hanging up the “back soon” sign on the door, adjusting the analog clock and movable hands to four o’clock. As I thank Gavin, I accidentally drop the keys on the ground, and then my phone. The phone now has a cracked screen, and Gavin is gone and when I finally look up, I think I catch the edge of Summer’s distinctive black and gold jacket disappearing behind the edge of the building and I wonder if she’d been there the whole time.

TWO

Charlie is sitting on a yellow plastic chair inside Tara’s office, her eyes red from crying. She springs upright and rushes into my arms to bury her face in my belly.

“Hey, sweetie! You okay?” I feel Tara’s disapproving stare as if to say.Oh, she’s fine, it’s the other girl you should be worried about.

“Charlotte?” Tara says, “Can you go outside for a minute?”

“Go on,” I say softly. “You wait outside the door where I can see you. I’ll be there in a sec.”

“It’s not just the biting,” Tara says once Charlie’s left the room. “She’s…taking things again.”

We don’t say stealing here, in this lovely elementary school. I know this because this isn’t our first rodeo. We say, “taking things without permission.”

“What did she take?”

“A box of pencils from another student. We found them in her bag.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Do you know why she’s acting up? She’s been so good lately, is anything going on at home?”

These time-honored teacher-parent questions are never meant to be answered truthfully, surely everyone knows that. We’re hardly going to tell our child’s educator that daddy is having it off with his secretary or mommy’s gone to rehab. So, I do what everyone else does. I plaster on my genuinely puzzled face, and say, “No, nothing I can think of. But we’ll talk to her, tonight, Jack and I. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“Because she was doing so well, she’s very popular with her classmates, she’s a lovely child.”

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