Ten minutes later, Mr. Alden called from a blocked number.
“Can you meet me tonight?” he asked.
“Where?”
“The laundromat on Pierce Street. Eight o’clock. Don’t bring Lily.”
The line went dead.
I stared at the phone for a long time.
Then I looked toward the living room, where Lily had wheeled herself close to the television and was watching a documentary about ocean predators.
A great white shark cut through blue water, silent and unstoppable.
That night, Janelle came over to stay with Lily.
She arrived with a casserole, a folder, and the expression of a woman who had already decided she was at war.
“I made calls,” she said.
“Of course you did.”
“My cousin works at Channel Six. My sister’s neighbor is a civil rights attorney. And the mother of a boy named Mateo Rivas wants to talk to you.”
I blinked.
“You did all that since yesterday?”
She shrugged. “I’m a PTA mom. We organize bake sales in hurricanes.”
I almost smiled.
Before I left, Lily caught my wrist.
“Are you going to fix it more?”
“I’m going to try.”
“Will Mr. Alden help?”
“I think so.”
She nodded.
“He always saves the purple markers for me.”
That nearly broke me.
The laundromat on Pierce Street was empty except for Mr. Alden and one dryer thumping unevenly in the back.
He sat under fluorescent lights, wearing the same gray jacket he wore when he emptied trash cans at Brookside. A brown envelope lay on the plastic table in front of him.
“You were followed?” he asked.
I glanced toward the dark windows.
“I don’t think so.”
“You wouldn’t.”
He pushed the envelope toward me.
Inside was a flash drive, a stack of printed pages, and a photograph.
The photograph showed Mr. Alden standing beside a boy in a red baseball cap. The boy had one arm around his waist and one hand gripping a set of crutches.
“My grandson,” Mr. Alden said. “Elliot.”
I looked up.
“He went to Brookside?”
“For two years.”
“What happened?”
Mr. Alden’s face changed. It did not collapse. It closed.
“They made him feel like every doorway was doing him a favor by opening,” he said. “Little things at first. Forgotten accommodations. Missing chair. A field day event he couldn’t participate in. Then bigger things. They told my daughter another school might be a better fit.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
The dryer thumped again.
“He stopped wanting to go anywhere,” Mr. Alden continued. “Not just school. Anywhere. Said people got tired when he needed help.”
I looked down at the photograph.
“What happened to him?”