Chapter 4: Baby's Real Voice

I let Chad wait for his answer.

"Ask him yourself," I said, and I walked down the path to the truck with Elias a step behind me.

Chad didn't come after me, and I didn't turn around.

On Monday afternoon I went to Brookside Elementary to clear out my desk.

The principal had told me to come after the last bell, when the halls were empty.

Elias drove me and parked across the lot with the engine running.

"I'll be right here," he said.

"I'm only getting a box."

"I know."

The art room still smelled like tempera paint.

Thirty paper owls hung from the ceiling, and a second grader had signed his on the wing: "Ms. Holloway is the best."

I'd kept my own name at work, and the kids had never called me anything else.

I took down the owls one at a time and laid them in the box.

I was holding the last one when I came out the side door and heard my name.

"Rochelle."

Poppy was leaning against my old parking spot in jeans and a gray sweatshirt, with her hair pulled back.

She wasn't crying, and she wasn't using the little voice.

I pressed the red circle on my phone's recorder and slid it into my coat pocket, screen against the lining.

"You can stop looking for the SUV," she said. "I saw it. I'm not going to touch you."

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