Chapter 9: Public Comment

Jo's POV

"They put your name on it," Dale had said on the phone that night.

His voice was rough. "As the parent."

"Of course they did," I said. "That's what the first life was for."

The school district meeting room holds a hundred and twenty folding chairs, a long table with microphones, and a flag.

On the twelfth of August at six in the evening, every chair was full.

People stood along the walls with their arms folded.

Sixty-three of them had signed my clipboard, and fifty-one had come.

Mrs. Albrecht had brought a cushion.

The lemonade lady had brought her husband, who held a cane across his knees and nodded at everyone who passed.

In the second row, in a clean white shirt, Dale sat with his hands on his knees and looked straight ahead.

At the back, standing against the wall with his arms crossed, was my husband.

Brandi's mother sat at the board table in her pearls, with a blue folder squared in front of her.

When item six came up, she did not wait for the president to finish reading it.

"I move to suspend the coach with pay," she said, "pending review of an inappropriate relationship with a parent."

Someone at the table seconded it in a mumble.

"We'll open the floor to public comment," said the board president, a tired man with reading glasses. "Three minutes each. State your name."

The line formed along the center aisle.

Mrs. Albrecht went first.

She stood with her cushion under her arm.

"That boy drove my grandson home in a snowstorm and never told his parents," she said.

"I've lived here seventy-one years. You're taking the wrong man out of the school."

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