Chapter 18: The Drive

The Fairmont PTA meets on the first Thursday in the school library, at seven, on folding chairs.

I had not been to one in a year.

That Thursday, every chair was full, and parents stood along the shelves.

Gwen sat at the head table under the reading-month caterpillar poster.

Her hair was smooth, and she held a pen.

Eli sat on the carpet in the corner with a coloring book and his blue blazer folded beside him.

She saw me come in and smiled.

It was a warm, patient, forgiving smile, and I took the chair by the door and smiled back.

Her whisper from the lobby was still in my head. He's mine, he always was.

I had decided on the drive over that I would not answer it.

He was never a prize to win, and she could keep him.

"Let's begin," Gwen said. "First, I want to say how much this community has meant to me this fall."

"Excuse me," the principal said.

She stood up in the back, tired and kind in a cardigan, with a laptop under one arm.

A woman from the district office stood beside her.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, Gwen. I need ten minutes on item one."

"Of course," Gwen said, and her pen stopped.

"This is our contact from the district's technology office," the principal said.

"Last month, the livestream of Family Day was deleted from the PTA shared drive overnight."

A murmur went through the shelves.

"I asked the district to pull the access log," she said. "It is school property."

"Every parent here has a right to know who touched it."

"Principal," Gwen said, "this seems unnecessary."

"It's brief."

The woman from the district opened the laptop on the head table.

"The file titled Family Day Livestream was removed at twelve forty-one that night," she said.

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