Chapter 4: Hot Tea

At seven the next morning, a black car was idling outside the hotel.

Darren stood beside the rear door in a gray overcoat, holding a paper cup in each hand.

"Good morning, Mrs. Alder. I hope you slept."

"How did you know where I was?"

"The hotel charged Randall's office for the room," he said.

"The assistant who handles his accounts flagged it. Nobody was tracking you. We were worried."

He said it so gently that I almost apologized.

He held one cup out to me. "It's tea. Hot. I asked them to make it the way you take it."

I took it, because my hands were cold and it was the first kind thing anyone had offered me since the screening.

"The car is for the studio," he said. "Randall thought you'd want to go in together."

"I'm driving myself. I promised Bennett I'd take him to pick up his suit."

"Of course."

He opened my car door for me instead.

"He'll want to know you're all right. May I tell him you said hello?"

"Tell him whatever you'd like," I said.

I drove away with the tea going cold in the cup holder.

The tailor's shop was two blocks from campus.

Bennett was already inside, standing on a low platform in the jacket of his graduation suit while a man with pins in his mouth knelt at his sleeve.

My son looked up, and his whole face went careful.

"Mom. Hey."

"Hey, sweetheart."

I sat down on a chair by the window.