Let Them Dare novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Offer

The conference room next to the principal's office had a round table and a dish of mints nobody had touched.

My mother came in still wearing her work shirt, with a lanyard around her neck and her car keys in her fist.

She had come straight from the insurance building she cleaned at night, and she sat down beside me without a word.

The principal stood in the doorway and left it open.

"Five minutes," she said to Mr. Hildebrand. "I'm in the hall."

He waited until her shoes had gone a few steps away.

Then he took the chair across from us and set a slim leather folder on the table.

"Mrs. Flanagan," he said. "I admire what you've done for your daughter."

"Thank you."

"I mean it. You work nights, I understand. That's not easy." He smiled. "My firm owns the building on Delmar Street. I'm told your company holds the cleaning contract."

My mother did not move.

"I'm only saying that I know who you are," he said. "I'd like to help you both."

"How?" I asked.

He opened the folder and turned a single sheet around.

It was a paragraph, typed, with a line for my signature.

I read it.

It said that I had received a photograph last March from an anonymous account, that I had assumed without evidence it came from a classmate, and that I wished to withdraw any suggestion otherwise.

"It's a small correction," he said. "It simply says you can't be sure who sent it."

"I'm sure."

"You're eighteen. You've had a hard week." He tapped the page. "If you sign, I'll call the dean of admissions at St. Aldwyn this afternoon. Your aid there will go from partial to full. That's a year of your mother's wages, and then three more."

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