They Rejected My Daughter novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Three More

Chloe's father landed on Friday night and walked into my living room still wearing his work boots.

He was a big quiet man with sunburned hands.

He hugged his daughter for a full minute without saying anything.

Then he sat on the arm of my couch and told me, in a rough voice, that he had known Lorna was giving money to the school.

"I thought it was for the gym," he said. "She said it was for the gym."

"It paid for something else."

"I can see that now."

He slept on the couch that weekend and let his daughter sleep in the room across from Ruby's.

On Sunday afternoon I set out every chair I owned in the kitchen.

I had called the three families on Ms. Walmsley's list.

One of them was the mother who had written to Ruby from the unknown number, and Ruby had given me her number herself.

I told each of them the same thing: nothing would be said to anyone, and they could leave whenever they wanted.

They all came.

A bus driver sat by the stove with his cap on his knee.

His son had been cut from the team three years ago, and he had stopped doing math that fall.

"He used to build things out of numbers," the driver said. "Little games, codes. He stopped talking about it, and I never knew why."

"What does he do now?"

"Delivers pizza. He's nineteen. He says he was never any good."

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