I put Bea's mittens down on the aftercare desk at 8:10 a.m. and said, "Show me the sign-out log. All of it, since Monday."
The director began to say something about office hours. I said it again, and she stopped.
Thursday, 3:10 p.m. Out. Thursday, 3:35 p.m. In.
Bea signed out for twenty-five minutes, by "C. Thorne, grandmother." Under it, clipped to the page, was a pickup authorization that had come in by fax Monday night at 11:14. My name sat at the bottom. Caroline Kerr.
I did not write that.
"The authorization was in the file," the director whispered. "Ms. Kerr, I am so sorry."
I looked at the signature for a long time. The J leaned backward, like a person bracing against wind. The K had a tail, a little hook off the last stroke.
I had seen that hand on Tuesday night, on the back of a canceled check in Gideon's phone. I did not know whose it was. I only knew it was not mine, and that someone had now used it twice.
I revoked every name on the pickup list but mine and Mrs. Okonkwo's. I added a password.
Then I called Gideon from the sidewalk. He did not ask why.
He was at the curb in eleven minutes. He read the log standing up, then read it again.
"Harrow Hill," he said.
"I can take the bus."
"I know," he said. "Let me be there anyway."
The drive took forty minutes and we spent them saying nothing.
Celia received us in a pale sitting room with a tea service already laid, as if she had been told the time of our arrival by someone who did not need to ask. The tea smelled of smoke and orange peel.
"Caroline. Gideon, darling. Sit."
I did not sit. "Thursday. Ten past three."
"Yes," Celia said. She poured. Her hand did not tremble. "I took Beatrix for cocoa at the café across from the school. Twenty-five minutes. I returned her myself. A grandmother is allowed one cup of cocoa."
"You are not on the list," I said. "You were never on the list. Someone faxed Larkin Street a form on Monday at 11:14 p.m. with my name on it. I want to know who."
She turned her head and looked straight at me. Her eyes were the exact gray of Gideon's, and they did not move.
"I have no idea what you mean, Caroline."
"Your handwriting is on my daughter's records."
"I have not touched your daughter's records." She set down the pot. "I raised one Thorne wrong. I will not do it twice."
I could not tell if it was a confession or a threat.
Gideon had not moved from the door. He spoke so evenly that I looked over to be sure it was him.
"Mother. You will not go near Bea again. Not at school, not at the park, not at a café. Not unless Carrie says so, in advance, in writing."
I waited for the fight.
"Of course," Celia said.
She smiled at him. She actually smiled, warm as a Sunday. "Of course, darling. Whatever Caroline wishes."
It was the quickest surrender I have ever watched, and it frightened me more than any slammed door. People give up that fast when the thing they wanted is already in their pocket.
I walked out without my tea. On the front step, Celia caught my sleeve with two fingers, light as a leaf, and said it quietly, for me alone.
"Ask your bank, Caroline."
Gideon drove for ten minutes with both hands at the top of the wheel. At a red light he said, to the windshield, "I have never told my mother no and had it hold."
"You just did."
"Watch." His jaw worked. "She'll have a reason by Monday. She always has a reason by Monday."
That was all. At the next light his two fingers started tapping on the wheel, and I looked away so I would not have to watch him notice.
Ask your bank. I had no bank to ask, and no idea which question to bring.
At 3:00 p.m. we sat in a small yellow waiting room at Lindqvist Diagnostics, a clinic I had picked because it had a back door. Results by Wednesday. The nurse was named Pilar. She held up a swab as long as a pencil.
"Open wide, bug," Pilar said. "Say ahh."
"Fact," said Bea, after. "It tastes like a spoon."
Gideon went next. He sat on the child's step stool because the chair was taken, his knees up near his ribs, and opened his mouth with the dignity of a man being fitted for a verdict.
They sat side by side on the little bench while Pilar sealed the tubes. Then I saw them both tapping two fingers on their own knees in exactly the same rhythm.
Nobody said the word. Not Pilar, not me, not him. Bea looked down at the two pairs of hands on that bench and kept very still, as though a bird had landed.
Dell called at 6:00 p.m., while the pasta water was coming to a boil.
"Kid," he said. I could hear him swallowing. "Sit down."
"I'm standing in my kitchen. Tell me."
"Draycott Grant filed a complaint with the State Court Reporters Board this afternoon. On behalf of Thorne Harbor Holdings. They say you staged Monday. That you brought your own kid in to extort a deponent." He took a breath that rattled. "There's a review hearing Tuesday, March 10, at 9 a.m. You're off the roster until then. All of it, every job. And if you lose, they revoke the certification."
"Dell."
"You know I love you, kid, but I can't have my name on this."
I said thank you. I do not know why. I hung up and turned off the burner.
My steno machine sat in its bag by the front door where I had set it down that morning, and it would not move again until Tuesday. Four days.