Page 7 of Slander
How could I have? School just started today.
I lock up at four. I'm the last teacher in my hallway.
I tell myself it's because I wanted to redo the seating chart, which is true, and I tell myself it's not because I wanted to be alone for a while, which is also true.
The drive home is about twelve minutes.
Hoagie meets me at the door with his whole body, and I sit down on the floor in the entryway and let him climb into my lap, all seventy pounds of him, and put his head against my chest, because he reads me better than most people in this town.
"It was some day, buddy."
He thumps his tail against my thigh.
I tell myself a lot of things while sitting here.
Sometimes parents change their minds. Sometimes a child just needs a different teacher, and it has nothing to do with anyone. The Lord works it out.
I almost believe myself.
* * *
By Friday afternoon, I haven't heard a word from Marie Bradley.
Caleb hasn't come back, and the chair where he sat is being occupied by a girl named Hazel, from when I re-did the seating chart.
I do my job. I read to my class and do math centers, and I write twenty-one weekly progress observations in my head as the week goes on, and I don't let myself think about the little boy who was removed from my class.
Maybe I shouldn’t be wondering what the reason is, but I am.
I'm at the door of my classroom at three on Friday, calling kids to their adults, when Lizzie Sue Hodgkins finds me.
She's collecting two of her four boys, both of whom are racing past her with their backpacks dragging, and she peels off from the pickup current and floats up to me with a smile she calculated. "Sophie, honey, do you have a minute?"
"Of course, Lizzie Sue."
She steps in close and lowers her voice, puts a hand on my forearm—light and friendly and not quite letting go. "Can I just say something as a friend?"
My neck tightens. I've felt this before—at the start of a sermon that's about to turn ugly.
I keep my voice even. "Of course."
"I just want you to be careful out there, sweetheart." She gives my arm the smallest squeeze. "You know how people talk."
I look at her. She holds the smile.
"Lizzie Sue, I don't know what you mean."
"Oh, honey." Her eyes go soft and sad. "Don't make me say it. I just love you, that's all. I just want you to be careful." She releases my arm and pats it once. "You take care, now."
She heads back to her boys and is gone into the parking lot before I've closed my mouth.
* * *
Saturday morning at the Piggly Wiggly is the closest thing this town has to a town meeting.
I keep my list short and my head down, find Hoagie's food in aisle seven, and I'm reaching for the eggs in the dairy case when Patricia appears at my elbow.
Patricia is in her sixties, a friend of my grandmother's. She's known me my whole life and taught my Sunday school class when I was nine.
