Sophie sat quietly.
“What do you want?” I asked.
She blinked.
“Right now?”
“Yes.”
“A cinnamon roll.”
I stared.
She laughed.
“You asked.”
“Your mother would be proud.”
“I know.”
After a moment she became serious.
“I want to stop piano.”
“Okay.”
“I want robotics.”
“Okay.”
“I want to keep seeing Dr. Patel, but not every week.”
I paused.
Dr. Patel was her grief counselor.
“Why?”
“Because sometimes I don’t have anything to say, and then I feel like I’m failing therapy.”
“You can’t fail therapy.”
“That’s what she says.”
“Then maybe every other week.”
Sophie nodded.
“And I want you to pick me up sometimes.”
That one caught me off guard.
“I do.”
“You send Thomas.”
“Thomas is my driver.”
“He’s nice.”
“He is.”
“But he isn’t you.”
There it was.
A sentence so simple no consultant could improve it.
“How often?”
She shrugged.
“Sometimes.”
“I can do sometimes.”
“And I want Maya to go back to school.”
I smiled faintly.
“That part isn’t our decision.”
“Can we help?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
That was the question Claire had apparently spent years trying to teach me to ask.
“First we listen.”
That afternoon, we met Maya and Elena at Northbridge.
Not in the headmaster’s ceremonial office.
At Maya’s request, we met with Ms. Aisha Bennett, the school’s student support coordinator.
I knew her name because Sophie had mentioned her repeatedly.
I had never met her.
That fact embarrassed me.
Ms. Bennett was in her early forties, calm, observant, and unimpressed by expensive suits.
She greeted Maya warmly.
“I remember you.”
Maya looked startled.
“You do?”
“You corrected a geometry answer key in front of Mr. Collins.”
Maya looked uncomfortable.
“It was wrong.”
“It was extremely wrong.”
Sophie whispered, “I knew I liked her.”
Ms. Bennett reviewed Maya’s records.
There were problems.
Credits missing.
Attendance gaps.
Residency documentation.
But there were also solutions.
Northbridge could not simply restore Maya’s former place.
However, she could sit for placement examinations.
Several credits might be recovered through testing.
A partner public school could provide interim enrollment while the Horizon committee reviewed her case.
Transportation assistance was available through an existing city program nobody had told Elena about.
Every obstacle that had looked like a wall became, under patient examination, a series of doors.
Not easy doors.
But doors.
Elena sat with a folder open on her lap.
