Then she had stood at a bus stop, surrounded by students heading toward their classrooms, knowing that she would have to find somewhere else to go.
For five days, she had carried the fear of school and the fear of being discovered.
And all that time, I had been asking her whether she had finished her homework.
“Why didn’t you call me, Mark?” I asked quietly.
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“I should have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because she begged me not to tell you.”
“She’s fourteen!”
“I know that, Zoe.”
“She’s a child! She was struggling badly enough that she was getting physically sick, and you decided the best solution was to hide the problem from me?”
Mark flinched.
For once, he didn’t have a clever response or a joke to soften the situation.
“I know I handled it badly,” he said. “I really do.”
