“Will she?”
He smiled without humor.
“She will now.”
He was right.
Denise never blocked us again.
For months, she barely looked at me.
Fine.
I didn’t need friendship.
Then one rainy morning in November, I came outside and found her standing near our hedge.
My stomach tightened automatically.
Her car was parked legally outside her own house.
She held an envelope.
“I wanted to give you this.”
I didn’t take it.
“What is it?”
“Nothing weird.”
“That’s reassuring.”
She almost smiled.
Inside was a printed letter.
From the school.
Not my boys’ school.
A different one.
She said, “I started working there.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“Office administrator.”
I waited.
“The first week, a mother came in crying because her daughter had six late marks.”
My expression changed.
Denise looked embarrassed.
“The bus kept arriving late.”
“Oh.”
“She kept saying it wasn’t her daughter’s fault.”
I said nothing.
