The Word of a Child Read Free Page A

principal. Afterward Noreen hugged her and
said, "I'll call your mother. We need to talk to her."
    "Will you fire him?"
    The principal explained again about the necessity for an
investigation, which Tracy took as an insult. "You don't believe me!"
    As Mariah had a class, Mrs. Patterson took Tracy away. She
paused to murmur, "Will you come to my office at the end of the day?"
    "Yes, of course."
    Her seventh-graders were reading As You Like It aloud,
stumbling over unfamiliar words and requiring constant explanations of
Shakespearean language. Perhaps Shakespeare was too difficult for them, she
thought, but then a student would read a passage with sudden understanding and
relish for the rich language, and she would decide she'd been right to
challenge them.
    Today it was very difficult to keep her mind on the reading.
Several times she was recalled by a loud, "Ms. Stavig? Ms. Stavig? I don't
get it."
    She avoided the faculty room during her break to be sure she
didn't run into Gerald Tanner, the computer teacher. He was likely to seek her
out, as they'd talked about doing a joint project that involved Internet
research in his class and a paper in hers.
    She liked Gerald, who was new at the middle school this
year. A tall bony man who made her think of Ichabod Crane, he was in his late
thirties and had been teaching at a community college before he'd decided to
"get 'em young," as he'd put it.
    Sexually? she wondered now in distaste.
    But what if Tracy was lying for some reason? She might be
afraid of her mother's current boyfriend who had raped her, or mad at Gerald
because he was flunking her, or… The possibilities were endless. She had seemed
genuinely distraught, but Mariah had thought before that Tracy, who was in her
beginning drama class, had real talent on the stage.
    The accusation alone could be enough to ruin Gerald's career
as a teacher; such stories tended to follow a man.
    She had reason to know.
    Simon had lost his job after rumors got around, even though
the accusation was never substantiated and he was never taken to trial. The
excuse for firing him was trumped up, and he had known the real reason, but he
couldn't do anything about it. Now, three years later, he lived in Bremerton, where nobody whispered, but he'd had to take a job working at the Navy shipyard
that wasn't as good as the one he'd lost.
    He'd lost his wife, too, but she didn't want to think about
that. Not today.
    This was different, Mariah told herself; the victim was old
enough to speak for herself, and it might not be too late for doctors to
recover sperm and therefore DNA. This wasn't anything like a child's perhaps
wild—or perhaps not—accusation.
    Zofie's daddy.
    She would hear the quiet accusation until the day she died.
Not in the little girl's voice, because she'd never seen Lily Thalberg again.
After the notoriety, after the investigation had stalled, the Thalbergs had
moved away, wanting a fresh start, a friend of a friend had told Mariah. No,
Mariah heard her husband named as a molester in the deep, certain voice of that
police officer. Detective Connor McLean. He'd believed Lily Thalberg, she could
tell. It was partly his certainty that had eaten at Mariah in the days and
weeks following his initial visit, when Simon became furious at her smallest,
meekest question and when she began to look at Zofie and worry.
    She hated remembering. Second-guessing herself, feeling
guilt again because she hadn't stood behind her husband.
    Why did Tracy have to come to her? she wondered wretchedly.
    Her last student was barely out of the classroom when Mariah
followed, locking the door behind her. In the office, the secretary said,
"Mrs. Patterson is expecting you," and waved her down the hall where
the counselors and the principal and vice principal had their offices.
    Both Mrs. Patterson and Mr. Lamarr, the vice principal, were
in the office, she saw as she opened the door. But they weren't alone. A second
man who had been standing by the