A big-cheeked, dark-haired girl with cartoonish eyes stared at the camera as if she wanted to devour it. “What superhero do I want to be?” Angie’s face screwed in disgust. “Why would anyone want to be a superhero? Flying around with their unnecessary masks. You can’t catch a cold in the sky. Who can sneeze that high?”

Imani laughed. “This would have been one for Nate.”

The name hung in the air. Imani stiffened, hoping it might dissipate without additional commentary. It was one thing to speculate about what had happened in her own mind. Another to open the topic with Barbara. Melissa’s disappearance wasn’t simple school gossip to be whispered about with other St. Catherine’s moms.

Barbara peered at her from over a pair of red bifocals. “Oh. It’s awful.” She removed her glasses and set them down on the table. “You were good friends with his wife, right?”

“I am friends with her,” Imani said, correcting the past tense even though she had her doubts. Even if Melissa was alive, Imani wasn’t sure what she should call herself. She’d loved Melissa like family. Perhaps the feeling had never been mutual.

“They gave so much to this school.” Barbara rapped her knuckles against her six-inch application stack. “Nate in particular—volunteering for committees, teaching a virtual class during the shutdown. He even endowed a scholarship. It pays for a kid’s entire tuition from kindergarten to graduation—half a million dollars, all in.”

Imani had figured Nate and Melissa as the kind of people to give back, but the extent of their generosity was impressive. It was the kind of thing that should be mentioned in a New York Times obituary or an In Memoriam on behalf of the school. “Do we know which child? Maybe we could reach out to the press or Nate’s family with the information. The child might even want to record something nice that the family could play at the funeral.”

Though she hadn’t heard anything about a service, Imani assumed Nate’s parents were having one. Likely they were keeping it small and local because of the pandemic. Immediate family. Real friends.

“That’s a great idea.” Barbara rose from her seat and moved toward the blackboard at the head of the room. A laptop sat on the teacher’s desk. She lifted the screen and then leaned over the keyboard, standing to put in her administrator password to access the school records. “I remember him mentioning a candidate when he’d endowed the scholarship—years ago. He wrote this long letter about the need to consider not only ethnic diversity but also economic diversity and experience.”