“They’re nice. They don’t draw a lot of attention to themselves, I guess. They just make sure we all know our jobs and that the days move according to schedule.”

“I can’t remember if I told you, but they asked a lot of questions. They seemed intense.”

I found that strange. “What kind of questions?”

“I can’t remember exactly . . . Oh! I know. It was Terry. He said, ‘Tell me about her resilience. Would you describe her as a strong person?’ No one had ever asked that about one of my kids.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that after your mom and that man pulled you out of school, kept you in seclusion like that for a full year, you returned to school and made honor roll, and continued to make it every semester. They were clearly looking for exceptional people, so I told them the truth: that you are exceptional, you are resilient, you are amazing.”

At first, I couldn’t speak. I’d never heard anyone use those words to describe me. “Thank you,” I managed to say.

“And is the farm . . . ?”

“Is it what?” I asked.

“I don’t even know what to ask! Just—is it as wonderful as we hoped?”

“It is,” I said.

I left it at that, and Karen assumed what she wanted—that all was good, all was safe. And maybe it was. I don’t know what kept me from telling her everything, only that it seemed better to keep it to myself.

I promised to call her again soon and then I washed my breakfast dishes and headed to the schoolhouse.

___

It took me two hours just to empty the supply closet of its papers and costumes, old books and folders stuffed with lesson plans, faded paintings and collages and collections of protractors and rulers and calculators. There were baskets of buttons and boxes of thread and tubes of paint so old they were rock hard. I sorted all of it into piles across the room. I wheeled the garbage can from the side of the house and stuffed it with what could not be salvaged. I gathered questionable items into a basket for Terry to go through. Even then, when I looked across the schoolhouse to gauge my progress it was as though a hurricane had swept through. They could arrive back at any moment and find it this way. But all I could do was keep going.

In a far back corner of the closet I found a record player and a box of records. I opened the lid, expecting music, but what I found instead were educational recordings, what seemed to be lectures by experts on various subjects. I was disappointed at first—I’ll admit it. I had imagined finding something soulful to get lost in. But I wiped the dust off the player anyway and pulled a record from its sleeve at random.