She had not come tonight as a lawyer. She had come as a mother. And yet the email that brought her early to the auditorium had been professional enough to blur the line.
A freshman parent named Keisha Morrow had written to the booster list—and somehow the message had reached Naomi through a mutual acquaintance—about a guest clinician scheduled for weekend sectionals. The clinician was retired from a neighboring district. His name was Harlan Briggs.
Naomi read the email in her office at lunch and heard her own blood in her ears. She called Westbridge's principal. She called Ortiz, who now consulted for the county arts program and still answered Naomi on the first ring. Ortiz cursed softly, then precisely. The invitation, it turned out, had come through an old-boys network of band directors who traded clinicians like baseball cards. Briggs's retirement biography on the booking sheet mentioned decades of service and a passion for fundamentals. It did not mention Millbrook. It did not mention a podium. It did not mention a boy in a yellow cardigan saying please, stop.
By Thursday afternoon, the invitation had been withdrawn. The principal sent a carefully worded note about alignment with current student-safety values. Briggs, through an intermediary, expressed disappointment that "old misunderstandings" were being recycled. Naomi did not respond to the intermediary. She drove to the school early anyway, because bodies remember buildings, and she needed to see her son walk onto a stage that was his and not haunted.
Isaiah found her in the back row during warm-ups and dropped into the seat beside her, long-legged, smelling of cork grease and peppermint gum.