"So was your hand," Naomi said.
Kellerman folded her fingers together. "We take all concerns seriously. We'll follow district protocol. Ms. Reed, you are welcome to file a formal complaint. In the meantime, Isaiah can go home for the afternoon. We'll schedule a restorative conversation—"
"No," Naomi said. "Not restorative. Investigative."
She signed the early dismissal form with a hand that did not shake until she reached the parking lot. There, with Isaiah buckled in and the clarinet case on the floorboards, she rested her forehead against the steering wheel for exactly three breaths. Then she drove.
At home, the apartment smelled of last night's lentils and the lemon oil she used on the secondhand piano nobody played anymore. Isaiah went to his room without being asked. Naomi stood in the kitchen and drank water she could not taste. Ruth arrived twenty minutes later with grocery bags and a silence that felt like armor. She hugged Naomi once, hard, and then went to Isaiah's door and knocked the way she always knocked—two soft, one firm—until he let her sit on the edge of his bed and talk about nothing that mattered until something that did could surface.
That evening, Isaiah told them pieces.