Reynolds introduced herself with a handshake that included Denise in the work rather than congratulating her on the product. "He was ready," Reynolds said. "We'll hear him in the hall in a few minutes. The dance, he says. Good choice. The Bach already did what it came to do."
Denise looked at the piano, at the bench still warm from him, at the faces in the lobby that were trying not to stare and staring anyway. She had the feeling of walking into a room where a glass had been broken and swept up before she arrived, the floor clean, the air still having opinions. She looked at her son.
"Did something happen?"
Elijah could have said no. The no would have been a gift to the afternoon and a small abandonment of himself. He glanced at Harper, who had not fled, and who, to his credit, did not let the child do the labor of the telling.
"Ms. Brooks," Harper said, and he had the sense to use the name he did not yet fully know, hearing Reynolds's introduction and catching it. "I'm Edward Harper, the principal. Before you came in, I spoke to your son as if he didn't belong on that bench. I had not looked at his card. That is not an excuse. He played anyway. I apologized. I owe you the same apology. He should not have had to use his audition to correct me."
Denise was quiet long enough that the quiet became a room of its own. She looked at Harper the way she looked at a form that had been filled out in the wrong box on purpose and then erased. She was not interested in humiliating him in a lobby. She was interested in the precise size of the thing.
"What did you say to him?"