not unkind, not warm, simply accurate. Then she said: “He handled it with more dignity than I would have at fifteen.”
Mr. Reynolds looked at me.
“I know,” he said. “I noticed that.”
The apology was not the dramatic capitulation of a story that requires its antagonist to be fully dismantled. It was a person recognizing an error and naming it, which is the most useful form that recognition takes.
I said: “Thank you, sir.”
We went back inside.
The school year continued after that day, the way school years
