Alvarez.

He shook my hand without flattery.

“They’re diligent students,” he said.

“The real accomplishment is that they learned to revise their ideas when the evidence disagreed with them.”

Later, Chloe asked if I would join them and their teachers for an informal lunch.

I sat at the far end of the table, close enough to hear stories about the project but not central enough to dominate them.

Sophie asked Penelope about photography after learning that she had come to the symposium with a student media group.