I ran into the school’s front office and the words came out of me wrong and too fast, and the principal looked at me with a confusion that turned, as she spoke, into the beginning of alarm.
Mireille had signed Elspeth out ten minutes earlier.
She was on the authorized guardian card.
She had every legal right, the right I had given her myself years ago, back when she was the woman who filled the mother-shaped hole in my life.
The air went out of the room.
I could not breathe.