The Word of a Child. Janice Johnson Kay

squeezed her hands again. “Who is it, Tracy?”

      The seventh-grader murmured something.

      “I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you.”

      “Mr. Tanner.”

      Mariah couldn’t suppress an, “Oh, no.”

      Tracy’s chin shot up. “Do you think I’m lying?”

      “Did I say that?”

      She yanked her hands away. “You sound like it!”

      “No. I’m only…sorry. I thought he was a well-liked teacher.”

      “You mean, well-liked by you,” the girl said spitefully.

      “Tracy, I know him only as a colleague. We aren’t personal friends. I’m on your side. I won’t abuse your trust, I promise.”

      The flash of fear and anger faded. “Oh.”

      “Can you repeat your story for Mrs. Patterson?”

      “The principal?” she said in dismay.

      “She’ll have to hear it, you know. And then I’m afraid you’ll have to tell the police or a social worker. You may even have to testify in court.”

      “In court?” Tracy shrank back. “They can’t just fire him?”

      “It’s not that simple. How can he be fired on the basis of one student saying he did something? He’ll likely be suspended while an investigation goes on, but unless he admits to having relations with you, he may have to be convicted of a crime before he can be fired.”

      The teenager looked genuinely frightened now. “But…what if I won’t talk in court?”

      Mariah hated having to tell the poor girl what she’d set in motion by choosing to come to a teacher.

      “Now that you’ve told me,” she said sympathetically, “I have to report your story. That’s the law for teachers. It would certainly be hard to convict Mr. Tanner if you won’t testify. That would leave him free to molest other girls. Do you want that?” She gave Tracy a moment to reflect, then levered herself out of the student desk. “I’m going to call Mrs. Patterson to come here right now. Please stay and tell her, just like you did me. The worst is over, Tracy. It’ll be easier this time, I promise.”

      Tracy sat hunched and small while they waited. Feeling out of her depth, Mariah talked gently about boys and how nice kisses were when both parties wanted them and how inexcusable it was for an adult to compel a child to have intercourse.

      Noreen Patterson was a plump woman of perhaps forty filled with good cheer that didn’t disguise her willingness to command.

      The good humor faded the moment Mariah said gravely, “Tracy has something to tell you.”

      Tracy did haltingly tell her story for the principal. Afterward Noreen hugged her and said, “I’ll call your mother. We need to talk to her.”

      “Will you fire him?”

      The principal explained again about the necessity for an investigation, which Tracy took as an insult.

      “You don’t believe me!”

      As Mariah had a class, Mrs. Patterson took Tracy away. She paused to murmur, “Will you come to my office at the end of the day?”

      “Yes, of course.”

      Her seventh-graders were reading As You Like It aloud, stumbling over unfamiliar words and requiring constant explanations of Shakespearean language. Perhaps Shakespeare was too difficult for them, she thought, but then a student would read a passage with sudden understanding and relish for the rich language, and she would decide she’d been right to challenge them.

      Today it was very difficult to keep her mind on the reading. Several times she was recalled by a loud, “Ms. Stavig? Ms. Stavig? I don’t get it.”

      She avoided the faculty room during her break to be sure she didn’t run into Gerald Tanner, the computer teacher. He was likely to seek her out, as they’d talked about doing a joint project that involved Internet research in his class and a paper in hers.

      She liked Gerald, who was new at the middle school this year. A tall bony man who made her think of Ichabod Crane, he was in his late thirties and had been teaching at a community college before he’d decided to “get ’em young,” as he’d put it.

      Sexually? she wondered now in distaste.

      But what if Tracy was lying for some reason? She might be afraid of her mother’s current boyfriend who had raped her, or mad at Gerald because he was flunking her, or… The possibilities were endless. She had seemed genuinely distraught, but Mariah had thought before that Tracy, who was in her beginning drama class, had real talent on the stage.

      The accusation alone could be enough to ruin Gerald’s career as a teacher; such stories tended to follow a man.

      She had reason to know.

      Simon had lost his job after rumors got around, even though the accusation was never substantiated and he was never taken to trial. The excuse for firing him was trumped up, and he had known the real reason, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Now, three years later, he lived in Bremerton, where nobody whispered, but he’d had to take a job working at the Navy shipyard that wasn’t as good as the one he’d lost.

      He’d lost his wife, too, but she didn’t want to think about that. Not today.

      This was different, Mariah told herself; the victim was old enough to speak for herself, and it might not be too late for doctors to recover sperm and therefore DNA. This wasn’t anything like a child’s perhaps wild—or perhaps not—accusation.

      Zofie’s daddy.

      She would hear the quiet accusation until the day she died. Not in the little girl’s voice, because she’d never seen Lily Thalberg again. After the notoriety, after the investigation had stalled, the Thalbergs had moved away, wanting a fresh start, a friend of a friend had told Mariah. No, Mariah heard her husband named as a molester in the deep, certain voice of that police officer. Detective Connor McLean. He’d believed Lily Thalberg, she could tell. It was partly his certainty that had eaten at Mariah in the days and weeks following his initial visit, when Simon became furious at her smallest, meekest question and when she began to look at Zofie and worry.

      She hated remembering. Second-guessing herself, feeling guilt again because she hadn’t stood behind her husband.

      Why did Tracy have to come to her? she wondered wretchedly.

      Her last student was barely out of the classroom when Mariah followed, locking the door behind her. In the office, the secretary said, “Mrs. Patterson is expecting you,” and waved her down the hall where the counselors and the principal and vice principal had their offices.

      Both Mrs. Patterson and Mr. Lamarr, the vice principal, were in the office, she saw as she opened the door. But they weren’t alone. A second man who had been standing by the window turned as Mariah entered.

      Her breath escaped in a gasp and she stopped halfway inside, clutching the doorknob.

      As the big man with short, reddish-brown hair faced her, his light gray eyes widened briefly just before his expression became utterly impassive.

      Anyone but him, she thought wildly. His voice would live forever in her nightmares and as the kernel of her guilt. If it had occurred to her he might be sent… But it hadn’t.

      She heard herself say hoarsely, “I’m sorry, I can’t…” as she began to back up.

      Noreen Patterson half rose from her chair behind the desk. “Mariah, what is it?”

      Her wild gaze touched on him. She was breathing like an untamed creature caught in a trap. “I…I just can’t…” she said again, her voice high and panicky.

      He