Edith said, “You’re sitting next to April.”
Quentin swallowed. “Pardon?”
“The box.”
He looked at it. Then looked at her.
“I wasn’t just a homeroom teacher,” Edith said. “I taught English, social studies, one dismal year of geography... Anyway, I kept boxes of all my favorite students’ work. My husband, like yours, made me keep them in the attic...” She pushed a lock of hair out of her eyes, a slight tremor in her hand. “That box next to you—that’s April. I looked for it after you called. It was easy to find.”
“She was in your social studies class.”
“That’s right.”
“She was a favorite student.” He tried to keep the disdain out of his voice. “A special one.”
She ran a hand across her brow, the index finger quivering. “Take a look.”
Quentin removed the lid from the Bankers Box. There was a small pile of papers inside, rounded girlish handwriting on lined pages. He read the first page, her name on it, the carefully formed letters.
Women and the Right to Vote
By April Cooper
As Quentin slipped the pages out of the box, a feeling swept through him—a chill that pressed all the way to the bones, followed by a tightness in the muscles—a faint, simmering rage. Her handwriting on the page. This girl, who had watched her boyfriend killa child, who had most likely killed many times herself. This murderer, who dotted heri’s with little circles. Her handwriting. She wrote this...He was aware of the silence in the room, his voice recorder capturing it, but he couldn’t get himself to speak.
“Can you read it?” Edith said. “I know it’s quite faint...”
He looked up at her—the big eyes behind the glasses, watching him, expectant. He cleared his throat.Read.“Before the 19th Amendment came to be in 1920, women didn’t have the right to vote. But because of the suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony and—”
“No, no. Read what she wrote at the bottom of that page.”
Quentin coughed. The dust was getting to him, but something else was getting to him too.A special one...He wondered if Mrs. Brixton kept boxes for Brian Griggs and Carrie Masters—Cooper and LeRoy’s fifth and sixth victims, found in their prom clothes, handcuffed together, shot in the head. Seniors at Santa Rosa High, not St. Xavier. Most likely victims of Cooper, not LeRoy. A murderer. The girl who ruined his mother’s life. Her handwriting on the page.
“Go on,” Edith said.
He took a breath. Keep it together.“The efforts of these brave women allowed for us all to be free,” he read. “But I don’t feel free, Mrs. Brixton, do you? When I am of legal voting age, like you, will I feel free, and equal and strong?” He read the next sentence, looked up at Edith Brixton and recited it out loud. “Is that a reason for me to look forward to growing up?”
Edith removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “She was one of those kids,” she said. “Always looking out the window, daydreaming. Her body would be in the room, but her mind would be a million miles away.”
“Did she talk to you directly in all her school essays?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure exactly,” Edith said. “But she’d lost her mother just a year earlier, and most of the other teachers at that time were younger women. Or men.”
“You think she was looking for a replacement.”
She put her glasses back on. “Something like that. I asked her to stay after class once, and we discussed the questions she’d written to me. It became a sort of tradition. April staying after class, talking with me about the future.”
Quentin thumbed through the slim stack of pages, reading sections from them into the voice recorder. An essay about the Great Depression, and its influence on the American family (Which would you rather have, Mrs. Brixton—enough money to eat, or parents who truly love you?) Another, titled the “Arab/Israeli Conflict.” (This happens so often, I think, but maybe you can explain why: people living side by side, but not bothering to understand each other.) Another one was called “The Death Penalty in America.” And when he read the last sentence, his breath caught in his throat. “Mrs. Brixton,” Quentin said, “have you ever met anyone who deserved to be killed?”
She stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“I’m quoting April.”
“Oh,” she said. “Right. ‘The Death Penalty.’”
