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“Matti, June and I will talk downstairs and I’ll make you a hot chocolate, okay?”
June gets up and he tugs at her, and for a moment I think he won’t let her go. She hands him the book and thanks him for his company.
“Can June stay?” he says to me.
“June has to go home soon, okay? Say thank you.”
“Thank you,” he says to June, and I hug him tight and kiss his head until he wriggles himself free.
Downstairs June sits at the kitchen table while I make a hot chocolate for Matti. She tells me how the soccer club had tried to call me on my cell but I wasn’t picking up, so they called the department and got through to her, and as I was so tense in that meeting that I almost shouted at her to go away, she thought she was doing me a favor.
“Look, June, I’m very grateful. I really am, but next time probably best not to go and pick up my children without telling me first. I almost had a heart attack.”
“I left you two messages and a text,” she says, a tad defensively. I tilt my head at her. “One day…” I begin, then I stop.
“One day what?”
One day, you will have children of your own and you will think back on this moment and you’ll understand how terrified you made me.
“One day, I’ll find a way to thank you properly,” I say instead.
I take Matti’s hot chocolate up to him and when I return, June wants to know what the meeting was about.
“You all seemed so intense,” she says.
I don’t want to tell her. Not because I don’t trust her, but why invite more questions about the whole thing, anyway?
“Before I get to that,” I say, knowing I probably never will, “remember Ryan?”
“How could I forget? He was the reason you went AWOL the other night.”
Oh right. I blamed my drinking binge on Ryan. Maybe I should start taking notes.
“Well…” I drop my head in my hands. “He’s filed a complaint against me.”
“What for?”
“Sexual harassment.”
She laughs. A loud cackle. Then she realizes I’m serious and her eyes grow wide. I tell her about the other meeting I had with Geoff, the fact that he saw me disappear with Ryan that day. That I think Geoff could even be a witness for all I know. I almost add that he hates me enough to do it.
“I just can’t believe it,” she says.
“I know, especially considering he was the one who sent me the photo smack in the middle of my lecture. The creep.”
“Well, that’s good, right? You can give that to whoever investigates the case. It’s not going to make him look good.”
I hadn’t thought of that. “You’re right. The number was private, but he wouldn’t deny he was the one who took the photo, would he? Or maybe he would. Maybe he’ll claim he never tookthatphoto. When I scrolled through his phone that day, I’m sure it wasn’t there.”
“He probably moved it to another device,” she says.
I sit up abruptly. “Lakewood Park.”
“What?”
“Oh my god, June! I remember now, the other photos on his cell. There were a number of them with a dog, a retriever.”
I close my eyes. I can see the park, and I can see the dog, I can see the sunset.
