Page 13 of The Forbidden Center

Good.

He had been large enough to occupy most of the entrance and confident enough to assume I would notice. They are always confident enough. It is the one quality you can rely on.

I noticed with my whole body and then I put it away, because my daughter had hit somebody.

I should have asked which hand Tova used.

Fuck.

At the first light, I turn toward the school.

The school office is too warm.

Heat gathers beneath my coat while Dana prints a visitor badge. The room smells of copier toner, disinfectant, and cinnamon gum.

I arrange my face on the way across the carpet. Pleasant, unhurried, slightly grateful. It takes about four steps and I have been doing it since the day we landed, and not one person in this building has ever met me.

“Ms. Nilsson, she’s right back here.”

“Thank you.”

Dana opens the door and calls Tova’s name with the stress on the wrong syllable.

“Tova,” I correct.

She repeats it properly and looks pleased with herself about it.

My daughter sits with her backpack between her shoes and a white towel wrapped around an ice pack over her right hand. Her braid has loosened near one ear.

She looks at me, then at the hand.

I sit beside her and hold mine out. “Let me see.”

“The nurse already checked it.”

“The nurse is not me.”

She gives me the hand.

The towel is damp and cold against my palm. Her knuckles are pink, with more swelling across the last two.

“Move your fingers.”

She does.

The last two do not go as far as the others.

I have performed this examination several thousand times. I have performed it on men who earn more in a season than I will earn in my life, and my hands have never needed to be told to behave like ordinary hands.

Tova watches my face instead of her hand.

I keep it still.

“Does that hurt?”

“No.”

“You moved them differently.”