Cold Springs by Rick Riordan Page A

hand, tried not to look like a man on his way to the rack. “Don't tell me you have a child . . .”
    “God, no. I mean, No, sir. Ann—Mrs. Zedman—hired me to help in the office. I'm assisting with the capital campaign drive.”
    “You're out of college.”
    “Yes, sir. Working here part-time. Working on my MBA.”
    Chadwick felt like he had needles in his eyes. Of course David was out of college. He would be twenty-four now. An adult. He had been in Katherine's class.
    He tried to swallow the dryness out of his throat. “Congratulations, David. That's wonderful.”
    David blushed, just as he had in eighth grade, trying to recite the Declaration of Independence in front of the class. And in high school, when he'd taken the BART train all the way from his house in Berkeley and shown up at Chadwick's doorstep, asking to see Katherine—advising Chadwick in a heartbreakingly awkward, gallantly honest way that he was here to—you know,
see
her. Not just like a friend, anymore. Was that okay with him?
    David looked down, pinching at his silk tie. “Listen, Mr. Chadwick, I never got to tell
you . . . I mean, after the funeral . . . I wanted to write, or something.”
    “It's all right, David.”
    “No, I mean . . . You were the best teacher I ever had. This place wasn't the same after you left. I just wanted to tell you that.”
    Chadwick felt as if he were standing in the loop of a snare. If David said one more thing, if he spoke Katherine's name . . .
    “Thanks, David,” he managed. “Listen, I really should get upstairs.”
    “Oh. Right.” David pointed behind him. “You know Ann is meeting—um—about the campaign, right? With Ms. Reyes?”
    “I'll try not to keep them long,” Chadwick replied. “Good to see you again, David.”
    He left David Kraft's waning smile—the look of a pupil who'd just gotten a B+ on a project he'd put his heart into.
    Upstairs, Chadwick's classroom had vanished, the space it had occupied filled with a computer lab and a faculty lounge. The doorway, where he and John had stood talking at the auction so long ago, was a blank wall.
    The old student cubbies, which Katherine had so despised, had been replaced with a row of red metal lockers. Chadwick wondered which was Race Montrose's. He tried to imagine Ann opening that locker, finding a gun—at Laurel Heights, where the kids weren't even allowed to play with water pistols. The kindergarteners downstairs, singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” The rainbow parachute being spread on the playground for PE.
    Ann's office was right where it had been, still dominated by a giant window, the same Japanese curtain hanging over the doorway. Ann's byword: Openness. No closed door between her and her school.
    She was standing behind her desk, Norma leaning across it, showing her something on a laptop screen. Baguette sandwiches on wax paper and bottles of water were spread out between them.
    Chadwick parted the curtain.
    Norma sensed his presence first. She turned, and her face shifted through several phases, like a projector seeking the correct slide.
    She touched Ann on the arm. “You've got a visitor . . .”
    If anything, Ann seemed younger since Chadwick last saw her—thinner, her caramel hair longer, her eyes with a new, hungrier light. Chadwick's memories had been of a plump gentle girl who had comforted him when he most needed it in high school, counseled him and mentored him since they were teens together, but this Ann looked as if she'd been pared down to just the essentials. She reminded Chadwick, disconcertingly, of the kids who had been through Cold Springs.
    “Where's Mallory?” she asked, without greeting him.
    He glanced at Norma.
    “It's all right,” Ann told him. “She knows.”
    “Doesn't mean I approve,” Norma inserted. “Did you find her?”
    “She's in the car,” Chadwick said.
    “Safe?” Ann asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Alone?” Norma asked.
    “My partner is with her. Mallory got confrontational. We had to