Danielle looked over her daughter’s head at Evelyn.
“What happened?”
Evelyn glanced toward the police.
“Not here.”
Danielle looked at Dana.
Then the cameras.
Then the ice cream on the sidewalk.
Her expression hardened.
“Did someone touch her?”
Evelyn nodded once.
Danielle’s face changed.
She started toward Dana.
Evelyn grabbed her hand.
“No.”
“Mom.”
“Not now.”
“She touched my daughter?”
“Yes.”
Danielle stared.
Evelyn lowered her voice.
“Nia needs you more than your anger does.”
That stopped her.
Danielle looked down.
Nia had her face pressed against Danielle’s stomach.
Her little shoulders shook.
Danielle wrapped both arms around her.
“Okay.”
They left Harbor Day without finishing the festival.
The car ride home took eighteen minutes.
Nia did not speak.
She sat in the back seat beside Evelyn while Danielle drove.
One wrist showed a faint red mark.
Nothing medically significant.
Everything emotionally significant.
Evelyn held an ice pack wrapped in cloth against it.
“I didn’t steal,” Nia whispered eventually.
Danielle looked into the rearview mirror.
“We know.”
“She didn’t believe me.”
Danielle’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“I believe you.”
“Grandma believed me.”
“Yes.”
“Miss Rosa too.”
“Yes.”
Nia looked toward Evelyn.
“Why did she think I stole?”
Evelyn had spent decades answering hard questions.
Murder trials.
Families after sentencing.
Children asking why a parent was going to prison.
Lawyers asking whether justice and fairness were always the same thing.
She had learned there were times when adults damaged children by giving them answers more complicated than they needed.
And times when adults damaged children by lying because truth made them uncomfortable.
“I don’t know exactly what Officer Whitmore thought,” Evelyn said.
Nia looked disappointed.
“But she decided something before she had enough information.”
“Because I had two?”
“Maybe.”
“Lots of people had two.”
Evelyn had noticed that too.
So had several people filming.
“Yes.”
“Was it because I’m Black?”
Danielle looked sharply into the mirror.
Evelyn felt the question like pressure behind her ribs.
There was no evidence yet that Dana consciously chose Nia because of race.
But pretending race could not possibly matter would teach another kind of lie.
“I don’t know,” Evelyn said.
Nia frowned.
“That’s a lot of ‘I don’t knows.’”
“It is.”
“You were a judge.”
“Judges say ‘I don’t know’ more than good television makes it seem.”
Nia almost smiled.
Evelyn continued.
“What I do know is she should have checked before treating you like you had done something wrong.”
Nia stared at her wrist.
“She made my ice cream fall.”
Danielle’s eyes filled unexpectedly.
Of all the things she expected her daughter to say, that simple sentence hurt most.
“I’ll buy you another.”