She said, "Good."
She settled back in her seat. She opened her backpack. The library book was a thick one, the kind she preferred: 412 pages of close-printed type. A story about a girl who could hear what machines were thinking, which Amara had chosen from the school library three weeks ago, and which she had already read once and was now reading again because the second reading showed you things the first reading missed. She opened it to her bookmark. She read.
He drove.
He thought about the tailgate warm from the sun. He thought about his father's sentence: Yielding is tactical. Accepting is something you do to the inside of yourself. He thought about Amara at the back bumper of his truck in the school pickup line with the elephant keychain and the dark blue backpack and the library book sticking out of the unzipped top, asking the officer to please let her daddy go so they could go home.
He thought, she already knew exactly what to say. He thought, she learned that somewhere. He thought, yes, she did.
He called Renata from the truck two blocks from school while Amara was reading. He said, "Something happened at pickup. I'm going to tell you about it when we get home."
She said, "Are you all right?"
He said, "Yes."
She said, "Is Amara all right?"