"You told me Dashiell Gilchrist was in a different chemistry section."
"I told you I didn't talk to him," Hesper said. "Which was true, at first."
Ottoline turned and looked at my son. It was the first time she'd looked at him directly since he'd come into the room. She looked at him the way you'd look at a house you'd driven past every day for years and only now noticed had a second story. He stood up very straight under it. I was proud of him for that. He didn't look at the floor.
"Mrs. Vandersloot," he said. "I didn't take anything out of your house. I never went into your house. I've never been in your house since I was eleven and you showed us how to fold the cranes. I'm sorry about the bag. I'm sorry about the... about the one that fell. I didn't see it fall. I'd have given it back."
The ducks lay on the table between us in their sandwich bag. Nobody touched them.
"I'm going to go," Ottoline said. She stood up. She did it carefully, the way people stand up when they're not sure the floor is going to stay where it is. "Radhika, thank you for coming. I'm sorry I wasted your morning."
"You didn't—" Radhika began.
"Hesper. Home."