"Okay," she said. "Okay. Grady. I need you to know that nobody here believes you did this."
"Thank you."
"I also need you to know that I have had eleven emails and two phone calls since noon, and one of those calls was from the district office, and the district office has a policy." She folded her hands. "When a staff member is the subject of an active police investigation involving, and I'm quoting the policy, 'conduct of a sexual nature,' that staff member is placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome. It isn't discipline. It isn't a finding. It's a policy."
"It's underwear off a clothesline, Renata."
"I know what it is."
"I didn't take it."
"I know," she said. "I really do. And I'm still going to have to ask you for your keys."
I gave her my keys. I walked out through the side door by the gym so I wouldn't have to pass the front office. In the parking lot, I sat in my car and finally opened my phone, and I read all hundred and forty comments, every one, the way you'd press on a bruise.
Then I called Lydia.
Lydia and I have been divorced for five years. It was not a dramatic divorce. We got married too young and grew in different directions, the way the books say, and we're decent to each other, and she lives forty minutes away in Durham and has Pippa every other weekend and half of every summer. She's a pediatric occupational therapist, and she is the most practical human being I have ever known.
"I've seen it," she said, before I could say anything. "Three people sent it to me. Are you okay?"
"No."
"Did you do it?"