"Go ahead. I'll be right here."
"You'll stay?"
"I'll stay."
She ran off, and I walked up behind the parents and stood at the back, by a picnic table, where I could see the whole field. I could see Carly, too, standing at the edge of the crowd near the kindergarten group with her phone up, already filming, because Finn's class was in the front row and Finn was still wearing his paper crown. She was maybe forty feet from me. She still hadn't seen me. I don't think she'd looked at the back of the crowd once all day.
Mr. Bergquist thanked everybody. He said that it had been a wonderful year, and a hard year, and that he was proud of every single kid at Lakeview. Then he said, "And now, before we let you all go back to the bouncy castle, we have one more very special thing. As most of you know, this is the last Field Day for someone who has been at Lakeview longer than this building has had a gym."
People laughed. Somebody whistled.
"Mrs. Fjelstad has taught second grade at Lakeview Elementary for thirty-six years," Mr. Bergquist said. "Some of you parents out there were in her class. I know at least four of you, because you told me, and you all told me the same thing, which is that you still remember your gold star." He looked around. "She was supposed to be here at the start, but she had to run home for something, and she promised me she'd make it back in time. Let me see if she's — there she is."
I turned around, like everybody turned around. A big old tan Buick, the kind with the vinyl roof, had pulled into the staff lot by the bike racks, and a woman was getting out. She was sixty or close to it, short and solid, with white hair cut close to her head and reading glasses on a beaded chain, and she was wearing a long green cardigan even though it was seventy degrees out. She was carrying something under her arm, a flat square tin, the kind Danish butter cookies come in, the blue one. She walked across the field without hurrying. People clapped as she came. Some of the parents stood up. A woman near me said to the woman next to her, "I had her in '98. I still have my star. It's in my jewelry box."
Mrs. Fjelstad climbed the two steps to the platform. She shook Mr. Bergquist's hand and took the microphone from him and held it a little too far from her mouth, the way people do who don't like microphones. She waited until the clapping stopped.