"In my backpack."
"Will you get it."
She didn't want to let go of Benji. But Benji had calmed down enough to be embarrassed, and he let go of her sweater on his own and wiped his nose on his white sleeve, leaving a shiny streak, and sat back in his chair with his shoulders up near his ears. So she went to the hook by the back door and unzipped the front pocket and took out the folded paper. She unfolded it on the way back. The crease was where she had put it, neat, not touching her name.
She held it out to him. He took it with both hands.
He held it close to his face, then far away; he didn't have his reading glasses. He read it anyway. She could see his lips move. *Josephine A. Reyes.* He looked at it for longer than it would take anybody to read it, even somebody without glasses, and then he set it down on the table, beside his plate, very carefully, away from the water that had spilled, and smoothed it flat with the side of his hand. The same hand.
"Good," he said. "That's good, Josie."
It was what she had wanted. It was the exact thing she had carried home all day in her backpack, pressing it through the canvas on the bus. Somebody at the table saying her name and *good*. And now he had said it, and it was the wrong thing, it was in the wrong room, it was too late and in the wrong voice, and she felt her face start to go again and she bit the inside of her cheek until it stopped.
"I didn't want you to do that," she said.
He looked up at her.
"I didn't want you to hit her," Josie said. "I didn't. I just wanted—"
She didn't know how to finish. *I just wanted you to see it.* *I just wanted somebody to say it.* *I just wanted chicken.* All of those were true and none of them were the whole thing.
"I know," Grandpa Walt said. "I know you didn't."
"You shouldn't have done that."
"No," he said. "I shouldn't have."
Benji said, in a small voice, "Can I have more chicken?"