"I didn't ask you when you got home. I didn't listen when you told me. I went in your bag. I took your money in front of your brother." Her mother's voice was very steady, and very careful, like someone walking across a floor where there might still be glass. "That wasn't—I shouldn't have done any of that. And it wasn't the first time I didn't listen. I know it wasn't. I'm not going to pretend it was."
Simone waited. She could feel everyone waiting. She knew what she was supposed to say. *It's okay.* That was the line. Everybody was waiting for her to say the line so they could all get up from the table and the weather could pass.
"Okay," Simone said.
She didn't say it was okay. She said okay, the way you say it when somebody tells you the time.
Her mother's face did something small. Then she nodded, slowly, as if that was the answer she had expected, maybe even the one she had hoped for, because at least it was true.
"Okay," her mother said back.
She didn't hug Simone. Simone was grateful.
"Is there anything in your bag that needs signing?" her mother asked instead. "The permission slip. You had a permission slip yesterday."
Simone's hand went to the backpack on her lap. She didn't hand it over. She unzipped the main compartment herself, just partway, and reached in past the math workbook and the choir folder and took out the slip and put it on the table. Then she zipped the backpack closed again, all the way to the end.
Her mother looked at the closed zipper for a second. She didn't say anything about it. She picked up a pen from the cup by the phone and read the slip, the whole thing, every line, which she had never done before, and signed her name at the bottom, and handed it back.
"Thank you," Simone said.
"Thank you," her mother said, which made no sense, and Simone saw her hear that it made no sense, and neither of them fixed it.
***
Her father walked her out. He didn't usually. He picked up the orange ball from where it had spent the night beside the front door and held it out to her on the porch.
"It's yours," he said. "Where do you want it?"