"What kind of help?"
"She does assessments. Placements. Specialized programs." Celeste squeezed his hand. "I didn't want to bring it to you until I knew more. I wanted to have a plan. You always say that, don't you? Don't come to you with a problem unless you've got a plan."
He did say that. He said it to apprentice pilots, about weather and traffic and tidal sets. He had never said it to her. But he was too tired to argue the point, and she was so calm, and so reasonable, and she was right that he was gone four nights out of seven, and he had not been in his own kitchen at dinnertime on a weeknight more than a handful of times since school started. What did he actually know?
He said they would talk more about it. He said he wanted to meet this Renée person. He went back to work. On the bridge of a Panamanian bulk carrier heading south past Thomas Point light that night, with the radar sweeping green and the captain drinking tea beside him, he kept seeing Skyler wiping the counter, and the careful way she had put her plate away, as though she were a guest in the house who did not want to be any trouble.
* * *
The school counselor called on the Tuesday. Her name was Ms. Okafor, and she had a calm low voice and the slightly formal manner of someone choosing her words with great care.
"I want to say first that Skyler isn't in any trouble," she said. "She's a wonderful student. She's a pleasure. I'm calling because a few of her teachers have noticed some things, and I've noticed some things, and I wanted to check in with a parent before anything else. Is this a good time?"
He was standing in the parking lot of the pilot station at Cape Henry, with the wind coming hard off the ocean. He said it was.
"Skyler has been coming to my office most mornings before school. I keep a basket of snacks for students, granola bars, fruit cups, that kind of thing, and she asks if she can take something. Which is fine, that's what it's there for. But she asks every day, and she takes two or three and puts them in her backpack. And her lunch account has been at zero since the second week of school. The cafeteria has been letting her charge, which they're required to do, but she's been asking the lunch staff if she can have the leftover fruit at the end of the period. And one of the aides saw her taking a half-eaten sandwich off another student's tray." Ms. Okafor paused. "Mr. Dawes, I'm not calling to accuse anyone of anything. I just need to ask. Is everything all right at home?"
He told her, slowly, what Celeste had told him. About grief, and hoarding, and control. He heard how it sounded as he said it. He heard it the way Ms. Okafor must have been hearing it, the way an outsider would, and something in his chest turned a few more degrees.