"And your name?"
"Brooke Garvey."
"You have some ID on you, Ms. Garvey?"
"Can I ask what this is about?"
He did not seem offended by the question. He seemed, if anything, a little tired by it, as though he had answered it many times this week. "There was an incident at one of the other elementary schools, about ten days ago. Woman tried to pick up a kid who wasn't hers. District sent out a description. One of the parents in the car line thought you matched it. I'm sure you can understand why folks are on edge. I just need to confirm who you are and that you belong here, and then I'll get out of your way."
She looked past him at the Tahoe. The woman with the highlights was watching them openly now, her sunglasses down over her eyes, her phone held up in front of the windshield at an angle that Brooke recognized. She was recording. Of course she was recording. By supper there could be forty seconds of a cop and a woman in a gray hoodie on the Ludlow Run Community Forum, and under it two hundred comments, and one of them would say I think I know her, doesn't she work at the linen place? Brooke felt something cold move across the back of her scalp. She did not want to be on anyone's phone. Being on people's phones was the single thing she had worked hardest, for ten months, not to be.
"Okay," she said. "Yes. I have ID."
She took her wallet out of the canvas bag. Her hands were steadier than she'd have guessed. She slid the folded paper out of the window and unfolded it and handed it to him.
He took it and looked at it for a long time. Longer than it took to read. He held it up a little, the way people held a twenty to the light, and turned it over, and the back of it was blank, and he turned it face up again.
"This is a temporary," he said.