He zipped the pocket shut.
Then he picked up a book from his nightstand and opened it and pretended to read.
Part Two: Jess
Jess called the school the next morning.
She’s thirty-five. She works as a dental hygienist in a practice near Town Center. She’s tough. She’s had to be. She was twenty-eight when two Marines in dress blues knocked on her door at Camp Lejeune.
She sat at the kitchen table with her phone on speaker. I sat across from her with my coffee.
“I’m calling about the Father-Son Breakfast,” she said. “My son is Caleb Halloran. Third grade. His father was killed in Afghanistan.”
The woman on the phone was the headmaster’s assistant. Her name was Mrs. Kerr.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Mrs. Kerr said. She said it the way people say it when they’ve said it a hundred times.
