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“I wasn’t trying to punish you.”

His head lifted. “Hazel, I know you weren’t,” he said immediately. Like that was the one thing he had no doubt about.

For some reason, that was when my throat started to hurt.

He set his hand onto the step between us, palm up.

Not taking mine.

Waiting.

“You don’t owe me an easy day,” he said. “You hear me? You don’t have to decide whether I’ve got time to be bothered. If you need help, you ask. Your dad. Your mom. Me. You call somebody.”

I looked at his hand. “I had your name open.”

His fingers moved slightly against the concrete. “I know.”

“No. I mean I’d already pulled it up. Before I decided anything.”

He looked at me. “Next time,” he said, “you call me.”

I put my hand in his.

He closed his fingers carefully, keeping them away from the sore part of my wrist.

For a while, we sat like that.

I could feel how much he was still holding back. How many things he hadn’t said. I knew better than to mistake an apology for an explanation of the last two years.

But it was an apology.

I had wanted one long enough to recognize it.

Chief looked down at our hands.

“And this morning,” he said. “You weren’t bothering me.”

I went still.

His thumb moved against the side of my hand.

“I wanted you there.”

I hadn’t cried at the gas station.

I cried then.

By Friday, the bruises on my arms had started changing colors. That was apparently progress.

The red fingerprints had deepened to purple first, then spread into ugly green-yellow shadows that looked much worse than they felt. My wrist was still tender if I bent it too far, and my shoulder objected when I reached behind myself, but otherwise I was fine.

Actually fine. Not I’m fine fine. There was a difference.

Coach Ben looked at my arms once when I came out onto the track after school.

That was it.

No careful voice. No sympathetic head tilt. No asking me to recount what had happened for the tenth time.