“Thank you,” I said, trying anyway. “That means a lot.”

“Emily's doing so well,” she said. She fingered the locket around her neck. “A nice kid who does well in her classes. I wish I saw her more often, but it's usually a good thing when I don't.”

“She loves it here,” I said.

She glanced over her shoulder, her pretty features wrinkling into a frown. “Probably because she doesn't have to deal with Harriet very often.” She shook her head. “I'm sure she means well, but having her as the president of the PTA has been a...challenge. I think she believes her title actually puts her on the faculty and she gets bent out of shape when something goes on here and she isn't in the know.” She shook her head again. “Harmless, but a pain in the rear end.”

“I just didn't think it was my place to share anything I knew with her,” I said. “Not that I know much of anything to begin with.”

Charlotte nodded. “And you shouldn't, unless you want it announced to half the parents in the school community. It's none of her business and you can feel free to tell her that. Or let me know if she's hassling you and I'll tell her.” She smiled. “Wouldn't be the first time we've had that conversation.”

I chuckled. “Thanks. I'll remember that.”

“You're welcome,” she said, leaning on the doorframe. “And if you need a place to hide this week, my office is always open. And Ellen out front is a good egg. She can run interference for you and I'm sure she's thrilled that you're here. Poor woman gets worked to the bone each week but she keeps coming back.”

“Good to know,” I said. “Thank you.”

She nodded and pushed off the doorframe. “You're welcome. I'll let you get back to your work here. Just wanted to say hello.”

She waved and disappeared.

I made a mental note to make certain Emily took Christmas cookies to Ms. Nordhoff.

EIGHT

“Sophie and Grace brought home these bottles with brown liquid in them,” Jake said, shaking his head as he got out of the car. “They said it was some sort of super healthy tea or something. I said it looked like sewer water.”

I'd gotten home from Prism around three - thirty. Bingledorf was off-campus for a meeting when I went searching for her, so I held onto the inventory sheet and finished sorting the mail. Ellen was unbelievably gracious and thankful and seemed on the verge of tears when I said I would be back the following day. So I'd gone home and started the laundry and pulled weeds from the garden. I waved at Emily as she scurried into the house when the bus dropped her off and had just started pulling yanking all of the ripe tomatoes from their vines when Jake pulled up with the rest of the kids.

“It's kombucha,” Sophie said, holding hers up. Her blond hair was tied back in a loose ponytail , her long bangs hiding her eyes. “It tastes like iced tea. Only a little grosser.”

“And it came from Brenda's mother!” Grace yelled, holding up her bottle. She scampered over to me and shoved the bottle in my face, within g inches of my nose.

“Brenda's mother?” I asked. “Really?”

“No, it came from something called a mother,” Will said, the last one to exit the car.  He held his bottle with his thumb and forefinger, like he was afraid to touch it. “It's this totally disgusting thing that lives on her counter now. Like an alien or something. Totally creepy.”

“ What?” I asked. “What lives on the counter?”

Will's blue eyes darkened. “The mother of this disgusting drink. Which I am not drinking.”

“Totally looks like sewer water,” Jake muttered.

The kids scampered into the house and Jake stayed out in the garden with me.

“How was your first day of school?” he asked, grinning. He was wearing khakis and a blue button-down shirt that matched the color of his eyes.

“Eventful.” I told him about the stolen computers.

“Wow,” he said, when I'd finished. “That's crazy. All of the computers?”

“All of them.”

“How would someone do that?”

I tugged on a tomato clinging stubbornly to the vine. “Uh, I guess they'd carry them out.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I got that part. But I mean, you'd need a really big car for that. Or a rental truck. Or something. Because that's a lot of computers if it was the entire lab.”

“Which you'd think someone would notice.”

Jake nodded. “Which you'd think someone might have on video surveillance.”

“They're checking that.”

He shook his head. “Tape is probably already lost.”

While I'd viewed Prism with skepticism, he'd openly shared his disdain for it. Not because he was against schooling, but because he'd claimed it felt like a rinky-dink operation from the beginning. He said the word “charter” was code for “parents who have no clue what they're doing” and he'd shared his frustrations about inconsistent teaching, poor communication and the website that never seemed to work. He'd tempered the complaining once he realized that Emily was enjoying it so much, but like with most things that irritated him, he'd usually mutter something under his breath about it when the opportunity arose.

“I have no idea,” I said, dropping another tomato into the basket next to me. “But the computer teacher guy didn't seem all that worried, which was kind of weird.”

“Probably just going to show movies until they get new computers,” Jake said.

I frowned at him. “Stop.”

He frowned back. “Yeah, let's see what happens.” He paused. “On a different note, when is the first time we have the Witt kids here for babysitting?”

“In two weeks, I think. Why?”

“I'm gonna try to schedule a trip or something so I'm not here,” he said. “Maybe for the duration of these trade days or whatever you're calling them.”

“You are very grouchy,” I commented. “Bad day at work?”

“Not at all. I got to their house to pick the kids up and that little tyrant threw a rock at me,” he said, narrowing his eyes.

“Maybe you should try making friends with him.”

“That's what I did!” he said. “I walked up to him on the front porch and said 'Hey, little man, what's going on?' and he said 'You're weird!' and fired a rock at me. I ducked and it hit the front of the car. Add that to the sewer water thing and I'm really thinking I need a business trip to Abu Dhabi or something.”

“You're exaggerating,” I told him.

“I did not exaggerate that rock coming at my head.”

“Maybe he wanted to play catch.”

“Or maybe he's into stoning people he doesn't like.”

“Yeah, I'm sure a two-year-old has a hit list going,” I said, rolling my eyes at his comments. “Back to the computers. Shouldn't the school have a record of what they purchased?”

“What do you mean?”

I sat down on the steps that led to the porch, the late day sun and breeze making me want to stay outside a little longer. It was a beautiful September day but fall could be fleeting in Minnesota and I wanted to savor every snowless minute I could.

“Like at your work. Isn't there some sort of purchasing system?”

Jake sat down next to me, his leg pressing against mine. “Yeah. You have to fill out a P.O., then get it signed off by a supervisor.”

“And then what happens when you buy it?”

He thought for a moment. “Well, with computers or phones or stuff like that, they go into our I.T. department because they actually do the buying. But when they come in, they give each one a serial number and the serial number is on a sticker or something that's placed on the device. Then when they go to whoever requested it, it's logged somewhere because if someone quits or gets fired, then I.T. knows exactly what needs to be turned back in before they leave.”

I nodded. “That's what I thought.”

“Why?”

“Well, I just thought it was odd that they wanted me to go make an inventory list on a spreadsheet,” I explained. “I thought they should have some sort of record of what was there. I mean,  shouldn't it be easy to figure out what's missing? The computer teacher didn't even seem to have a clue as to what had been in his classroom.”