"If I sign, they'll know everything," she said. Raina asked what she meant. Darla looked toward Eli's bedroom, then back at the paper. "They'll ask why he missed school. They'll ask why I didn't see it. They'll ask what kind of mother lets her son get to thirteen without anyone understanding why he's struggling."
"Somebody may ask those things," Raina answered. "The questions don't disappear if we avoid the form. And the assessment is for Eli, not an examination you have to pass to deserve him." Darla gripped her teacup with both hands and said she needed a little time.
Raina wanted to tell her there was no time. She wanted to tell her about the boy appearing at a freezing gate with five dollars in his sock and hunger written across his face. But she saw how close Darla already was to retreating and chose a smaller step. She left the form, arranged to call again the following morning, and made sure Darla had the number of a local counseling service and a way to get there.
At the compound, Eli worked on a practice assembly Boon had laid out for him. He had begun noticing that Boon preferred to teach by making the right answer physically available and then watching what Eli did with it. The mechanic rarely praised him directly; instead he handed him a slightly harder problem next time. Eli liked that because it meant progress did not require standing in the middle of a room while adults talked about his potential.
But he kept glancing toward the gate. Boon noticed and asked what he expected to see. "Raina's truck," Eli admitted. Boon tightened a clamp on his own motorcycle and said, "She isn't going there to hurt your mother. She's going to tell her how things are, then ask what she wants to do."
"Mom doesn't like people with authority," Eli said. Boon gave him a dry look. "Raina doesn't have authority over your mother." Eli considered that. "She acts like she has authority over everything," he said, and Boon finally smiled.
Raina returned after six. She found Eli eating stew in the main room and sat across from him with a mug of coffee. Three riders were playing cards at the far end of the table, and Eli noticed their game slowed slightly when he asked whether his mother had signed. Raina told him the truth: Darla wanted time to think, and the assessment would have to wait until the proper authorization was in place.
"She won't sign," Eli said. "She might," Raina replied. "She won't," he repeated, then stopped because he did not want to sound as though he had given up on his mother. Raina looked at him over her mug and said she would handle the conversation again in the morning.
She did not tell him what happened afterward. Alone in her office, facing a deadline printed at the top of the referral packet, Raina made a decision she would later regret. She imitated Darla's signature on the consent form and submitted it to the school, telling herself that a needed assessment should not be lost to another delay. Boon walked in as she finished and saw the page on her desk.