"That's good," Lucas said. "Did your mom make it with you?"
Sophia shrugged. "She got home at two in the morning, so I finished it myself. Mrs. Whitmore doesn't think it's very interesting anyway."
"I think it is. What happened with the broken elevators?"
Sophia looked up. "How do you know about that?"
"You started telling me at recess. I wanted to hear the end."
She told him while they walked toward the buses. Her mother's name was Elena Wilson, and she had worked evening maintenance shifts in government buildings for nearly a decade. One night she found an elderly visitor confused and unable to locate the exit after an event. Elena escorted him safely outside, contacted security, and waited until his family arrived. She remembered the small things other people overlooked because she was one of the few people who saw the building when it was almost empty.
"Mom says you're responsible for people even when nobody important is watching," Sophia finished.
Lucas smiled. "That's almost exactly what my dad says."
Sophia studied him. "Your dad really is a general?"
"Yeah."
"Cool. My mom says people sometimes think she doesn't understand English because she cleans for a living. She's the smartest person I know."
"Mine too," Lucas said, then laughed. "Not your mom. My mom. But yours sounds smart too."
They parted at the bus line. Lucas climbed aboard feeling better, but the concern returned when he opened his folder that evening and saw the small pencil mark Mrs. Whitmore had made beside his first paragraph: VERIFY. The word looked official and accusing. He wondered what it would take for a ten-year-old to satisfy it.
Angela came home later than planned after a surgery lasted longer than expected. Lucas was sitting at the dining table, erasing and rewriting a sentence for the third time. She put her keys down and studied his face before she studied the paper.
"What's wrong with the sentence?" she asked.
"Nothing."
"Then why have you rubbed a hole in it?"
He pushed the folder toward her. "Mrs. Whitmore doesn't believe Dad's a general."
Angela put down her bag. "What did she say?"
Lucas repeated the conversation as faithfully as he could. He admitted that he had felt embarrassed, then immediately insisted he was fine. Angela knew her son well enough to hear the distance between those two statements.
"Did she tell you not to write about your father?" she asked.
"Not exactly. She wrote verify on my paper."
Angela traced the small word with a fingertip. "Verifying information is all right. Humiliating a child is not. If she has questions, she can call us. I'll send an email tonight."
"Please don't make it a big thing," Lucas said quickly. "Career Day is tomorrow. Dad's coming. Then she'll know."