“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have waited until you could call privately. Your sister got scared and thought if she told you to call, you’d think something terrible happened.”
Evan looked at the folded letter in his hand.
“What changed?”
His mother hesitated.
“It’s Lily. Her teacher asked us to have her evaluated. Reading has been getting harder for her, and she has been hiding it. They think she may have dyslexia.”
The corridor narrowed.
Evan pressed the receiver closer to his ear.
“What?”
“She’s okay,” his mother said quickly. “Nothing happened to her. But when the specialist explained the signs, I kept thinking about you.”
Evan closed his eyes.
Across from him, Avery looked away to give him privacy.
His mother continued carefully. “The headaches. Losing your place. How long homework took. The way you hated reading out loud. Evan, I thought you were rushing. Sometimes I thought you weren’t trying.”
The old shame arrived so fast it felt like heat.
“Mom–”
“I was wrong.”
He could not answer.
“Lily thinks you’re going to be disappointed in her,” his mother said. “That’s why she put all those stickers on the envelope. She said if it looked cheerful you wouldn’t know she was worried.”
Evan stared at the bright stickers.
Something inside him shifted.
His sister had not decorated the envelope because she was childish. She had been doing what he had done for years: making difficulty look like personality before anyone else could name it.
“Put her on,” he said.
A shuffle. A small voice.
“Evan?”
“Hey, bug.”
“Are you mad?”
The question almost broke him.
“No. Why would I be mad?”
“Because Mom told you.”
Evan looked at Avery, then at the common-area door where Dean had held the letter out of reach.
“I’m glad she told me.”
