just the right spot for the pressure latch to release. Inside, the space was big enough for a child to crawl into, or maybe an adult, if you scrunched. The back was still crammed with clock parts—copper coils, weights and chains, star-and-moon clock faces.
She remembered her grandfather telling her, “Never wind a clock backwards, Katie. Never.” He had always called her Katie, never Katherine. Her father said it was because he couldn't bear to think of his wife, whose smoker's lungs had shut down while she was waiting for her namesake to be born. “Winding backwards will ruin the clock. Always go forward. Even if you only want to go back an hour, always go forward eleven.”
She wondered if her dad had been made out of clock parts, like the latch on the cabinet. She wished she could wind him backwards one week, to see if something would break.
She reached into the closet, to the little rusty hook only she knew about, and pulled out a copy of her Toyota key.
Ground me, Daddy. Go ahead.
She turned to Mallory, who was balancing Equestrian Barbie's plastic pony on her knee.
Poor little Mallory—the headmistress's daughter. She would have an even worse school experience than Katherine did. So what if she liked kindergarten? It was only a matter of time before she felt the walls closing in on her, that chasm opening at her feet. It sliced into Katherine's heart whenever she passed the lower school windows, saw Mallory wave a sticky hello to her, fingers covered in primary-colored gloop.
No, Katherine never wanted to see her baby doll grow up.
She smiled to cover the blackness. “Come on, Peewee. Let's go for a ride.”
Laurel Heights School blazed with light. Luminarias lined the sidewalk. Arcs of paper lanterns glowed red and blue over the playground, transforming the basketball court into a dance floor nobody could use, thanks to the weather.
Inside, the two-story building was buttery warm with jazz music and candlelight, waiters bustling about with trays of champagne and canapés, parents laughing too loud, drinking too freely, enjoying their big night away from the children.
For an outside party brought inside at the last minute, Ann had to admit the staff and the caterers had done a great job. Cloths had been draped over the teachers' supply cabinets. Banquet tables had replaced school desks. A hundred tiny articles of lost-and-found clothing had been taken off the coat hooks and stashed in closets, broken crayons and Montessori rods swept off the floor. Fresh-cut flowers decorated the music teacher's piano. The kindergarten teacher's desk had been converted to a cash bar.
The school was too small for so many people, but the cramped quarters just proved Ann's point, the purpose for the auction—the school needed to grow. They weren't the neighborhood school they'd started out as in the 1920s, with fifteen kids from Pacific Heights. They were busting at the seams with 152 students from all over the Bay Area. They needed to buy the mansion next door, do a major renovation, double the size of the campus. What better way to kick off the capital campaign than cram all the parents together, let them see how their children spent each day?
Despite that, despite how well the evening seemed to be going, Ann was a mess. The two glasses of wine she'd had to steady her nerves were bubbling to vinegar in her stomach.
She should have been schmoozing, but instead she was sitting in the corner of the only empty classroom, knees-to-knees with Norma Reyes on tiny first-grade chairs, telling Norma that marriage counseling was a great idea. Really. It was nothing to be ashamed about.
Hypocrite.
She prayed Chadwick would forget about their agreement—just forget it.
At the same time, she hoped like hell he had more guts than she did.
Norma kept crying, calling Chadwick names.
Parents streamed by the open doorway. They would start to greet Ann, then see Norma's tears and turn away like they'd been hit by a wind tunnel fan.
“I want to kill the pendejo,” Norma said.
Ann laced her fingers in her friend's. She promised that Chadwick was trying his best, that Katherine would be okay. Her therapist was sharp. There were good programs for drug intervention.
“Bullshit,” Norma said. “You love this. You've been warning me for years.”
Ann said nothing. She'd had lots of practice, diplomatically saying nothing.
For years, she had been the mediator between the family and the faculty, who would ask her—no disrespect to their colleague Chadwick—but why wasn't Katherine on probation? Why wasn't she taking her