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and, as we shook, his eyes strayed to the tattoo on my
     wrist. As he raised them again to my face, I could see theywere dark—almost black—and unreadable. “So what’s up?” He looked back and forth between us.
    “Rickie?” said Dr. Wilson with a gallant little “go ahead” kind of a gesture.
You wanted to complain. So complain.
    I swallowed. I wasn’t a confrontational kind of person. I was more of a hide-in-your-room-and-sulk kind of person. But I was
     Noah’s mom and dealing with this was just something I had to do. I raised my chin. “Noah said you made him crawl up the stairs
     and let the other kids kick him.”
    “Whoa, whoa,” Coach Andrew said, putting his palms up. “I don’t let anyone kick anyone in my class.”
    “He said kids were kicking him.”
    “They weren’t,” he said emphatically. “I was right there at the foot of the stairs, watching. No one was kicking anybody.
     But it is true that Noah chose to crawl up the steps, even after I asked him to stop, and it’s possible someone might have
     bumped him by accident on their way back down.”
    “He said he was too weak to climb anymore. He’s not very strong—he’s got an autoimmune disease.”
    “I know. The school nurse said it shouldn’t affect his ability to keep up.”
    “It obviously did the other day.”
    “Noah needs to run around more,” he said. “Build up his stamina. He’s not weak because of his disease, he’s weak because he
     doesn’t get enough exercise.”
    Could he have been any less sympathetic? “You don’t know anything about his health or how much he does or doesn’t exercise,”
     I said tightly. “You pushed him too hard. And when he tried to tell you it was too much, you wouldn’t even listen and let
     the other kids make fun of him. He was still crying about it when I picked him up.”
    Dr. Wilson had been watching our exchange with his armscrossed as if he were hoping we would work it all out without him, but now he said with patronizing gentleness, “Noah
does
resort to tears fairly often, Rickie, which sometimes makes it hard to know how seriously to take them.”
    He had a point, but I wasn’t in the mood to hear it right then. “Whatever,” I said. “I just don’t think PE class is working
     for him right now. Can’t he go to the library or something while the rest of the kids run up stairs and beat each other up
     for exercise?”
    “You can’t take him out of PE,” the coach said. “Noah needs more exercise, not less. The more he can keep up, the more fun
     he’ll have.”
    “Oh, right, because climbing stairs is such fun.”
    He flushed. “We were a little restricted yesterday because we didn’t have access to the field. But the other kids liked it—we
     made a game out of seeing how many times they could go up and down.”
    I turned to Dr. Wilson. “How about we make a deal? I’ll make sure Noah climbs a flight of stairs five times a day if you let
     him skip PE.”
    The principal shook his head. “As long as Noah goes to Fenwick, he’ll take PE with his class. It would be doing him a disservice
     to single him out by excusing him.”
    I stepped back, flinging up my hands in disgust. “So, in other words, nothing is going to change.”
    “I’m not ignoring this, Rickie,” Dr. Wilson said. Years of managing parents had made him smooth as silk; anger slid right
     off of him. “We’ll put our heads together and figure out some way to offer Noah some extra support during class. Right, Andrew?”
    His face was impassive. “Of course.”
    I looked back and forth between the two of them. Dr.Wilson was smiling his bland fixer smile at me, and the coach wouldn’t even meet my eyes. I wasn’t going to get anything more
     out of either of them. “Fine,” I said. I grabbed my bag and left the office.

3.

    W hen I brought Noah home from school a few hours later, Melanie’s car was parked in front of our house. It often was those
     days. A few months earlier, when