“We’re back,” he said.
Mr. Davenport peered at them over the tops of his glasses. “You are, are you?”
“Mom took sick,” he said. “Very sick. We had to go live with our aunt, and she was too far away for us to get to school.”
“I see,” Mr. Davenport said.
“I taught the littler ones as best as I could,” Alan said. He liked Mr. Davenport, understood him. He had a job to do, and needed everything to be accounted for and filed away. It was okay for Alan and his brothers to miss months of school, provided that they had a good excuse when they came back. Alan could respect that. “And I read ahead in my textbooks. I think we’ll be okay.”
“I’m sure you will be,” Mr. Davenport said. “How is your mother now?”
“She’s better,” he said. “But she was very sick. In the hospital.”
“What was she sick with?”
Alan hadn’t thought this far ahead. He knew how to lie to adults, but he was out of practice. “Cancer,” he said, thinking of Marci’s mother.
“Cancer?” Mr. Davenport said, staring hard at him.