“Do you think we should cancel the library photography club?” Priya asked.

“No. I think we should ask everybody how they want their photographs handled.”

“Children don’t always know what they’re agreeing to.”

“Then adults need to stop treating a signature as permission for anything they can imagine later.”

Alma opened the door. Her hair was pinned crookedly, and she was carrying a cup of coffee she had apparently forgotten to drink. She showed them the sign-in sheet from the workshop. Arcadia had supplied camera lights, simple costumes, and a backdrop printed with doors. The library had supplied the space. A volunteer named Frankie had supervised the children, while Simon and Celia came and went, describing themselves as creative advisers.

Frankie arrived ten minutes later. She was nineteen, earnest, and horrified to discover that photographs from the workshop had been taken into a real neighborhood. “Simon told us the children were designing an imaginary town,” she explained. “He asked them to take pictures of sidewalks, fences, signs, and gates. He said they could assemble their favorite details into new places on the screen.”

“Did he ever ask them to photograph anyone’s home?” Mara said.

“Not when I was present. He was always talking about different kinds of doors. The front door you use when you trust somebody, the back door you use when you’re afraid, the door somebody forgets to lock. I thought it was a metaphor.”

Mara looked toward the colorful paper houses on the table. Some had a dozen doors attached, others none at all. One child’s house had a roof covered in little blue fingerprints. Simon had taken a simple exercise about storytelling and turned it into research on real people’s vulnerabilities.

Frankie lifted a drawing that had fallen beneath the table. It showed a white fox beside a window with a crack through the glass. In the corner a child had written: THE FOX MAKES A BIG NOISE SO THE PERSON LOOKS THE WRONG WAY.

“Whose drawing is that?” Mara asked.

“Owen’s, maybe. They worked in groups. He liked figuring out what would make a character notice something.”

“Was the brick part of the original story?”

Frankie shook her head. “No bricks. Just a fox ringing a bell. The children were supposed to invent something loud but safe. Somebody suggested a pile of tin pans. Owen suggested a violin played badly. We laughed for five minutes.”

Mara could almost hear the children laughing. That detail made the real brick feel more obscene. Simon had taken a children’s harmless idea and translated it into an act that could have blinded her.

The officer called Alma into the storage room. Priya went to help Frankie sort photographs by the children who had created them, so the families could be contacted without spreading the images again. Mara stayed beside the drawing. She looked at the fox, its long tail and bright eyes, and understood why the logo had begun to disturb her. A fox wasn’t guilty of anything. It had merely been chosen to make adults lower their guard.