Nora said Harold could answer that question better than anyone else.
Melanie replied that her father changed the subject whenever she asked.
Nora refused to disclose his testimony without permission and suggested that Melanie speak with him about what he wanted to share.
Several days later, Harold arrived at a committee session with his daughter beside him.
He admitted that he had signed a confidentiality agreement when he left his job and had misunderstood its limits for many years.
He worried that speaking publicly would jeopardize the modest savings he and his wife had accumulated.
Jasmine explained that he should obtain legal advice before assuming the agreement barred him from describing every event he had witnessed.
Melanie listened while her father described the meeting he had previously recorded in writing.
She did not interrupt him until he finished.
Then she asked why he had never told her that he had tried to raise concerns with his supervisor.
Harold said he had felt ashamed that his efforts had changed so little.
Melanie told him that she had spent her childhood believing adults were supposed to fix every problem they recognized.
Now she understood that some problems continued because the people responsible for fixing them refused to listen.
Harold asked whether she was disappointed in him.
She said she was disappointed that he had carried the fear alone.
Nora looked away to give the family privacy.
She thought of Elise returning home after another exhausting day and refusing to explain why she no longer worked in a laboratory.
The silence had protected Nora from some of her mother’s worries.
It had also left her without the language to understand those worries until years later.
Chapter 10H: The School Library
Owen’s class visited the public library to prepare presentations about community helpers.
His teacher invited parents to speak about their work, and Owen immediately asked Nora to come.
Nora hesitated because she had only recently begun describing herself as a records coordinator instead of a waitress.
She worried that the job sounded confusing and that her son’s classmates would prefer a firefighter or a veterinarian.
Owen said she helped people find answers, which seemed like a useful community job to him.
Nora brought copies of two fictional sample documents that Aaron had made for the children.
One was a pretend repair request for a school playground, and the other was a work order describing a broken swing.
She asked the students how they would determine whether the swing had been repaired before recess.
