Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,100

sweet.”

“That’s right,” Elisabeth said. “She asked me for your address.”

“Somebody raised that girl right,” George said.

“Who’s Sam?” said Elisabeth’s father.

“Gil’s babysitter,” Elisabeth said.

“I heard from her over email two mornings back,” George said.

“You did?”

This bugged her for some reason. Elisabeth had been trying to respect Sam’s space. She hadn’t reached out at all.

“Why are you emailing their babysitter?” Elisabeth’s mother said.

“We’re in a discussion group together,” George said. “A civics thing. It was sort of related to that.”

“How so?” said Elisabeth’s mother, clearly thinking George had a more sinister reason for emailing Sam. She looked directly at Faye.

“For a while now, Sam’s been wanting to help the women who work in her campus dining hall,” George said. “I guess one of them has a small child. And this young woman was more or less denied access to childcare at the college. She told Sam, and now Sam’s more fired up than ever to do something.”

“I didn’t hear about that,” Elisabeth said.

“It just happened,” George said. “Right when Sam was about to head home for the holiday. She wants to write a letter to the president of the college. She really admires that woman.”

“I know,” Elisabeth said.

Out of curiosity, after hearing Sam lavish praise upon her, Elisabeth had looked Shirley Washington up online. The woman had been on the board of directors at Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis. She made half a million a year from it. She left in 2009, with seven million in stock, after being on the committee that doled out generous severance packages to criminal bankers. She was not the saint Sam imagined her to be.

Elisabeth was surprised that it hadn’t become more of a campus scandal. From the stories published in the Gazette at the time, it seemed that alums of the college had demanded that Shirley Washington donate her ill-gotten earnings. But she didn’t, nor did she ever publicly comment. Eventually, the story just went away. She gave a speech about the inherent selflessness of women, and the speech went viral. By the time Sam arrived at the college a year later, all signs of outrage had vanished.

“The babysitter is in a civics group with George?” Elisabeth’s mother said now, to no one in particular.

“Yes. She’s a fellow activist,” George said.

“I didn’t realize you were one,” Elisabeth’s father said.

“It’s a fairly recent development. Have the kids told you about my theory? The Hollow Tree?”

“Dad,” Andrew said, shaking his head. “No.”

“What is it?” said Davey, who hadn’t said anything since announcing that their house smelled just like his grandmother’s.

“Take, for example, my wife, Faye,” George said.

“Why me?” Faye said.

George raised a hand. “Let me say my piece. Faye’s a grade school teacher, has been for forty years. The first time they did one of those active-shooter drills at the school, she called me crying after. She knew it wasn’t real, but she said going through the motions almost killed her. Tell them, Faye.”

“Dad, this isn’t very Christmasy,” Andrew said.

“No, tell us,” Davey said.

“We had to practice squeezing into the supply closet and keeping still,” Faye said matter-of-factly. “Then the children had to lie on the floor and pretend to be dead. I told them, ‘This is how we’ll stay safe if someone dangerous brings a gun to school.’ They’re seven.”

“Shit,” Davey said.

“Now the school does these drills every three months,” George said. “They are as routine a part of Faye’s schedule as lice checks or class-picture day. This is our country’s solution to the problem of guns. Teachers hiding in a closet with all their kids. My wife as a human shield. Instead of following the money and going after the crooked lobbyists like they should.”

“This is why I prefer to live on-island,” Charlotte said. “It’s a simple way of life. None of the corruption and violence that pollute America. No one we know cares about material things. We live for the authentic experience. Right, Davey?”

“I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, but I think that’s right,” Davey said.

George nodded, but the look on his face said he wasn’t buying it. Elisabeth recalled the epic rant he went on some months ago, when they described to him what an influencer was.

“Teaching on the whole is so much worse than it was when Faye started,” George said now. “The young ones in her school have master’s degrees, but they all work second jobs to get by. Once you could raise a family on a teacher’s salary, but not anymore. The state of some