Walter didn't look up. "I'm old. Avoiding questions is one of the few privileges I have left." "What did my father have to do with Crown Bridge?" Walter straightened slowly.
"Ask me when you're not angry." "I'm not angry." Walter glanced at the dent Maya had just put into the heavy bag. Maya folded her arms. "Fine."
"I'm a little angry." "A little." She almost smiled. Almost. Walter set the final chair against the wall.
"Your father taught people how to survive without turning survival into hatred. That's the part you need tonight." Maya's expression hardened. "Brooke poured food on me." "I know."
"She stepped on my notes." "I know." "And 50 people watched." Walter nodded. "That's the part that hurt most, isn't it?"
Maya looked away. The gym had emptied except for one adult trainee finishing stretches near the far wall. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. "I could have stopped her." Walter's voice softened.
"Yes." "I could have stopped her before the tray hit the floor." "Yes." Maya swallowed. "So why did it feel like losing?"
Walter rested both hands on the back of a chair. "Because restraint doesn't feel powerful when the other person walks away laughing." The words landed harder than Maya expected. He continued. But the question isn't whether you could have put Brooke on the floor.
The question is what would have happened 10 seconds later. Maya already knew. Campus security, conduct report, scholarship review, maybe suspension, maybe headlines reduced to three words. Student attacks, classmate. Brooke's family could hire lawyers without checking a bank balance.
Maya and Denise counted grocery money. Walter seemed to read the answer on her face. Your scholarship has that conduct clause, doesn't it? Maya nodded. One physical altercation can trigger a review.
Even if I'm defending myself, they can suspend the aid until they investigate. And your internship? Clinical placement opens next semester. Any disciplinary flag could knock me out before I even apply. Walter exhaled through his nose.
There it is. Maya's jaw tightened. "They built a rule that punishes me for surviving." "No," Walter said. "The rule is the same on paper."
What matters is who people believe when the rule gets used. Maya looked toward the dark hallway leading back to Room 214. "Brooke knows that." "She may not know the details. She knows enough."
Walter's eyes sharpened. "Then don't teach her anything for free." Maya frowned. "What does that mean?" "It means don't show her your anger just because she wants proof she can control it."
He stepped closer. "Restraint only looks like weakness to people who've never had any." Maya stared at him. The sentence settled into the room. For a moment she heard her father's voice inside Walter's.
Not the same voice, the same truth. Three years earlier, after David's sudden death at 44, Maya had watched adults speak about him as if a life could be summarized in a few polite sentences. Good man. Community minded. Gone too soon.