Madeline looked down.
“Because you came senior year.”
“So did other transfers.”
“I know.”
“Because I had a fellowship?”
“Partly.”
“White students have scholarships.”
“I know.”
Naomi waited.
Madeline’s eyes filled.
Finally she said, “Because Ashford always looked a certain way to me.”
There it was.
Not the answer Madeline wanted to give.
The honest one.
The Ashford she had grown up considering normal was filled mostly with families who looked like hers, lived like hers, attended the same churches and clubs, rode at the same barns, and had parents whose names appeared at school events. When that picture widened, Madeline experienced expansion as though somebody were taking something from her.
Naomi asked whether she believed Black students were less qualified.
Madeline shook her head.
“Not consciously.”
“That isn’t really an answer.”
Madeline tried again.
“I assumed the school wanted you for reasons other than grades.”
“Before you knew my grades?”
“Yes.”
“Before you knew my debate record?”
“Yes.”
“Before you knew what the fellowship required?”
“Yes.”
“Before you knew anything about me?”
Madeline looked at the table.
“Yes.”
Naomi nodded.
“Then you answered it.”
Madeline cried quietly.
She admitted that when Adrian stepped from the SUV, her first feeling had been humiliation because she realized she had been insulting someone connected to a powerful adult. During the investigation, that embarrassment changed into something harder to accept.
“I kept thinking I had picked the worst possible person to do it to,” Madeline said.
Naomi watched her.
“And?”
Madeline wiped her eyes.
“Then I realized there shouldn’t have been somebody I could do it to.”
That was the first sentence of the afternoon Naomi believed without qualification.
They talked for nearly an hour.