For seven years Jane met me on the porch when I returned from a work trip. This time the porch was empty and covered in roses—red, pink, yellow, white, at least a hundred of them. The smell was thick enough to make my stomach tighten. When she opened the door she asked what I had done. I had been driving two hours. Neither of us knew who sent them. After a week away and a year of quiet strain, suspicion arrived before I could stop it. Then I found a small envelope under yellow roses. Inside, on wide-lined school paper, a child’s uneven hand had written three sentences. Please don’t quit. We love you so much. We are so sorry.

Inside, Jane told me she had resigned two weeks earlier and never found the right moment to say so. Budget cuts had taken the counselor. Children were living through unstable homes. Test pressure never matched where they actually started. She graded until late, woke at four, and once cried in Dr. Okafor’s office over her blood pressure. I had been traveling through an acquisition and calling her tired, so she kept her own exhaustion off the phone until silence became a habit.