Chapter 9: What the Committee Decided
I read the email twice in the back seat before I said anything.
Roderick watched me in the rearview mirror.
Ivo was looking out the window at the passing street, giving me space without knowing he was doing it.
"Good news or bad?" Roderick asked quietly.
"Read it," I said, and forwarded it to his phone.
His phone buzzed.
He glanced at it, then back at the road.
"Read it to me," he said.
I cleared my throat.
"'Dear Mrs.
Hargrove and family, Following an emergency review convened this afternoon by three senior committee members, and in light of documented evidence that Ivo's original nomination was suppressed without his knowledge or consent, the Regional Academic Awards Committee has voted unanimously to reinstate Ivo's Young Achiever nomination with immediate effect.
The committee further notes that Ivo's original submission materials, preserved in our records, remain outstanding by any measure.
A formal ceremony will be scheduled at the earliest opportunity.
We deeply regret that this recognition was delayed.
It should not have been.
Ivo has earned this.
— Patricia Voss, Committee Coordinator.'"
The car was quiet.
Ivo had turned away from the window.
He was looking at me with an expression I hadn't seen from him before — not the careful watchfulness he'd worn all day, but something younger and more open, the face underneath the face he'd learned to keep.
"They're giving it to me?" he said.
"They're giving it to you," I said.
He blinked several times.
His chin moved.
"Don't," I said gently.
"You're allowed to."
He looked out the window again.
His shoulders rose once and then settled.
When he turned back his eyes were bright but his voice was steady.
"I worked really hard on that project," he said.
"I know you did."
"I stayed up three nights finishing the data section.
You made me hot chocolate."
"I remember."
"And she just—" He stopped.
Started again.
"She just put it in a bin."
"She did," I said.
"And now twelve people on a committee who have never met you, who have no reason to give you anything, looked at your work and said it was the best they'd seen in six years.
She couldn't take that.
She only ever had the medal."
Roderick pulled into a car park beside a small café.
He turned off the engine but didn't move to get out.
"Ivo," he said.
Ivo looked at him.
"I owe you more than an apology.
I know that.
I was in that house and I didn't see what was happening, and that is something I have to live with." He paused.
"But I want you to know that from here on, if anyone — anyone — tries to take something from you that you've earned, you come to me.
Directly.
You don't carry it alone."
Ivo studied his uncle for a moment with those careful eyes.
"You mean that?" he said.
"I mean it."
Another pause.
Then Ivo nodded once, the way he'd been nodding all day — filing it away, deciding to believe it provisionally, leaving room to be proven right.
"Okay," he said.
We went inside.
Ivo ordered a toasted sandwich and a hot chocolate without being asked if he wanted one.
He sat across from me at a small corner table and ate with the focused, uncomplicated appetite of a child who had been running on adrenaline since morning and had finally been given permission to stop.
Halfway through his sandwich he said, without looking up, "Will Sophia be okay?"
I set down my cup.
"What do you mean?"
"She didn't ask for any of this," he said.
"Her mum just put the medals on her.
She didn't know they were mine.
Not really." He picked up his sandwich again.
"I don't want her to be in trouble because of her mum."
I looked at him across the small table — this boy who had spent a year being quietly robbed, who had just found out an entire honor had been stolen from him before he even knew it existed, who had sat in a room all afternoon while adults untangled the damage done to him.
And his first unprompted question about another person was whether the daughter of the woman who had done it would be alright.
"Sophia will be okay," I said.
"She has her father.
And she'll have better from her mother too, once her mother has no choice but to be better."
He nodded.
Finished his sandwich.
Drank his hot chocolate.
Outside, the street had gone quiet in the early evening.
A few people passed the window.
A woman with a pushchair.
Two older men walking slowly, deep in conversation.
Ordinary life, moving on.
Roderick's phone rang.
He stepped outside to take it.
Ivo watched him through the glass, then looked back at me.
"What happens at the ceremony?" he asked.
"They call your name," I said.
"In front of everyone.
And they give you what you earned."
He thought about this.
"Will you come?" he said.
"Try and stop me," I said.
May you like
He smiled then — a real one, unguarded, the kind that takes over a child's whole face before they've learned to manage it.
It was the first time I'd seen it all day.
