It happened at the school fundraiser.
Not a press conference. Not a carefully arranged public appearance. Not anything with a communications director in an earpiece telling him where to stand.
Just a school fundraiser on a Thursday evening in the assembly hall of Nora's school paper tablecloths and homemade cakes and the particular smell of a room that was used for many things and had absorbed all of them.
Julia hadn't expected him to come.
He'd mentioned it the week before Nora had brought home a flyer and presented it at dinner with the full expectation that all relevant adults would attend, which was the particular power Nora wielded without knowing she wielded it. Daniel had said he'd try. Julia had translated try into probably not because his week had looked complicated, and she
