I thought, you know, about not telling her. I thought about being like, “Really, I’m on my way to my Grandma’s,” or some other lie like that.

But something about the way she was looking at me made me be honest. I don’t know what it was, but suddenly, as I sat there messing with the little tag to my teabag, the whole story poured out. Just poured out of me, all over that butcher block, while Joe sat on my shoulder and, somewhere in the house, I could hear the faint strains of some classical music.

And when I had gotten it all out—everything, about David, and about Jack, and about the From My Window contest and Maria Sanchez and David’s dad—I finished with, “And to top it all off, I found out last night that Dolley Madison’s only kid who lived past infancy was from her first husband. She didn’t even have any kids with James Madison. So I’m not related to her. Not even one tiny bit.”

Finished with my long speech, I sat there and stared down into my tea. I couldn’t see it all that well, since my eyes were sort of moist. But I was determined not to cry. To do so would have been perfectly ridiculous, even more ridiculous than riding the Metro with five loaves of French bread sticking out of my backpack.

Susan, who’d listened to my entire recitation of my many problems in silence, now took a sip of her tea and said, in a very calm voice, “But, Samantha. Don’t you see? You know what it is you have to do. David already told you.”

I lifted my gaze from my cup of tea and stared at her from across the table. On my shoulder, Joe picked up a strand of my hair, pretending just to be casually holding on to it, though we both knew that when he thought I wasn’t paying attention, he would try to yank it out and make his escape.

“What are you talking about?” I said. “All David said was that he wouldn’t talk to his dad about Maria Sanchez.”

“He said that, yes,” Susan said. “But you didn’t really listen to him, Sam. You heard him, but you didn’t listen. There is a difference between listening and hearing, just as there is a difference between seeing and knowing.”

You see? This is why I knew I’d had to come. I didn’t know this. The difference between hearing and listening, I mean. Any more than I’d known the difference between seeing and knowing.

“David,” Susan said, “told you that you have the right to free speech, just as much as any other American.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “So?”

“So,” Susan said, with an emphasis I didn’t understand. “You have the right to free speech, Samantha. Just as much as any other American.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I got that part. But I don’t see what that has to do with—”

And then, suddenly, I did. I don’t know how, or why. But suddenly, Susan’s—and David’s—meaning sunk in.

And when it did, I couldn’t believe it.

“Oh, no,” I said, with a gasp—and not just because Joe had finally made his move and yanked out a strand of my hair, then taken off in triumphant flight for the top of the refrigerator. “Ow. You don’t think he really meant that, do you?”

Susan said, breaking off another piece of bread, “David tends to mean what he says, Sam. He’s no politician. He isn’t a bit likely to follow in his father’s footsteps. He wants to be an architect.”

“He does?” This was news to me. I was beginning to realize I really knew nothing about David at all. I mean, I knew he liked to draw and that he was good at it. And I knew about the giant serving fork and spoon, of course. But there seemed to be a lot I didn’t know, as well.

And that made me feel worse. Because I had this very bad feeling that it was too late for me to find out about them. The things I didn’t know about David, I mean.

“Yes,” Susan Boone said. “I think it’s easy to understand why he wouldn’t necessarily want to get involved in his father’s business. He certainly wouldn’t want his father involved in his.”

“Wow,” I said, because I was still reeling from her earlier revelation. “I mean . . . wow.”

“Yes,” Susan Boone said, leaning back in her chair. “Wow. So you see, Sam. It’s been there, all along.”

I frowned. “What has?”

“What you wanted,” she said. “You just had to open your eyes a little to see it. And there it was.”

And there it was.

And there I still was ten minutes later—not quite believing that I was there at all—chatting with Susan Boone, a woman who’d once accused me of knowing but not seeing, when the back door to the kitchen banged open. A large man with his long hair pulled back into a ponytail and his arms filled with grocery bags came in. He looked at us with surprise on his handle-bar moustached face.

“Well,” he said, looking at me with friendly, but curious, light blue eyes. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I said, wondering if this was Susan Boone’s son. He seemed to be about twenty years younger than she was. She had never mentioned kids or a husband before. I had always thought it was just her and Joe.

But then maybe I had only been hearing, and not really listening.

“Pete,” Susan Boone said. “This is Samantha Madison, one of my students. Samantha, this is Pete.”

Pete put the grocery bags down. He was wearing jeans, over which were fastened a pair of leather chaps, like cowboys and Hell’s Angels wear. When he reached out to shake my hand, I saw that his arm had the Harley Davidson logo tattooed on it.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, pumping my left hand, on account of the cast still being on my right. Then his gaze fell on the French bread. “Hey,” he said. “That looks good.”

Pete pulled up a chair and joined us. And it turned out he wasn’t Susan’s son at all. He was her boyfriend.

Which just goes to show that Susan was right about one thing, anyway: what you want is right in front of you. You just have to open your eyes to see it.

I chose Candace Wu.