Chapter 14: Ink
The Foundation office was full when Nora came back from lunch, and she stood in the doorway listening.
"I told the financial aid office twice," a girl by the window said. "They still want another tax form."
"Then we send it a third time," Nora said. "With a letter. Paper is patient, even when offices are not."
The students laughed, a small tired sound. Thursday advising always drew first generation students with folders and confusing forms.
She moved among them, signing letters and checking one essay. When the room thinned, one student stayed by her desk, his backpack at his feet, his hands folded tightly.
"Darius," she said. "You have been quiet today."
"Yes, ma'am," Darius Cole said. "I was trying to decide if my question counts as an emergency."
"Ask it," Nora said. "We will classify it afterward."
He smiled, briefly. "My grant letter came. For next semester. It went down again."
"By how much?"
"Two thousand dollars," he said. "It was seven thousand in the fall. Now it is five. My counselor said the Foundation reduced awards because income was down."
"That is true," Nora said.
"I know you did not choose it," he said quickly. "I am not complaining. I am grateful. Nobody in my family has had five thousand dollars paid toward anything."
"You are allowed to be grateful and worried at the same time," Nora said. "Most honest people are."
He looked down. "I picked up a second job, stocking shelves from eleven at night to four, three nights a week. I fell asleep in statistics twice, and Professor Grant noticed."
"What did he say?"
"He asked if I was all right," Darius said. "I told him yes. I did not want him thinking I cannot handle finance if I cannot stay awake in class."
"You are studying finance to handle it, Darius. Sleep is not a character flaw."
"No, ma'am. But rent is real. My mother keeps offering to take overtime at the clinic. I keep telling her no. She raised four of us there. This was supposed to be where it gets easier for her."
Nora sat down across from him, not behind the desk. "What would the full grant have changed?"
"One job, not two," he said. "And the summer class instead of working full time, so I graduate on schedule. If I slip a semester, the aid package changes again. My counselor explained it for an hour. I understood the part where everything depends on everything else."
"That part you understood correctly," Nora said.
"Is it just this year?" he asked. "I can do one hard year. I need to know if I should plan for four."
She considered how much to say. Pryce had offered her money at lunch if she would let the question die quietly. She felt the full distance between that dining room and this one.
"The Foundation is addressing the reason income fell," she said. "I cannot give you a date today. I can tell you the reduction was not caused by waste here, or by students asking for too much. It is being treated as the serious matter it is."
"So it is not just the market," he said.
"No," Nora said. "It is not just the market."
He nodded slowly, sorry to be right. "How many of us got cut?"
"This year, forty three awards were reduced," she said. "Yours among them."
"Forty three," he repeated. "That is a whole classroom of people stocking shelves at night."
"Yes," Nora said. "It is."
"I will manage," he said, standing. "I just needed to hear it from you, not a form letter."
"Call me before you drop any class," Nora said. "Promise me that."
"I promise," he said. "Thank you for seeing me."
After he left, Nora opened her green notebook to the page where Angela had written the total: eleven million, three hundred thousand dollars, taken over nine years in fees that had never existed.
She did the arithmetic slowly, in pencil, the way her father had taught her.
The Foundation's average grant was five thousand dollars a year.
Eleven million three hundred thousand divided by five thousand came to two thousand, two hundred and sixty grants.
Four years at a time, that was five hundred and sixty five full scholarships.
She sat with the number until the office darkened. Five hundred and sixty five students with no letter at all, and forty three with a smaller one who had thanked her for it.
Nora opened the old leather document case. Inside, in its worn slot, lay her grandfather's brass fountain pen, the pen that had signed the bank's charter in 1938.
She took it out. Its weight settled, familiar, across her fingers.
"Tomorrow," she said quietly to the empty room. "In person. On paper."