Martha looked up, her expression softening slightly. “The system shows zero checked-in guests for your list, Clara. The main gates open in ten minutes.”
“Is there a secondary list?” I asked. “Perhaps they registered under my father’s name.”
Martha sighed, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. “I checked the last name Evans, dear. Only your student profile is listed. There are no guest names attached to your reservation. Usually, families submit their security clearances by the first of May.”
“I sent the reminders,” I said.
“I am sure you did,” Martha said. “But the portal is closed now. Even if they show up, they will have to sit in the general admission section at the very top of the bleachers.”
I looked at the tickets in my hand. Row C, right in the front, where the families of the graduates were supposed to sit. Four empty chairs.
The gate hinges groaned as the security guards pushed the heavy iron barriers open, letting the first line of families flood toward the entrance.
I stood in the center of the walkway, the tickets sitting in my open hand.
Three weeks before those gates opened, I sat in the hospital library at ten in the morning.
The room smelled of old paper and carpet cleaner, the high windows letting in a pale shaft of light that caught the dust motes.
George, the financial administrator, adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles and pointed a red pen at the ledger on the desk between us.
“The university cannot clear you for graduation with an outstanding balance of eleven thousand four hundred dollars,” George said.
I rubbed my left wrist, my thumb tracing the cool silver band of my watch.
“I applied for the standard graduate health loan,” I said. “The bank is just waiting on the final processing.”
George slid the printout closer to me, the paper sliding across the dark wood of the table.
“There is a late-payment fee of five hundred dollars already attached,” he said. “If we do not have a co-signer signature by Friday at five, your name will be removed from the commencement program.”
