After years of learning at home, my 10-year-old son, who has Down syndrome, was finally given the chance to go to a regular school. He was happier than I’d seen him in years. But just five days after he started, I got a phone call from the principal that left me shaken.

Every face in that gym turned, slowly, toward the woman at the front table.

Celeste’s hand went to her brooch before she could stop it.

“This is absurd,” she said. Her voice had gone thin. “A child’s drawing. A child who, I’m sorry, has a documented intellectual disability —”

“And a phone log,” said Officer Lim, stepping in from the doorway. “Showing a call to the front office at 10:52 a.m. from the library desk. And a sign-in sheet showing you were the only adult in the library at that time, Mrs. Rowan.”

Somebody in the back gasped.

Celeste stood up. Her chair scraped hard against the gym floor.

“You would destroy my family,” she said to me, her voice shaking now. “Over two cell phones and a misunderstanding? My son is eleven. Do you have any idea what this will do to him?”

“Yes,” I said. “I know exactly what it does. You tried to do it to mine.”