The notice said the man had been reported in two other towns for approaching schoolchildren. Caleb had seen him writing in a notebook and told Lucas, who told a teacher. She walked to the fence, and the man drove off, but she had already photographed his license plate. Officers found him within the hour, and the evidence in his car was enough to hold him.

Caleb had noticed because the man had no child to pick up. His grandmother had taught him that rule, and he repeated it to the officers word for word. One of them knelt beside him and said it was the sharpest observation he had heard from any adult. Caleb beamed and asked whether he could keep the sticker badge they had given him.

I hugged my son until he complained that I was squeezing him. Principal Walsh admitted he had worried about how the school would handle having Caleb, and that Caleb had just answered the question for the entire building. Lucas and his mother were waiting in the hallway, and the two boys high-fived like old friends.

At Friday assembly, the school honored Caleb with a certificate, and the whole room cheered. The doctor who had urged us to try wrote him a card. Caleb now has a lunch table that fills up every day, and he wears the sticker badge on his backpack. Every morning he asks the same question, and every morning I say yes: “Can I go to school today?”