The case in three lines. Jonah wants the school's flood-memorial display to say his late grandfather, aged seventeen, saved six people in the 1953 flood. The newspaper says two, the town plaque names only a postman, and a great-aunt's diary from that week says four. Bartholomew asks who made each source and why, Cosimo lays them side by side, and Isabeau asks where each teller was standing. The history teacher asks Tara what the panel should say, and the case stops there.

One question to ask. "What did Tara say?" Then: "What would you want on the wall if it were your grandparent?" A good answer holds both the evidence and the grief.

One thing to do at the table. Pick a family story everyone knows, the one that gets told at birthdays or holidays. Ask each person at the table to tell it in two sentences, without the others listening first. Then compare. Where do the versions agree? Where do they drift? Is there anything written down from the time?

The grown-up layer. The case is about sources and memory. Historians ask who made a source, when, for whom and from where, and they look for independent sources that agree. Psychologists since Frederic Bartlett have shown that honest memories change with retelling, usually toward a better story. Neither point makes family stories worthless: the diary in the case only exists because a family kept it. The case leaves the panel's wording to Tara because a good answer has to be accurate and kind at once.

The case leaves Tara's sentence blank on purpose. Ask for it before you offer yours.