“Because you didn’t ask! You just smiled and said thank you and went and did whatever you wanted!”
I didn’t raise my voice. I have never once gotten anywhere with that girl by raising my voice. Not when she was fifteen, and not now.
“Honey,” I said. “I’m going to say one thing, and then I’ll let you go, because you’re upset and it’s the kids’ bedtime. I would have come and watched those babies for nothing. I’d have done it gladly. But you told me I’d be earning my keep. I earned my keep with you a long time ago. I don’t believe I owe on it.”
She hung up.
I put the phone down on the table Dale and I bought in 1981. I sat there until the window went dark and the elevator lights came on.
Ten days.
No calls. No pictures on my phone, which she used to send most every evening. Sadie with spaghetti on her forehead. Eli missing a tooth. Nothing.
