One evening, Michelle arrived alone.
She sat at my kitchen table and watched me finish an invoice.
“You look happy when you work,” she said.
“I am happy when the numbers balance.”
She smiled.
Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a folded sheet of notebook paper.
For one terrible second, I thought she had brought another calculation.
Instead, she opened it and placed it on the table.
It was the original sheet Todd had written months earlier.
The one with $800 circled twice.
“I found it in my desk,” she said. “I thought about throwing it away, but I couldn’t.”
I stared at it.
“Why did you keep it?”
“Because I needed to remember how easily I confused helping you with deciding for you.”
She folded it carefully.
“I don’t want to be that daughter again.”
I reached across the table and took her hand.
“You won’t be, honey. Not if you keep asking me what I want instead of deciding what I need.”
