That night, she put the cards beside her backpack. In the morning, while I packed her lunch, she came into the kitchen to check that I hadn’t forgotten them.
“He doesn’t know how to play,” she told me.
“You can teach him.”
“I know. That’s why I’m taking them.”
I kissed her hair and reminded her to wait with the dismissal teacher until he arrived.
The morning went the way mornings in an emergency department usually went. Someone needed another blanket. Someone needed a translator. Someone had been waiting too long and wanted me to know it.
I checked my phone on my lunch break.
No messages.
By three, we were busy enough that I didn’t think about the pickup again. I had made the arrangement. I had confirmed it. My father knew the time and the place.
For once, I had allowed myself to treat his promise as something settled.
After I brought Delaney home, I called my manager.
She had already arranged coverage for the rest of the evening. When I asked about using leave while I sorted out childcare, she told me to send her the request.
“We’ll work it out,” she said. “Get your daughter settled.”
I thanked her and hung up feeling embarrassed by how close I was to crying.
I made grilled cheese and tomato soup. Delaney ate at the kitchen counter and asked whether I was going to lose my job.
“No.”
“Because you left?”
“My manager knows why I left.”
She dipped a corner of sandwich into her soup.
“Did the man you were helping get another nurse?”
“Yes. He did.”
That answer seemed to let her shoulders drop.
After dinner, she fell asleep on the couch with one hand curled around the cards. I slid them out gently and put them on the kitchen table.
Then I called my mother.
“Oh, Shelby. I’ve been at quilting all afternoon. What’s going on?”
“Where’s Dad?”
“In the shower. He took Lindsay’s boys to the zoo. He’s worn out.”
“He was supposed to pick up Delaney.”
Silence.
“At three-ten, Mom. He promised yesterday.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure he got the days confused.”
“He told me the time himself.”
“Did you remind him this morning?”
I looked at my daughter’s shoes on the floor. She had taken one off. The other was still hanging from her foot.
“I confirmed it Sunday.”
My mother lowered her voice, as if that might make what she said more reasonable.
“You know how he gets when the boys are excited.”
“I know how Delaney gets when she thinks someone’s coming for her.”
I heard a door close on my mother’s end. A muffled exchange followed.
Then my father came on.
“Shell. Look, I’m sorry. Lindsay called. The boys were climbing the walls, and I said I’d take them out.”
“You knew you were picking up Delaney.”
“I meant to be back.”
“The school couldn’t reach you.”
“I turned my phone off. Your mother kept calling about dinner.”
That was how I learned why the calls had gone straight to voicemail. Until then, I had only suspected.
“You turned it off knowing you had to get her?”
“I lost track of time.”
“You could have called me.”
“I figured you’d have somebody.”
For a few seconds, I couldn’t answer.
I had asked him because I didn’t have somebody.
Finally, I said, “The principal had to find me at work.”
“She was at school, Shelby. She wasn’t standing on the highway.”
My mother took the phone back.
“Your father made a mistake.”
“Then let him call her and apologize.”
“He’s upset enough.”
I looked across the room. Delaney’s cheek was pressed against the couch cushion, her mouth slightly open.
My mother kept talking.
“He worked thirty-one years. Your dad deserves to enjoy retirement. He is not your regular babysitter.”
“No,” I said. “He isn’t.”
“You can’t build everything around what you need from him.”
For years, I had tried to find the right way to explain myself to my mother. Calm enough that she wouldn’t call me emotional. Detailed enough that she couldn’t say she hadn’t understood.
That evening, I was too tired.
“You’re right. I won’t interfere anymore.”
“Good. Then let’s all—”
I ended the call.
The apartment was quiet except for the refrigerator motor and a cartoon still playing at low volume.
I sat at the kitchen table and looked at the deck of cards.
Then I thought about my grandmother’s cabin.
When I was twelve, my father forgot to pick me up from softball practice.
He was supposed to come at seven. By seven-thirty, I was the last girl at the field.
My coach called our house from the concession stand. Nobody answered. He had somewhere to be, but he stayed, moving his equipment bag from one shoulder to the other while I told him my dad would be there any minute.
He finally asked for another number.
I gave him my grandmother’s.
She arrived in her old station wagon wearing a housecoat over her clothes. She drove right up beside the gate.
“Get in, sugar.”
I climbed into the passenger seat with my glove still on.
“Is Dad coming?”
“He’s been delayed.”
She didn’t say more until I was buckled in.
Later, I learned he had taken Lindsay for ice cream after her dance recital. She was eight. They had gone across town, and then they had stopped to see someone my father knew.
By the time they got home, my grandmother had already fed me.
My mother said he had a lot on his mind.
That weekend, Grandma took me to Stockton Lake.
Her cabin was a little over an hour from our part of Springfield, depending on the route and how many farm trucks you got behind. It had two bedrooms, a screened porch, and a dock with one section that always looked slightly crooked.
She kept a coffee can of loose buttons beside her sewing chair. The kitchen drawer stuck when the weather was damp. You had to lift it as you pulled.
I loved every inconvenient inch.
Grandma taught me gin rummy at the kitchen table and how to unhook a fish without hurting myself. When I talked, she listened without folding laundry or looking over my shoulder for someone else.
Once, when I was fourteen, I asked why she always came to get me.
She looked up from sorting her cards.
“Because you asked.”