“She said you’re here at 12:05 every day. She said the other parents set their watches by you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything.
Kara looked over at the play yard. Gage was standing at the fence with his fingers through the chain link, already watching the corner of the lot where the pickup always came in.
He didn’t see us yet. We were parked in the back, under the tree.
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“He saves you half his sandwich,” Kara said. “Doesn’t he.”
It wasn’t a question. I looked at her.
“I couldn’t figure out why he was so hungry when I picked him up,” she said. “I thought he was growing. Then last week Miss Jen asked me if I could pack him an extra napkin. For Daddy’s half.”
Her voice broke on the word half. She put her hand over her mouth.
“I’m paying for full days he isn’t there,” she said through her fingers. “You’re getting up at three in the morning. Your mom is sitting home alone. And our son is saving you half his lunch because he thinks you don’t get to eat.”
“Kara,” I said.
“I did this,” she said. “I did all of this. Over a nap.”
I didn’t tell her she was wrong. I couldn’t. But I didn’t tell her she was right, either. I just got out of the truck and stood next to her by the door, and we both looked at our son at the fence.
“Why’d you do it?” I asked her. I asked it quietly. I wasn’t trying to win anything.
She was quiet a long time.
“You remember my grandma,” she said.
“I remember.”
“Every time I walked into your mom’s house, he ran to her first,” Kara said. “Every time. He’d run right past me to her. And I would stand in that doorway and I would feel like my mother.”
She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.
“Your mom never did one thing wrong, Jesse. I know that. I knew it then. I just couldn’t stand in that doorway anymore.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do.
“Jesse,” she said. “Does your mom still sit out on that porch in the mornings?”
“Every morning,” I said. “Six o’clock. With her coffee.”
Kara nodded slowly. Then she handed me the paper sack.
“Give him his lunch,” she said. “I have to get back to work.”
She turned and walked to her car. I stood there holding that brown sack until my alarm went off in the truck at 12:03.
Then I pulled around to the front of the lot, and Gage saw the pickup, and he dropped everything, and he yelled “Daddy!” like he had every day for ten weeks.