The Steer Money Was Always Hers

The Stop on the Way Home

On the way back I pulled into the computer repair place on the edge of Sheldon, the one in the old tire shop, where a young man named Kyle fixes laptops and sells refurbished ones off a shelf by the register.

“What are we doing here?” Kenzie asked.

“Brooklyn’s been doing her homework on her phone,” I said. “With the cracked screen. I noticed it at the table last week. She types her English papers with her thumbs.”

Kenzie went quiet. Then she said, “She does it up in her room so nobody sees. I hear her. She has to zoom in to read anything. Dad, she needs one with a real keyboard. The little ones are awful.”

I let Kenzie pick it. She asked Kyle more questions than I knew there were to ask, about battery and memory and whether the school’s programs would run on it.

She picked a gray one with a scuff on the lid for two hundred eighty dollars.

When we got to the register, Kenzie reached for her own wallet. “I can pay half,” she said. “I’ve got babysitting money.”

“Put that away,” I told her. “This one’s from me, with my money. It isn’t a trade and it isn’t a swap for anything. It’s just a girl who needs a laptop and a dad who can buy one.”

She put her wallet back. In the truck she said, looking out the window at the beans turning gold on both sides of the road, “Thanks for not making me be the one who said no to her.”

That about broke my heart, if you want to know. She had been ready to be the villain in her own house so nobody else had to be.