The Saturday I Rented the Bowling Alley

Piper stood in front of that cake with her eyes squeezed shut for a long time.

When she blew, she got all nine candles in one breath and nearly fell into the frosting. Every kid in the building cheered again.

“What did you wish for?” Ella asked her.

“I can’t tell you,” Piper said. “Then it won’t come true.” But she looked right at me and her mother, standing a few feet apart by the shoe counter, and she smiled like she already knew it would.

At three-twenty-five, parents started coming in from the parking lot with car keys in their hands and snow on their boots.

The kids took off their rented shoes and lined them up on the counter in front of Frank.

Shauna came over to me while the last kids were still saying goodbye to Piper. She had changed back into her snow boots.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a plain white envelope and held it out.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Half of the alley,” she said. “Frank told me what you paid. Two hundred forty dollars. Nolan and I talked about it in the corner. It’s right, Zach. Please take it.”

I looked at the envelope. Part of me wanted to wave it away and be the bigger man about it.

But my mother raised me to understand that sometimes letting a person pay what they owe is the kindest thing you can do for them.

I took it. “Thank you,” I said.

“And next time,” Shauna said, and she had to stop and start again. “Next time, if something comes up on your weekend, I’ll ask you first. Before anybody books anything. I mean it.”

“I believe you,” I said. And I did. I do.

She looked over at Piper, who was helping Frank put the bumpers back in their box. Then Shauna did something she had not done once in five years. She asked me a question about my weekend.

“Would you want to take her home?” she said. “In your truck? You were supposed to have her for two hours. I’ll follow with the presents. She’d like that.”

I could not answer right away, so I just nodded.

When Piper came back from helping Frank, she was still wearing her rented shoes.

She looked up at him and asked if she had to give them back. Frank looked at me, then at Shauna, then down at her.

“Those are an old pair,” he said. “Been here longer than you. Birthday girl gets to keep them. Just don’t wear them in the snow, or you’ll slide all the way to Laurel.”

She hugged him around the middle, which surprised him so much he patted her head twice like she was a dog.

Out in the parking lot the sky had gone that flat Montana gray it gets on a February afternoon.

The chinook had come through overnight, and the snow in the lot had gone soft and dirty around the edges.

I lifted Piper up into the cab of my pickup. She was holding her new shoes in her lap like a pair of puppies.

I turned the heat up all the way and pulled out onto the road, with Shauna and Nolan’s headlights behind us.