“I thought I was protecting you,” she said. “I thought I was protecting Lily. I thought I was protecting all of you.”
“You were protecting him.”
She flinched. Then she nodded slowly.
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I was.”
“There’s a girl,” I said, and my voice was shaking now. “She’s sixteen. She’s Lily’s age. She’s his daughter. Your granddaughter. She cleans the cafeteria tables after lunch to get a free meal. Did you know that? Kids at school call her Goodwill. Her mother cleans offices all night. And all this time, you knew. You could have done something. You could have helped them.”
“I sent money,” Ruth said quietly. “After he died. Twice. Anonymously. She sent it back both times.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Ruth said. Her eyes were wet. “I’m an old woman, Beth. I made a choice seventeen years ago. Once you make a choice like that, it gets harder and harder to undo it every year. Until it feels like you can’t.”
I thought about the phone call. About choosing to believe Michael.
“I know,” I said finally. “I know exactly what that’s like.”
We sat there in the sunroom for a long time. Ruth reached over and took my hand. I let her.
“Does Lily know?” she asked.
“Lily’s the one who figured it out.”
Ruth closed her eyes. A tear slid down her wrinkled cheek.
“Of course she did,” she said. “Of course it was Lily.”
That afternoon, Lily came home from school and found me at the kitchen table with the sewing machine.
The blue dress was spread out in front of me. Annie had thrown it on the bathroom floor at school, and Lily had picked it up and stuffed it in her backpack. It was wrinkled and there was a dirty footprint on the skirt. Two of the pearl buttons were missing. One seam at the waist had ripped open about three inches.
“Mom? What are you doing?”
“Trying to fix this,” I said. “I’m terrible at it. Help me.”
She stood in the doorway for a moment. Then she put down her backpack and came over.
“You’re using the wrong thread,” she said.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I know. I can tell.” She sat down next to me and took the dress out of my hands. Then she looked at me. “Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Are you mad at Dad?”
I thought about it.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m so mad at him I could scream. I’m mad at Grandma, too. I went to see her today.”
Lily’s eyes went wide. “She knew?”
“She knew.”
Lily was quiet for a moment. “Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you mad at Annie’s mom?”
I took a long time to answer that one. “I don’t know yet. I think I want to be. But I don’t think I can.”
Lily nodded. She threaded a needle in about two seconds. I’d been trying for ten minutes.
“The concert’s tomorrow night,” she said. “Annie texted me at lunch. She said she’s going to sing. Up front. Not behind the curtain.”
“In what?”
Lily held up the blue dress.
“If we can fix it in time,” she said.
I looked at the ripped seam. The missing buttons. The footprint.
“Then I guess we’re staying up late,” I said.
We worked until almost two in the morning.
Lily did the hard parts. I did what she told me to. I ironed. I held pins. I cut thread. At one point, I found an old button tin in the hall closet. It was Ruth’s, from years ago. Lily dug through it and found two tiny pearl buttons that almost matched.
