“These are close enough,” she said. “Nobody’s going to look at her buttons.”
“Everybody’s going to look at her.”
Lily smiled. “Yeah. That’s the point.”
Around midnight, I made grilled cheese. The way Michael used to make it. With mayonnaise.
We ate it at the kitchen table next to the sewing machine. Lily ate two.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Sure.”
“Do you still love him? Dad?”
I put my sandwich down.
I thought about the phone call. About the late nights at the office while I was pregnant. About the ice cream once a year and the photos with his handwriting on the back. About the man who rubbed my feet when I was too sick to move, and who taught our daughter to ride a bike in the parking lot of the church, running beside her for an hour until she finally got it.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I think I’m going to love him and be furious at him for the rest of my life. I think both of those are going to be true at the same time.”
Lily nodded slowly. “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”
“Can I ask you something now?”
“Okay.”
“Why did you give her the cardigan? Of everything. The money I understand. The dress I understand. But that was the last thing he ever gave you.”
Lily looked down at her plate.
“Because it was the last thing he ever gave me,” she said. “And she never got anything from him. Not one thing. Not one present that said ‘from Dad’ on it. I wanted her to have one thing he picked out with his own hands.” She shrugged. “Even if he picked it out for me.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.
I reached over and squeezed her hand. Her fingertips were covered in needle pricks.
The concert was Friday at seven.
The school auditorium was packed. Parents with phones held up, little brothers and sisters running in the aisles, grandparents in the front rows with their programs. Lily and I sat about halfway back.
Ten minutes before it started, the auditorium door opened, and Teresa came in.
She was still in her work uniform. Gray, with the name tag. She’d come straight from somewhere. She stood at the back of the aisle, looking around, holding her purse in front of her with both hands. She looked like she didn’t know if she was allowed to be there.
Lily stood up and waved.
Teresa saw her. She hesitated.
I stood up too. I took my coat off the seat next to me and put it on my lap.
Teresa walked down the aisle slowly. She stopped at the end of our row.
“Is this seat taken?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Sit down.”
She sat down. For a while, none of us said anything. The choir teacher, Mr. Duncan, came out and tapped the microphone. Everybody clapped.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” Teresa said quietly.
“I almost didn’t,” I said.
“Why did you?”
I looked at the stage. “Because my daughter stayed up four nights making a dress, and then she stayed up another night fixing it. I wanted to see it.”
Teresa nodded. She didn’t push.
