Chapter 1 #2
Had I cried on my first day of school? I didn’t remember.
Maybe I hadn’t. But I bet I was nowhere near as brave as Gracie was, because when I got her out of the truck, she didn’t even wait for me to hold her hand.
She just put on her backpack, squared her little shoulders, and began to stride toward the school like a motherfucking boss.
Flipping.
Motherflipping.
I was trying not to swear as much, even in my head, but it was a hard habit to break.
“Hey,” I called to her. “Hey, slow down a second.”
Gracie stopped and looked back at me, clearly exasperated. She held out her hand. “Hurry up, Daddy!”
I hurried up.
A sign pointed us in the right direction of the kindergarten classroom, and there was another one on the door.
The one on the door was painted in different-colored letters on yellow craft paper and said, “Happy first day of school!” The i was dotted with a smiley face and I pictured the teacher who made the sign as perky and young and sunshiney.
The guy who opened the door was young, I guessed, but he didn’t look perky and sunshiney. He looked as disapproving as Mrs. Moore had when I’d turned up on her front porch a little while ago.
“Uh, hey,” I said. “This is Gracie. We’re late.”
Like he didn’t already know that.
The guy was a little shorter than me and had dark hair and glasses.
He was maybe around my age, which meant he couldn’t have been teaching for very long.
Behind him in his brightly decorated classroom, a bunch of little kids sat crisscross applesauce on the floor, craning their heads to see what was going on.
There was an empty chair in front of them, and the guy had a picture book under his arm.
We’d interrupted story time.
The guy’s disapproving look vanished as he leaned down toward Gracie. “Hi, Gracie. I’m Mr. Smith. Welcome to kindergarten. Why don’t you put your backpack in the empty cubby over there and take your snacks out so we can see if anything needs to go in the refrigerator?”
For the first time, Gracie faltered. She looked up at me, eyes wide and her bottom lip wobbling. “I don’t have any snacks.”
Mr. Smith’s disapproving look was back as he met my gaze.
“Uh,” I said. “Sorry.”
I should have checked if Mrs. Moore had packed snacks. She was supposed to have Gracie ready with everything she needed for her first day. Not that I’d mention that to her, since she’d find a way to make it my fault. And while I knew it wasn’t, it was still my responsibility to have checked.
“Daddy!” Gracie whispered again in a too-loud voice. “I don’t have snacks!”
“I know, sweet pea,” I said. “It’s okay. I’m gonna go get some and bring them back if, um, if that’s okay with Mr. Smith?”
I’d already interrupted his day once, right? Why not a second time?
By his expression, he’d made the same calculation, and he wasn’t happy about it. But he showed me a tight smile I was sure was for Gracie’s benefit instead of mine and said, “Sure. That’s not a problem.”
His mouth said it wasn’t, but his eyes told a different story.
“Go on in and put your backpack in a cubby, then sit down on the floor,” Mr. Smith said. “We’re reading a story.”
Gracie nodded, then took a deep breath and darted inside the classroom.
“I’ll come straight back,” I said, eager to escape.
Mr. Smith nodded like he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me and then closed the classroom door gently but firmly in my face.
Cassidy called when I was halfway home.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m on my way to class, but I wanted to see how the drop-off went.”
“Great,” I lied. “No tears or nothing. But you know Gracie. She’s brave as hell.”
“Yeah.” Cassidy’s voice wavered a little.
“She gets it from her mom,” I teased. “How’s college going?”
“It’s good,” she said with a little too much force. Then she relented. “It’s scary. I’m like five years older than everyone else, but I feel twice as dumb.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said. “You’re one of the smartest people I know. You got this.”
“Yeah,” she said on a long breath. “I really miss Gracie.”
“She misses you too,” I said. “But we’ll see you soon enough.”
We talked for a few minutes longer until Cassidy had to get going and I was almost home.
I left the truck parked at a bad angle in the driveway.
The front yard had been shaded once by the old red maple, but now the grass was a little wilted and bleached by the direct sunlight.
Danny had replaced the maple with a sapling, but it’d be years before it cast any shade at all.
Next door the For Sale sign was leaning precariously again, but I didn’t have time to go fix it up.
There had been a few people checking the place out over the last few weeks, and sometimes cars drove slowly down the street and stopped for a while.
I didn’t know if they were evaluating the neighborhood or casing the place.
If they were casing it, more fool them because there was nothing left to steal.
We’d helped Harlan’s daughter clear it out when Harlan had gone to live at Sunny Fields.
I hurried inside the house, not even bothering to close the front door behind me. I threw together some snacks in the kitchen—apple slices, crackers, little cubes of cheese, and some carrot sticks—and then dashed out the door again.
Uncle Steve called when I was on my way back to school.
“Where the fuck are you, kid?” he asked.
“Running late,” I said.
“Well, obviously. I’ve got a crew here waiting to work, and I’m one man down.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”
He grunted and ended the call.
He was pissed, but I knew it wouldn’t last. Uncle Steve couldn’t hold a grudge.
He was my mom’s youngest brother, and he’d been the black sheep of the family before I’d stolen that particular thunder.
I’d been working for his roofing company since I finished high school.
Steve and Danny and Danny’s grandma, Jane, had saved my life back then, and that was no exaggeration.
I dropped Gracie’s snacks off at school, managing to avoid looking the judgmental Mr. Smith in the eye, and made it to the address on the west side of town within twenty minutes. Steve did me the favor of not chewing my ass off me in front of the rest of the crew.
“You okay?” he asked me in an undertone as I set the ladder against the side of the house.
“Yeah,” I said, ignoring the wave of tiredness that swept over me now I’d stopped moving for a second. “I’m good.”
I gripped the rungs of the ladder and began to climb.
The parking lot was almost empty when I pulled up to collect Gracie, and tension swirled in my gut.
Late. Again.
Fuck.
I jogged toward the classroom, and if I’d thought Mr. Smith was giving me judgmental looks when I’d been late this morning, it was nothing compared to the one he gave me when I opened the door to find him standing next to Gracie and another teacher in an otherwise deserted room.
I swore he looked about two seconds away from telling me to stand in the corner and think about what I’d done. And I probably would have gone too.
Gracie ran over to me with a painting clutched in one hand and said, “Daddy! You’re late.” She pursed her lips in disapproval.
“Yeah, sweet pea, I know.” I wilted a little under their combined gazes.
“There’s an after-school program,” Mr. Smith said. “You should look into it, if this is going to become a regular occurrence.”
I could tell he was just itching to remind me he wasn’t paid enough to hang around and babysit Gracie after class, but he was too nice to say it in front of her.
“Won’t happen again,” I said. I was saying that a lot lately. I grabbed Gracie by her free hand and said, “See you tomorrow.”
Gracie flapped her painting in his direction. “Bye, Mr. Smith! Bye!”
The whole ride home I got to hear about how amazing Mr. Smith was. He taught them a song about cleaning up. He had beanbag chairs in the back of the class. He had a monkey puppet that was naughty. He was the bee’s fucking knees, apparently.
Flipping.
I sighed. It wasn’t fair to be annoyed at Gracie’s teacher just because I was dropping the ball.
Gracie liking her teacher was a good thing.
It just worried me that we were only one day into the school year and I was already fucking this up.
And yeah, I knew about the after-school program—but I also knew how much I earned and how much the program cost, and those numbers weren’t even close to lining up.
Uncle Steve was already cutting me some slack and letting me finish early so I could collect Gracie, and in theory I should have been able to make it work.
Based on today’s shitshow, I was starting to have my doubts.
But really, what choice did I have except to figure it out? The only other option was sending Gracie back to live with her grandparents and there was no way I was letting that happen. I was just gonna have to get my shit together, that was all.
As I went around to the passenger door and lifted Gracie from her seat and grabbed her bags, the For Sale sign next door caught my eye. Not only had it been straightened up, but there was a SOLD sticker slapped across the front of it.
I wondered briefly if whoever bought it had kids.
It would be nice if they did, for Gracie’s sake.
But I didn’t get to ponder on it too long because Gracie was tugging at my hand.
“Daddy, I’m hungry,” she said. There was a crease between her brows and a whining note to her voice that told me she was overtired and done with today.
Well, that made two of us. Except I didn’t get to be done, not until hours from now when Gracie was fed and bathed and tucked up in bed for the night. That was the deal when you were the adult.
I crouched down in front of her, ignoring the ache in my thighs from going up and down a ladder all day. “Let’s go find you a snack, sweet pea, and then later we’ll call Mommy and you can tell her all about your first day, ’kay?”
Gracie’s pout turned into a smile that lit up her face, and my heart squeezed.
Sure, full-time parenting was turning out to be a lot harder than I’d thought, and sometimes I missed the days when I wasn’t always exhausted and only had to think about myself, but when Gracie looked at me like I’d hung the moon?
It was totally worth it. And with a little time and practice, I was sure the day would come when this was all smooth sailing.
Just, that day seemed a long way away right now.