Chapter 24: Look Up

The card for my daughter had to be easy.

She was five weeks old and could not hold a pencil, so I set the problem for the person she would become.

On the front I wrote four numbers: 8, 15, 13, 5.

Under them I wrote: A is 1, B is 2. Which word?

On the back I wrote in pencil: Good morning. You were wanted before you were born. Ask me anything.

I put a bar through the stem of the seven in the date.

Seth, holding her against his shoulder, read it upside down.

"That's the word?"

"Don't tell her," I said. "She's going to find out."

I tucked the card into the corner of her basket, and went upstairs to nap.

On the first Monday of September I came down at six with my teaching bag over one arm.

The diner was dark and warm, and the grill was already ticking.

The baby sat in a bouncy seat on the bench of the window table, waving a rattle.

She was almost three months old, and the seat was an old one of Dot's, with a scarf tied over the strap.

She had the frown.

I loved the frown.

Dot passed me, pouring coffee, with a pencil behind each ear.

"Big day?"

"My first full school year since I came back," I said. "Room 114. Thirty-one of them. Four are named Tyler."

"Good luck," said Dot. "Don't let any of them near my pie."

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