Chapter 7: The Casserole Line

"Item six," I said.

The fireworks went on above us, red and white over the high school roof.

"Coaching conduct," Dale said. "It's what they used last time, too."

"By the time I understood what was in it," he said, "it was October."

"Then it's early," I said. "We're early."

"We're early for a meeting I can't be at."

"You can be at it. You just can't speak."

He turned his head and looked at me.

"What are you planning, Jo?"

"A casserole drive," I said, and went to find my daughter.

The ice cream social at Zion Lutheran is held on the third Sunday of July in the church basement.

The folding tables come out, and four flavors sit in washtubs.

Three hundred people come every year.

I had been in that basement for sixteen years, scooping and wiping and carrying, and nobody had ever asked what I knew.

What I knew was everyone's business.

I knew that the retired bus driver at table two had a daughter in Toledo with a new baby.

I had mailed the shower gift.

I knew that the woman running the lemonade had a husband on dialysis three days a week.

I had driven him twelve times in 2021 when her car died.

I knew that the wrestling parents had a dozen small kindnesses I'd been collecting for years and had never once called in.

My daughter carried my clipboard.

She had asked to, and I had let her, as long as she understood it was a sign-up sheet and not a secret.

"What do I write?" she said.

"Name and phone number. And one thing. A kindness," I said.

"What kind of kindness?" she asked.

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