They Never Picked Up My Calls, So I Made Dolls That Answer novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Not Yet

I looked at my father under the parking lot lights.

"Pay for what?"

"Anything. Something. I don't know yet." He rubbed his face. "I just know I can't keep writing checks to lawyers and calling it sorry."

Fletcher's truck pulled up behind me and idled.

"Not here," I said. "Come to the shop. Saturday at ten. Everybody will be there."

"Everybody."

"Everybody you didn't call."

He nodded slowly.

"Saturday at ten," he said.

He came at nine fifty.

He parked his big silver car in the alley next to the dumpster and sat in it for five minutes before he got out.

I watched him through the shop window.

"He's scared," Gracie said beside me. She had pins in her mouth.

"Good."

He came in through the open garage door in khakis and a golf shirt.

The machines stopped one by one.

The three sewers.

Gracie at her bench.

Drew at the new drafting table in the corner, on his first day.

Gus at the soldering station.

Fletcher on a ladder, hanging a light.

The boy was on his Saturday stool with his ruler.

Dad stood in the middle of the concrete floor.

He didn't sit down. Nobody asked him to.

He took a folded paper out of his back pocket.

"Your grandmother left a college fund," he said. "To 'my girls.' Half of it was yours. Your mother spent all of it on Gracie's tuition, and I signed the checks."

Gracie looked down at her pins.

"I put your half back," Dad said. "Out of my own account. With eight years of interest. It cleared Thursday."

"I don't want your money, Dad."

"It isn't for you." He unfolded the paper and set it on the cutting table. "I signed it over to the fourth floor this morning. The Keepsake ward fund. In your grandmother's name."

I picked it up.

Her name was at the top. Her whole name, the one she signed on every birthday card.

My throat closed.

"I'm sorry," my father said.

He said it to me. Then he turned and said it to the room.

"I'm sorry. I paid for a studio with no air conditioning and called it a decision. I stopped paying when I was told to. My daughter called me every night for a year and I let it ring because it was easier at home if I did."

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