Chapter 18: The Pickup Card

The preschool director called me on Monday at noon and asked me to come in before pickup.

She was a broad, tired woman who had taught half the county to hold a crayon.

She shut her office door before she said anything.

"I had to audit the enrollment forms after yesterday," she said. "A mother at church called me."

She laid two sheets on the desk.

The first was Birdie's.

Under Father, in neat blue ink, it said Jesse Tillman, and there was a signature.

"That's Jesse's name," I said. "That isn't his hand."

"I thought so. I've seen his signature on Daisy's field trip slips."

She slid the second sheet across.

It was Daisy's emergency card.

I had filled it out myself, in black pen, in August.

Under Authorized Pickup, in blue ink, somebody had added a line: Lottie Spears (family friend).

My stomach turned over.

"She put her name on my daughter's card."

"Eleven days ago, while you were out with the ambulance. She told my aide that you'd said it was fine."

"I never said it."

"I know you didn't."

I stood up.

My hands were cold.

"I'd like to fix this where people can see it," the director said. "If you're willing. She'll be here at three, and so will everyone else."

At three the pickup line stretched down the sidewalk, twenty parents in trucks and on foot.

Jesse stood beside me with his hands in his back pockets.

He had come straight from the corral.

Lottie parked her truck across two spaces.

She swung down in a white sundress, with her sunglasses pushed up in her hair.

She smiled at the parents.

Nobody smiled back.

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