Chapter 13: A Wedding Gift

I took my hand off Jude's chest and turned the phone so he could see the screen.

He read all three messages.

He read the last one twice.

"Are you going?" he signed.

I signed, "No."

He nodded and didn't argue with me.

He waited on the sidewalk until I pulled out.

In the mirror he was still standing under the tree with his hands in his pockets.

I didn't answer Jenna.

A week later the invitation came anyway, a printed card forwarded from the house.

It had a photo of Jenna and Josh on the back porch, under the patio lights.

I put it in the drawer under the hot plate.

On the first Saturday in August, someone knocked on my door at ten in the morning.

I opened it with the chain on, the way I did now.

My father was on the landing.

He had a paper bag from the bakery down the street in one hand and a manila envelope in the other.

"Hi, kiddo," he said.

He held up the bag. "They had the cinnamon ones."

When I was small he bought cinnamon rolls every Saturday morning, and he took me with him because Jenna liked to sleep in.

I took the chain off.

He came in and looked around.

The single bed. The sink. The hot plate. My laptop on a folding chair.

There was nowhere to put the bag, so he set it on the windowsill.

"It's clean," he said. "It's nice and clean in here."

He sat down on the edge of my bed. I stayed standing.

Then he lifted his hands and signed, slow and clumsy.

"How are you?"

He hadn't signed a whole question to me since I was in middle school.

I signed back slowly, so he could follow.

"Working. Good job."

"I heard." He said it out loud now. "Carrick. Your mother looked it up."

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