Page 7 of His Daughter

I watched it ring. The name pulsed with each vibration. Four rings. Five. Voicemail.

Kira sitting across from me. Plastic chairs. The baseball game no one was watching. Trust me.

I picked up the phone, opened her contact, and blocked the number.

The screen went dark. I set the phone face down, finished my whiskey, and rinsed the glass.

The past needed to remain in the past.

THREE

THEA

The screwdriver kept slipping.

Caleb sat cross-legged on the nursery floor, the instruction manual spread across his lap, and a pile of white wooden slats fanned out around him like bones. He wore his reading glasses, looking like a handsome librarian, and squinted at Step 14.

“It says insert dowel B into slot C.” He held up two identical pieces of wood. “These are both dowel B. There is no slot C. There has never been a slot C.”

I sat behind him with my legs stretched out, my back against the wall, eating peanut butter straight from the jar. “Did you skip a step?”

He turned and looked at me over the top of his glasses. “I didn’t skip anything.”

I laughed so hard the spoon nearly fell out of my mouth. He grinned and turned back to the manual. I watched him try to fit two mismatched pieces together, his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth.

“Give me that.” I crawled over and took the screwdriver. Our knees touched. He smelled like cedar and the laundry detergent he always used too much of.

“You don’t trust me,” he said.

“I trust you with my life. I don’t trust you with furniture.”

He kissed me — quick, laughing, his hand cupping the back of my neck. “Fine. You build. I’ll supervise.”

I blinked that memory out of my mind. I hadn't stepped back into that room since that day.

The door was closed. The key sat in my nightstand drawer under a book I no longer read. Some mornings I’d pass it on the way to the bathroom, my hand drifting toward the knob — and then the ringing would start. That high, steady tone. But I’d keep walking.

It had been a month. The trees outside the nonprofit’s windows were beginning to bud, pale green against the gray brick across the street. The world moved forward.

I was at my desk by 6:30 am. My inbox held forty-seven unread messages. The Garcia family needed emergency housing referrals. The Whitfield grant application was due in six days. Our last volunteer quit over the weekend, so I’d be covering intake shifts for the rest of the week.

Oh well, enough work to fill every hour. That was all I needed. Hours that were full. Hands that were busy.

I pulled up the Garcia file. Maria Garcia, thirty-one, had two children and received a thirty-day notice from her landlord. I’d been working on this case for three weeks. The shelter waitlist hadn’t moved. The transitional housing program had frozen intake the week before I needed it. I opened a new document and started drafting the appeal letter.

Four sentences in, the front door opened and closed.

Margot’s footsteps echoed down the hall. I didn’t look up. Soon she appeared in my doorway — orange and gold print blouse, burgundy twists pinned up, reading glasses riding on top of her head. She carried a coffee in each hand — mine and hers — and two fingers of her right hand were stained blue from Saturday’s art therapy session, pigment ground into the creases of her knuckles.

She walked in without asking, setting my coffee on the desk without spilling it. Then she sat down across from me, crossed one leg over the other, and looked at me over the rim of her cup.

I looked back at my screen.

“So the Garcia appeal needs to go out by Thursday,” I said. “And Devon quit, so I need you to cover intake Tuesday and Wednesday. Also, the Whitfield grant. I started the narrative, but the budget still needs — ”

“Thea.”

I ignored her and continued, “The budget still needs line items for the new counseling program, and I think if we frame it as preventative rather than — ”