They both looked up when I came around the corner.
“Hey, sis,” Dad said, at a perfectly normal volume.
“Hi, Daddy.” I looked at Cindy. “Cindy.”
“Kayla.” She looked down at her hands.
“Pull up a chair,” Dad said. “Cindy was just telling me something.”
I sat down slowly on the edge of the brick planter. Duke lifted his head, sniffed my shoe, and went back to sleep.
Cindy didn’t look at me. She looked at Dad.
“I was telling him,” she said, in a small voice I’d never heard from her, “that I’m sorry. For pushing him. And for laughing. And for not calling to see if he was okay.”
Dad nodded slowly.
“And I brought this.” She reached into the pocket of her sweatshirt and pulled out a white envelope. She set it on the table beside the pie and pushed it toward Dad with one finger. “It’s eight hundred dollars. It’s not the whole thing. I know it’s not. It’s what I got back when I returned the sundresses and the hat, plus what I had in my savings. I’ll send more when I can.”
