Chapter 4 - The Coupon on Elmwood at Nine
I sat in the car at 8:59 and watched the curtain in 3B move and then settle. I stayed a beat longer than I needed to, hands on the wheel, breathing.
At exactly nine I got out. The brick building had a buzzing entry with taped-over names and a stroller folded by the mailboxes. Helen buzzed me in before I knocked. I climbed two flights where the carpet smelled like cleaner and cooking oil.
Helen opened the door before I knocked there too. She was maybe sixty-five, gray hair pulled back, wearing a cardigan over a plain dress, holding the doorframe like she was bracing. Behind her, Ella stood in the hallway in her cream lace dress from last night, but now with white tights and little Mary Jane shoes. She held the cream bunny against her chest and stared.
"Mr. Reyes," Helen said quietly. "You came."
"I said I would," I said. My voice sounded too loud in the hall. I knelt a little so I wasn't towering. "Hi, Ella."
She didn't move at first. Then she held out the same small white paper I already had in my pocket. A second one, I realized. Or she had made another.
"You brought it," she whispered, looking at my jacket pocket where the fold showed.
"I did," I said. I patted it. "I have the coupon."
That seemed to unlock her. She took two quick steps and stopped a foot away, looking up. "We can go now? The whole day?"
Helen put a hand on her shoulder. "Shoes on first, remember? And you ask."
"Can we go now, borrowed daddy?" Ella asked, and the words hit me hard and clean.
"Yes," I said. "We can go now."
Helen handed me a folded sheet of paper, not a coupon. "Her allergies. Just peanuts she can't have. And my number is on there. I know you said till seven. I'll be here. If anything—"
"I'll call," I said. "I have your number."
She looked at me like she wanted to say more and then didn't. She knelt and zipped Ella's small pink backpack and handed it to her. "Be good. Listen."
Ella nodded hard, already holding my hand. Her hand was tiny and warm and damp.
In the stairwell she counted the steps out loud down to the sidewalk. One through fourteen. At the bottom she stopped and looked up at me.
"Do borrowed daddies hold hands in the parking lot?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said. "They do."
We walked to my car, an old dark sedan that was too nice for the inside and too plain for the outside. I had wiped the passenger seat that morning. I helped her into the back where I had borrowed a booster from my neighbor at seven thirty that morning with an awkward knock. She sat and I buckled her, double-checking the strap the way Helen had showed me in the hallway mirror. The bunny sat on her lap.
"Where first?" I asked.
"School," she said, like it was obvious. "The coupon says school and park and dinner. School is first."
I pulled out onto Elmwood and drove the six blocks to Whitman Elementary. It was Saturday, but the parking lot was filling with minivans and dads in jeans holding little girls in dresses. A banner over the door read DADDY DAUGHTER PICNIC in hand-painted letters. Ella pressed her face to the window.
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"That's my school," she said. And then, quieter, "Will you come in with me?"
I parked, checked the coupon in my pocket again even though I knew it by heart, and got out to get her door. I felt twelve eyes on us already, and we hadn't even reached the sidewalk.
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