"So you're ashamed."
"I'm not ashamed. I'm—" He stopped. "Kenzie loves it. Okay? She loves it. She lights up. She's good at something, she's really good, and people clap for her, and I'm the one who drove her there, and for an hour on a Saturday I'm not the guy whose wife left, I'm Kenzie Sorensen's dad. You know? I'm not going to be the reason she can't go. I'm not going to be the reason she's the kid whose dad couldn't pay."
"So you'll be the reason Maeve is the kid whose dad took her money instead."
"Maeve's fine. Maeve's always fine. She's tough. She takes care of herself."
Under the window, Maeve shut her eyes.
"She takes care of herself," her grandmother said, "because nobody else in that house does. Do you hear what you just said? You're punishing her for being good at the thing you made her do."
"Oh, come on."
"No. You listen to me. Your father did this to me, Douglas. You were too little to remember. I had money put by, from the job at the lumberyard, for a bookkeeping certificate at the community college, and your father found the envelope and used it on a bass boat, because his brother had one, because he couldn't stand to be the one at the lake without one. And when I cried about it he said, Bev, we're a family, what's mine is yours and yours is mine. Family helps family. You know where you got that? That's where you got that. He said it every time he took something."
The moths batted against the light.
"I never got the certificate," Grandma Bev said. "I kept the books at the lumberyard for thirty-one years for less money than the men who had it. I'm not telling you that so you'll feel sorry for me. I'm telling you because I watched you pick up that jar tonight, and you had his face. You had his exact face."
Maeve heard her father make a sound. It wasn't a word.
"I'm going home," her grandmother said. "Tomorrow morning I'm taking that girl to the credit union, and then she's going to pay her deposit, and you are going to drive her there or you are going to stay out of the way. Figure out the trip some other way. Sell something. Call Tara and tell her the truth. You're a grown man. You'll survive one email."
"Mom."
"What."
A long pause.