"What summer program?"
She looked up at him then. It was not that she had expected him to remember. She had stopped expecting him to remember things around the time she was twelve. But she had told him. She had told him in March, when the acceptance came, at this counter, holding her phone out so he could read the email, and he had said that's great, honey, without looking at it, because Kenzie had been crying in the next room about a stunt she couldn't land. She had told him again in May when she took the Dairy Dip job, and he'd said good, it'll be good for you to have some responsibility, as if she hadn't been the one making Kenzie's lunches and signing Kenzie's reading logs since their mother left.
"The Lakeshore program," she said. "The research one. At the university. Next summer. Six weeks. I got in."
"Oh. Right." He nodded. "Right, right. The science thing."
"The science thing," she agreed.
"That's next summer, though."
"The deposit's due tomorrow. By five. And then the rest is due in January. I got some aid but not enough." She screwed the lid back on the jar, firmly, and set it back on top of her books. "So that's what this is."
She watched him look at the jar. He looked at it the way he looked at cars that came into his service bay, the ones with something knocking under the hood, as if he were adding up what it would cost.
***
Kenzie came in a minute later, still in her uniform.
She was twelve and small for it, and she wore the uniform as if it were skin. Red and yellow, the colors of the Marlow Elite Sparks, a sleeveless top with a gold star stitched over the heart and a pleated skirt that swung when she walked. Her blonde hair was pulled back so tight it lifted the corners of her eyes, tied off with a huge red bow, glitter-edged. There was still a smear of glitter on one cheekbone from practice. She had been wearing the uniform since four o'clock, though practice had ended at five-fifteen and the uniform was not supposed to be worn outside the gym. She wore it everywhere. She would have slept in it if anyone had let her.
"Did you ask her?" Kenzie said.
Maeve turned her head slowly.
"Ask me what?"
Her father rubbed the back of his neck. He had a way of doing that, too, of rubbing his neck as if there were a knot in it someone else had tied.
"Kenz, go on in the other room a minute."