"He wasn't," I said.
"Because of your daughter. Because a fourteen-year-old stuck her own medicine in my son while his grandmother screamed at her. Please tell her. Will you tell her? I'll tell her myself, I'll come over myself, but please tell her tonight. Tell her I said thank you. Tell her I don't have a better word than that and I'm sorry I don't."
I went upstairs. Clem was in bed with the lights off and her phone on her chest, not asleep. I sat on the end of the bed and told her. She didn't say anything for a long time. Then she said, "Brown?"
"That's what she said."
"That means it oxidized. From the heat. It might not have worked." She turned the phone face down on her chest. "She left it in the car because of the sign, Dad. Your sign."
"I know."
"Rule 11.4."
"I know, Clem."
She was quiet. Then she said, "You did a really nice keyline on that sign, though," and I laughed, for the first time all day, and so did she, and then she was crying, the big, silent, delayed kind that comes after, and I sat there in the dark with my hand on her ankle until she fell asleep.