Junie shook her head.
"I should've." His jaw worked. "There's a lot of stuff I should've done, bug." He turned to her finally and she saw that his eyes were wet and red at the rims and furious, not at her, and something in her chest that had been clenched for three years came undone a quarter of an inch. "You do not say sorry to me. You hear? Not today. Not about this. Not about anything that happened in this house while I was gone. That's mine to say. That's my job, and I didn't do it."
Then he hugged her. He smelled like sweat and diesel and the pine-tar soap the crews used to get creosote off their hands, and he held on to her like a man holding on to a pole in a high wind.
When he let go he said, "Where's Brooke?"
"Here." Brooke was in the hall, half behind the doorframe, as if she might need to bolt.
Mark looked at her for a second. Then he crossed the hallway in two steps and put one big hand on top of her head, very lightly, the way you'd touch a bird that had landed on you.
"Thank you," he said. "That was brave. That was the bravest thing anybody's done in this family in a long time, and I'm not gonna let anybody give you a hard time about it. Okay?"
Brooke's face crumpled. She nodded.
"Okay," Mark said. He took a breath. He looked at his watch. "Junie, go get a shower. Fast. Five minutes. Then put on whatever's comfortable and grab your shoes for tonight. You have shoes?"
"I have shoes." Silver flats. Eleven dollars on clearance at Target. She'd been so proud of them.
"Bring them. And bring that sash. Pearl said there's a sash."
"It's in my backpack. It didn't—it wasn't in here, it was at Grandma's last night. It's fine." She heard her own voice. "Dad. What are we doing?"
"Your grandmother's waiting for you," he said. "She's got your mother's prom dress out of the cedar closet and she's got the machine oiled. We're due by five-thirty." He looked at his watch again. "Go. I've got one thing to take care of first."
* * *