"I said no."
Lulu snatched her hand back to her chest. It didn't hurt very much. That wasn't why her face crumpled. Her eyes went hot and her nose filled, and the tears came before she could stop them, sliding down both cheeks and dripping onto her light pink shirt, the ribbed one with short sleeves that Mama Glo had bought her at Target.
"But I'm hungry," she said.
"Stop crying." Vanessa picked up her fork. Her voice was not loud. It was never loud. "Crying doesn't get you anything in this house. Sit there and think about what you did."
Lulu tried to stop. She held her breath, which sometimes worked. She could hear the clock in the kitchen and the refrigerator humming and Vanessa's knife squeaking faintly against the plate.
Then she heard the front door.
The deadbolt turned. The door swung and caught on the rug, the way it always did, and a voice came down the hall, tired and low and full of gravel: "Anybody home? I smell steak."
Lulu was off the chair before she knew she had moved. Her socks slid on the hardwood. She ran through the doorway into the hall, and there he was — big as the doorframe, still in his work clothes, the light blue long-sleeve button-down with the white oval patch on his chest that said TruClean in blue curly letters, the dark gray work pants with a pale smear of drywall dust on one knee. His short black hair was flattened from his cap. His goatee had gray in it that she had never noticed before.
"Daddy!"
Andre Lassiter dropped his duffel bag and went down on one knee, and she hit him so hard he rocked back on his heel. He wrapped both arms around her. He smelled like industrial cleaner and wet sawdust and the inside of his truck, and she pushed her face into his neck and held on.
"Hey, hey. Hey now." He leaned back to look at her. His thumb went to her cheek and came away wet, and his face changed. "Baby, what happened?"
Lulu didn't answer. She hid her face in his shoulder again. Over her head, Andre looked up.
Vanessa stood in the dining room doorway. One hand was half raised in front of her, palm out, as if to slow something down.
"She was misbehaving," Vanessa said.
Andre stood up slowly with Lulu still clinging to him, and he did not put her down. He looked at Vanessa's raised hand. He looked at his daughter's wet face. Something moved under his jaw.
"Did you put your hands on her?"