FEB 4. L no breckfast. Spilled juice.
FEB 9. Dad in Columbus (flood). L no dinner. V said she is getting chubby and it is for her own good. L is not chubby.
FEB 10. same.
FEB 11. same. I took 2 rolls from lunch for her. Ms. Pak saw and did not say anything.
Andre turned the page. And the next one. The entries went on through February and March, through April and May, a column of dates down the left side, a few words beside each. Sometimes only a dash. Sometimes OK DAD HOME, and those days had a small check mark, and there were not enough of them. He knew without counting that every gap between check marks was a stretch of his own schedule: the night rotation, the storm deployments, the two weeks in June when TruClean had sent half the restoration crew to a hotel fire in Louisville and he had come home with five thousand dollars in overtime and a new grill for the backyard.
JUNE 14. Dad in Louisville. L ate dog food. Not a lot. I told her it is bad for you. She said it tasted like nothing.
He had to stop reading. He sat with the notebook open on his knees and pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes until he saw colors.
They didn't have a dog. They had not had a dog since Pepper died the year before Monique. There was half a bag of kibble in the garage that he had never gotten around to throwing away.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
He did not mean it to sound like an accusation. It came out like one anyway, and Theo flinched, a small, contained movement, as if he had been expecting it.
"I tried," Theo said.
"When?"
"In March. You were putting gas in the truck. I said Vanessa is mean to Lulu about food. And you said—" Theo stopped.
Andre remembered. He remembered it exactly, the way you remember a pothole after it has already cracked your axle. A Saturday morning. The pump clicking. He had been on the phone with dispatch, half listening, and Theo had said something, and Andre had said, Buddy, I need you to give her a chance. She's trying real hard with y'all. It's an adjustment for everybody. Okay? Be the man of the house for me.
Be the man of the house.
"I said give her a chance," Andre said.