"She had one anyway." Audrey's thumb pressed the edge of the folder until the card stock bent. "And now if Willa falls on her face, it looks like we sent her to fail. And if she doesn't—"
"If she doesn't, nothing changes about today," Patricia said. "Today is your day. I need you to act like a person who knows that."
Audrey was quiet for a full exit ramp. Then she said, "I'm not worried she'll be better than me. She's eleven. I'm worried she'll be interesting, and interesting is what they write down when the technique isn't finished. I have technique. I've paid for it in ice baths and in not going to things. If they start telling a story about the little sister in the sad shoes, my footage becomes a comparison. I don't want to be a comparison."
Patricia felt a flare of something like pride and something like fatigue. "No one is comparing you to a child."
"You do," Audrey said. "Not out loud. You look at her and you look at the hallway where he used to leave his boots, and then you look at me like I'm the receipt. I can feel it. I'm not stupid."
"Don't talk about your father as if I use him."
"He bought those shoes," Audrey said. "I was there. I wanted the black ones with the white stripe and you said no, we were not buying two pairs of junk, and he bought hers anyway because she asked about the gym. You were mad in the car. You said he was teaching her that asking worked. He said asking was the point."
Patricia's hands tightened on the wheel. She remembered the car. She remembered the anger, which had not been about canvas. It had been about a man who would spend twenty dollars on a whim and forget the electric bill until the envelope went red. It had been about being the person who remembered envelopes. After he died, the whim looked like tenderness, and the envelopes were still hers, and there was no one left to be charming about either.
"I am trying to keep a roof," she said. "Charm does not mail itself."
"I know," Audrey said. She sounded older then, and tired, and seventeen in the way that is not a costume. "I know the fees. I know you sold the good camera. I know Belland is a reach and the state school is the one that might actually say yes if I don't blow my knee or my face. I'm not asking you to pretend we're rich. I'm asking you not to make Willa a lesson every time you can't stand the math."
Patricia did not answer. The pavilion's flags appeared over the trees, bright and official. Cars were already turning in. A woman in a red coat waved a clipboard at the lot entrance. Audrey straightened as if a string had been pulled up through her spine. The conversation folded itself and went somewhere both of them could pretend was later.
"Lipstick," Patricia said.