for the Moses Lake entry. R has a dentist appt Tues. Can you sign the permission slip. The furnace guy is coming Weds, can you let him in. He had answered almost every one with ok, or k, or a thumbs-up. Once, in November, she had sent a photo of Dani on a podium in Wenatchee holding a gold medal, grinning with her headgear around her neck, and he had replied with a thumbs-up.
He'd thought it was enough. He'd thought responding was the same as answering.
He scrolled further. September. August. July. And there, at the very end of July, a few days after she'd moved out, a message from Lena that he'd forgotten about completely: Did you ever do the cheek swab thing? From that drive at Dani's tournament in Pasco, years ago? I got a call. I'll tell you about it sometime.
He'd never answered that one at all. He'd been in a bucket truck outside Naches the day it came, and then he'd forgotten. He looked at it now and couldn't remember what she was talking about. A cheek swab. A drive. He had a dim memory of a table in the lobby of a gym, a long time ago, and a sign with a picture of a kid on it, and a line of parents, and Lena coming back to the bleachers rubbing the inside of her cheek with her tongue, saying, "It's for Coach Delgado's nephew, the little boy with leukemia, they're trying to find a match." He'd been reading something on his phone. He'd said, "That's nice."
He scrolled back down to the present. He opened a new message.
Lena. She's in the final. 6 PM. Mia Castellanos, the girl who beat her last year. She's upset and I made it worse. I said something about you I shouldn't have. I'm sorry. Whatever your class is, if there's any way, she needs you here.
He sent it. He watched the little word Delivered appear under it, and then nothing. No dots. No Read. He set the phone face-down on his knee.
"Daddy." Rosie had finished the hot dog and was wiping her hands on her leggings, a habit Lena had spent two years trying to break. "I have to tell you something."
"Okay, Rosebud."
She hesitated. She put her hand in the pocket of her puffy coat, where she'd been keeping it, he realized, on and off, all day. Then she took it back out, empty.
"After," she said. "After Dani wins. I'll tell you after."
"Is it a good thing or a bad thing?"
Rosie thought about it with her whole face.
"I don't know," she said. "I can't read all the words."