"Yeah."
"I thought you just didn't want to be here." She was still looking at the card. "I thought you were already leaving. Like, practicing leaving. You were gone all the time and then you got into Vermont and you were so happy about it, and it's eleven hours, I looked it up, it's eleven hours, and you're going to go up there and you're never going to come back, and it's going to be just me. Me and Mom and Dad. And Mom crying in the closet. And you didn't even care. You were going to walk on that field in your perfect dress and then just — go."
She was crying again, but differently, not angry now. I sat down on the end of her bed. I couldn't remember the last time I'd sat on her bed. When she was little she used to climb into mine during thunderstorms and put her cold feet on my legs, and I'd let her.
"I'm going to come back," I said.
"Everybody says that."
"I know. I'm saying it anyway." I looked at the softball glove on her nightstand. "I didn't know about Mom. In the closet. I didn't know any of it. I should have. You're right that I should have. I wasn't looking. I was looking at the card and my paycheck stubs and the mirror. That's on me."
"It doesn't make what I did okay," Hadley said. It surprised me that she said it.
"No," I said. "It doesn't. That's what the card's for."
She wiped her nose with her wrist. She looked at the card for a long time.
"Okay," she said. "Every other Friday."