Kenan was on the bench at Carondelet Park when she got there at six-nineteen, the last kid, with his shin guards in his lap and his cleats tied together by the laces and slung over his shoulder, the way the older boys did it. Coach Villalobos was sitting at the other end of the bench with a clipboard and a whistle around her neck, and she stood up when the cream car came around the curve by the boathouse and gave Selma a wave that said, it's fine, it happens, and then looked at Selma's face as she got out and stopped waving and said, "Everything okay?"
"Everything's okay," Selma said. "I'm sorry. Thank you for staying with him."
"He's a good kid. He helped me pick up all the cones."
Kenan did not get up right away. He sat on the bench with his arms crossed and his chin down and his cleats over his shoulder and looked at her from under his eyebrows, which was the look he had gotten from her father, and which he had been practicing, she was nearly sure, in the bathroom mirror.
"You said you wouldn't be late."
"I know. I'm sorry, dušo. Something happened."
"What happened?"
She sat down on the bench next to him. The park was going blue around them, the trees along the lake gone black at the tops, the lamps on the path coming on one by one. Out on the water two ducks were arguing. In twenty minutes it would be Maghrib, and they would pray it at home, all of them, Tarik too if he could slip away for ten minutes, on the good rug in the living room and on her father's cheap one, which she had brought home and would bring back to the shop on Monday.
"Do you remember," she said, "the medal in Dedo's car? On the dash. The one we don't touch."
He uncrossed his arms. "The St. Christopher. That belongs to the other family."