Chapter 8
Vanessa walked farther into the bakery.
“Daniel didn’t trust you when he was alive,” she said. “A letter he never sent doesn’t change that.”
Arthur glanced at me before answering.
“No. It tells me he wanted the children to have someone to call. I’m here now.”
Ruth asked Vanessa to lower her voice. Customers had begun watching.
Vanessa pointed at us.
“Do they know Arthur once called their father a thief?”
“Yes,” I said. “We know who corrected the books too.”
Her face tightened.
“Those records are being handled,” Arthur said. “If you have something to say about Lily and Noah, speak to Ms. Lewis.”
Vanessa looked at Lily. Then she turned and left.
Lily pressed close to me.
“She always sounds like she knows a secret,” she whispered.
“She knew one for years,” I said. “Now everybody else knows it too.”
Ms. Lewis visited Arthur’s house that evening. Vanessa had contacted her, claiming Arthur was turning us against her. Ms. Lewis spoke to each of us and asked what had happened at school and the bakery.
I told her exactly what Vanessa said. I did not need to make it worse.
“Do you feel safe here?” she asked.
I looked toward the kitchen. Arthur and Lily were preparing dinner. He asked her before helping her with anything, even tying the apron.
“Yes.”
“What about when you’re upset with Arthur?”
“I can tell him.”
“Have you?”
“Yesterday. He wanted to move Dad’s sweatshirt from the chair. I told him to leave it.”
“What did he do?”
“He left it.”
Ms. Lewis smiled slightly. She thanked me for being honest.
That week, Ms. Brooks met with Arthur about the old bakery partnership and with Mrs. Carter about Dad’s final payment. She told me the adults were sorting two different problems. I appreciated that she kept them separate.
The first was the money Dad left. It belonged where his documents said it should go, and Vanessa would have to account for what she had taken.
The second was what happened when Dad was seventeen. Finding the corrected deposit could not give him back those years. It could prove Arthur had accused him without cause and that Vanessa had known.
Arthur asked Ms. Brooks to help him put a written account of it with Dad’s records.
“Why?” I asked later.
“So you and Lily will never have to wonder what I believe about him.”
We sat at the kitchen table while he wrote.
Daniel did not steal from me.
Arthur paused after that sentence. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. I waited.
I failed to listen to him, he wrote next.
I looked down at my hands. Dad would have wanted to read those words. I wished Arthur had found a way to say them sooner.
The people reviewing Dad’s payment called Mrs. Carter and asked her about the days after he died. She had saved receipts for food and the funeral arrangements she helped with. Her careful little folder answered questions Vanessa could not.
I had teased Mrs. Carter for keeping every scrap of paper. I apologized.
“Keep teasing me,” she said. “I’ve earned it.”
A month after we moved in, Ms. Brooks told us Vanessa had agreed to return the money she could repay at once. The rest would be addressed through a formal process. She would no longer handle anything meant for Lily or me.
I asked whether Vanessa had admitted what she did.
“She has admitted using money that was not hers to use,” Ms. Brooks said. “You don’t have to meet with her.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then you won’t be asked to.”
Arthur had kept the photograph in a frame on his shelf, but he asked before putting it there. I still carried a copy in my pocket. Lily liked looking at the baby Dad had been. She asked Arthur to tell her again how he pulled his hand out of the blanket.
Each time, he added another small detail. Dad had made a face when Claire put a hat on him. He had slept best when someone sang.
I was learning a part of Dad’s story he never got to give us himself.
One evening, I came downstairs and found Arthur reading the letter Dad had left him. He folded it when he saw me.
“You can keep reading,” I said.
“I do. Often.”
I sat beside him.
“Dad knew you’d be here?”
“He hoped.”
“Were you always coming to the bakery?”
“Nearly every morning.”
I imagined Dad walking past its windows and choosing not to enter. I also imagined him writing the address for me.
“He made sure we could find you,” I said.
Arthur nodded.
“And you were brave enough to ask.”
I thought of seven dollars in my pocket and Lily trying to give me the bigger half of a cinnamon roll.
May you like
“I was scared,” I said.
“I’m glad you came anyway.”
