“What do they want to do?”
“Small loans program. Reasonable rates. Hours that work for people who have jobs.” He shrugs. “Everything Marco’s operations weren’t.”
“Get me a meeting.”
It takes a week to arrange and another to execute, but the credit union gets what it needs to get off the ground properly. The payday storefronts are starting to become other things. A laundromat. A sliding-scale medical clinic that Alanda consults on. A tutoring center that Opal has already mentioned will be an excellent resource for the neighborhood when she’s older.
She said this over breakfast with the authority of someone who has reviewed the proposal and found it sound. I have no idea whether she did or not, but nothing surprises me with this kid.
She’s five. She has a ten-year plan for the neighborhood. I’ve started asking her for her ideas too.
“A petting zoo. One with sharks.”
“Not sure I can get the zoning for that, but I’ll look into it.”
It’s slow work. Invisible from the outside—it looks like a neighborhood getting slightly better on its own, which is exactlyhow I want it to look. But I know where the decisions are being made and Ed knows, and a small number of other people are starting to understand what flag they’re working under now and what that means going forward.
Renzo’s release date comes through on a Tuesday morning. Just over a year. Apparently, he got caught with some contraband by the wrong guard, one who didn’t know he was untouchable before it was too late.
The contraband? A stolen ham from the kitchen.
He’s been there for four years for reasons that were forty percent his own choices and sixty percent a prosecutor who needed a win and a jury that liked a clean story. He’s spent those four years being the kind of man who keeps every letter Opal has ever sent him—all of them, in order, in a box that the guards have never bothered to confiscate because it’s letters from a child, and even in there, some things are left alone.
She draws Rainbow sitting on rainbows in the margins. She signs themLove, Opal. I’m pretty sure he already does.
I need to think carefully about what to offer him. Not a favor—Renzo would clock a favor immediately and resent it. Something real. Something that fits who he actually is, which is a man with sharp instincts, terrible patience, and a genuine talent for reading people that he has historically aimed at entirely the wrong targets.
When I mention the release date to Ed, he says only, “About time,” and goes back to his notepad.
Renzo is one of those people who is either hated or adored. Apparently, Ed likes him. That should make life easier.
On a Saturday, I take Opal to the park. Just the two of us—Lena has a study session for school.
At the park, Opal goes directly to the swings, the way she always does, and I stand at the appropriate parental distance and watch her pump her legs and think about Renzo and the credit union and the Archer Street buildings and what I want the next year to look like.
Busy. I want to be busy, setting things right.
After a while, Opal drags her feet, slows herself down, climbs off, and comes to stand beside me. She doesn’t ask to go home. She just stands there, looking at the park, in the comfortable way she has of existing in a space without needing to fill it.
The park does its Saturday thing around us—kids arguing near the climbing structure, a dog making a break for the fountain, the old couple who walk this loop every weekend at the same steady pace.
“Are you going to be my real dad?” she says.
I look at the side of her face. Her hair is in its two uneven braids because she did them herself this morning and refused help. Lena said we have to let her try things sometimes, even though I die a little inside each time I see the straggles sticking out in every direction.
Parenting is not easy.
But I enjoy trying.
“If you want me to be your real dad, then I will be.”
She nods once. “Okay.” And then she walks back to the swings. Climbs on. Within thirty seconds, she’s back up to full height,working on something new with her legs, tongue between her teeth in concentration.
I stand there, feeling the world slip out from under me.
My real dad.
She asked me a question, received her answer, then returned to the swings. The entire exchange probably took about twenty seconds. During those moments, she shifted something within me—an indescribable change. Nothing was shattered. Rather, something that had been tentative became fixed. It was like a door that sounds different once it’s correctly installed.
