Molly meets Reno in the hall, a smaller version of the red case in hand. “We’re the same, Momma.”
Reno runs her fingers gently beneath Molly’s little chin. “Oh, baby. No we ain’t. But you do look cute.” She bends and presses a kiss on her head. “Be good for your daddy, yeah?”
“Yes, Momma.”
“I’ll see you in a few days.” She stops near the door and, sure enough, pulls on a pair of strappy heels before donning a puffy jacket. “Love you, baby.”
“Love you too, Momma.”
Reno tugs her case over the threshold with a hasty, “Lock up when you leave,” thrown over her shoulder before the door clicks shut.
I glance down at Molly and silence the immediate barrage of negative thoughts that arise.Should have been there… not doing enough… growing too fast.“What should we do first?” I ask with a wry smile. “Ice cream or donuts?”
My daughter’s smile matches mine. “Both.”
A genuine chuckle escapes, and I gesture for her bag. “Anything else you want to bring with you?”
“No?” The response is posed more as a question than a certainty.
So, I head toward her bedroom on my way to the door and stop in to see if there’s anything she might miss, like a cuddly toy or favorite book. The sight startles me. Reno’s never been shy about telling me how thin the household budget stretches after rent and utilities are paid, but I thought the monthly amounts I gave her would have covered more than this.
Molly’s bed sits disheveled in the far left corner, no frame, just the mattress straight on the floorboards. A tattered rug is positioned between that and a three-tier bookcase with a split join at the top. A total of three books sit on the bottom shelf, two of which are geared more for babies than a first-year school kid. A slingshot collects dust on the middle shelf with a teddy that’s missing one ear, and the top shelf is cluttered with cheap, plastic takeout toys. The kind that kids play with once and lose interest in.
Swear to God she had more than this the last time I visited.Not that you can even say when that was.
I move to the built-in closet and open the ajar door wider. Clothes spill out of the drawers shoved inside, but again, half of it she has to have grown out of.
“When did Mommy last buy you clothes, baby?”
Molly sits on the edge of her bed to watch me as I rifle through the contents of the closet. “I don’t know.”
“She buy you new clothes for school?”Like she said she did.
“Yeah.” Molly springs to her feet and nudges me out of the way to tug down a plain blue dress. “See.”
“Just the one?” Stones grind in my gut.
“And this.” She pushes a few things out of the way and tugs flowery leggings out of the bottom drawer and a matching T-shirt.
“Nothing else?”
Molly’s ponytail swings with the shake of her head.
Fuckin’ Reno.I gave her a tidy stack a full month before Molly started school so that she could get our daughter clothes, shoes, a bag, and anything else she might need.
The first question I’ll have for the woman when she gets back is: where are the receipts?
“We can fix that.” I usher Molly from the room and shut the door behind us as though that’ll erase the guilt of trusting Reno at her word from my conscience. “You want syrup with your ice cream and donut?”
“Yeah!” She answers me as though it’s a no-brainer. I guess for someone her age, it ain’t.
“Then let’s get going. We should make it before they shut.”
Molly’s legsswing back and forth, alternating, while she uses broken pieces of her cinnamon donut to scoop the rapidly melting ice-cream from the dish.
I swirl what’s left of my coffee and stare out the shop window at the street beyond. Police tape criss-crosses Davis’s shopfront door, and a sign tacked to the window of Beryl’s craft shop likely advertises the reason for her closure.
Slurping sounds emanate from my left when Molly opts to clean her sticky fingers.
