I nodded. And that was all either of us needed to say about it right then.
When he finally stood up, he turned to Mrs. Lund first.
“Thank you for calling me,” he said. “I mean that.”
“She’s a good girl,” Mrs. Lund said. “She works harder than any child in my room. She deserves to hear what she’s working for.”
Then Chad turned to me.
“You should have called me, Mandy,” he said quietly.
Nobody else has called me Mandy in four years.
“Would it have gone well?” I asked.
I didn’t say it mean. I meant it as a real question.
He thought about it. Honestly. I watched him do it.
“No,” he said. “Probably not. I’d have defended her before I listened. That’s on me.”“Chad,” I said. “There’s something else. I called Linda Haugen on the way down.”
His face changed. “You called a lawyer?”
“I didn’t hire her for anything. I just needed to know where we stood.” I took a breath. “Page seven of our parenting plan says both of us have to make sure Emma has her prescribed medical devices. Her hearing aids are prescribed. What happened this weekend broke a court order.”
He stared at me. Then he looked down at the blacktop.
“I’m not filing anything,” I said. “Not today. I don’t want to. I just want you to know that I know. And I want it in writing somewhere that this happened. In case it ever happens again.”
He nodded slowly.
“It won’t,” he said. “But you write it down anyway. You should.” He put his cap back on. “I’m going home to get them. They’ll be at your house before supper.”
“Chad,” I said. “Kendall.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll talk to her. She’s coming with me.”
Emma went back inside to eat her lunch, chattering at Mrs. Lund about the bell the whole way to the door.
I went back to work for the afternoon, because the bills don’t stop. I checked my phone about every four minutes.
At 4:40, a little after Emma and I got home, Chad’s pickup pulled into my driveway.
I watched from the kitchen window.
Chad got out of the driver’s side. Then, after a long moment, the passenger door opened.
And Kendall got out too.
She was still in her bank clothes. A navy skirt and a cream blouse with a little name badge still clipped to it. Her eyes were red and swollen.
She was holding Emma’s purple hearing aids in both hands, cupped together. The same careful way Emma had held the loaner at recess.
I went out onto the porch. Emma came out behind me and stood holding on to the back of my shirt.
Kendall walked up to the bottom of the porch steps and stopped there. She didn’t come up.
I think she knew she hadn’t been invited. And she was right.
She looked at me. Then she looked down at Emma.
“Emma,” she said. “Can I talk to you? Your mom can stay right there.”
Emma looked up at me. I nodded.“I took something from you that I had no business taking,” Kendall said.
Her voice shook. She took a breath and tried again.
“When I was your age and I talked back, my dad took away my clarinet. It was the thing I loved most in the whole world, and he locked it in his truck for a month. I hated it. I hated him for it. But I grew up thinking that’s how you teach a kid. You take the thing she loves most.”
She swallowed hard.
“I didn’t understand that your hearing aids aren’t a toy. Or a treat. I thought you could hear fine if you just tried harder. Your dad told me today what Mrs. Lund said. About the spelling test. And standing by the slide.”
She stopped and pressed her lips together tight.
“I’m so sorry, Emma. I was wrong. And I’m not ever going to do it again.”
Emma looked at her for a long time.
I’ve learned to wait when she does that. She’s nine years old. But she’s fair.
“Did you play the clarinet good?” Emma finally asked.
Kendall let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
“Not very,” she said. “But I loved it.”
“I love hearing,” Emma said simply.
“I know,” Kendall said. Her voice broke. “I know that now.”
Emma held out her hand. Kendall put the purple hearing aids in it.
Emma took off the loaners and handed them back to me. Then she put her own back in. One, and then the other. She did it without even looking, the way she does every morning, the custom molds sliding right into place.
Then she frowned.
“They need batteries,” she said. “They died Saturday.”
Kendall looked stricken. All the color left her face.
“I didn’t even know they had batteries,” she whispered.
Chad was standing back by the truck with his hands shoved in his coat pockets. He didn’t say a word. But he didn’t look away, either.
He’d made her come. And he’d made her do it herself. And he stood there for it.
I haven’t always been fair to Chad. I’ll say that plainly. But he did right that day.
I went inside and got the card of 312 batteries and the little battery door tool out of the junk drawer.
When I came back out, Kendall was sitting on the bottom porch step. And Emma was sitting right next to her.
“Here,” I said, and I held them out.
Not to Emma.
To Kendall.Kendall looked up at me, surprised. Then she took them.
“The door locks,” Emma explained. Very serious. Leaning over Kendall’s hands. “You use the little thing. Push here. No, the other way. And you have to peel the sticker off first and wait a minute so it wakes up.”
Kendall’s hands weren’t steady. She dropped the first battery in the grass. All three of us got down on our hands and knees and looked for it.
Chad found it with the toe of his boot.
She got it on the second try. Then the other one.
Emma smiled at her. She clicked the battery doors shut. She tipped her head and listened.
“Okay,” she said. “Now you know.”
I drove the loaners back to Sioux Falls that Saturday morning, since the clinic keeps Saturday hours twice a month.
Emma came along. She found two Minnesota plates and one from Nebraska. She marched right up to the front window and reported all three to Deb, who wrote them down on a yellow sticky note like it was official business.
“Three plates,” Deb said. “You’re paid in full, young lady.”
Dr. Meyer checked Emma’s own aids while we were there. They were fine. Emma told her the whole story about the recess bell, start to finish. Dr. Meyer listened to every word like it was the best thing she’d heard all week.
On the way out, Dr. Meyer slipped me a little packet of printed pages. “Hearing Loss: A Guide for Families.” On the front, in pen, she’d written: “For the stepmom. Page 4 especially.”
I gave it to Chad the next week when he picked Emma up. He looked at the note on the front and nodded.
“She’ll read it,” he said. “She reads everything.”
Two weeks later, it was Chad’s weekend again.
I’ll admit I didn’t sleep well that Friday. I lay awake listening to the house creak. Around nine o’clock, my phone buzzed on the nightstand with a text from a number I didn’t have saved.
It was a picture.
Emma at Chad and Kendall’s kitchen table in her pajamas, grinning ear to ear, with her purple hearing aids lying on a paper towel next to a card of batteries and the little tool.
Under it, Kendall had written:
“Changed them myself. She says I did it right. Thought you’d want to know.”
